Travel Bits: January 2021
Travel plans for 2021.......
When the pandemic first started rearing its ugly head in the early months of 2020 and governments worldwide started to announce local lock-downs followed by restricted borders, many travellers (myself included) soon started to realise that leisure travel for the year would not be possible. The hope then was the following year that will be 2021 is the likely timeline when we could all resume travel again.
But as we head into the final week of January 2021 and are soon to bid farewell to the first month of the year, it seems highly likely that leisure travel this year is also not going to be possible. The pandemic is still raging and while there are bright spots in humanity's fight against the virus, the so-called and often touted vaccination bullet is still very much in its infancy stage. While many developed countries have started to vaccinate their population, for large swathes of the world's population, vaccination and hopes of an end to the pandemic remain as distant as they were in 2020. A combination of the lack of funds and public healthcare infrastructure as well as bottlenecks in vaccine productions and deliveries are just some of the obstacles facing developing countries in the fight against the pandemic.
Even with vaccinations being rolled out at breakneck speed in developed countries, questions remain unanswered. Are the vaccines really effective? How effective? Does it only prevent the vaccinated from developing serious illness but they could still be spreaders and infect others? How long do the vaccines protect one against the virus? Will the vaccines be effective against newly mutated strains of the virus? The list of unanswered questions continue. Truth is, nobody really knows the answers. Even when answers are forthcoming from the experts, these answers were at most scholarly assessments and guesstimates based on existing medical knowledge.
With these in mind, I have more or less written off any hopes of leisure travel for 2021. I still have a hotel reservation in Bali that was moved to this March from April of last year. I will soon be writing in to the hotel to either cancel the reservation or to postpone it further to maybe March 2022.
Instead of travel, I have penciled in many other stuff to occupy my "vacation" time for 2021. Reading will be one key activity. Travelogues topping my reading list. Others include exploring the local nature reserves and parkland on weekend hikes and visiting long forgotten neighbourhoods in my home city. Not forgetting one of my favourite activities, cafe hopping; as long as social distancing rules allow and are adhered to.
I will be skipping the local staycations this year. Not much fun paying to coop myself up in a small hotel room when I have all the room to bum around in my own home. Talking about bumming around at home, maybe I should plan some nights to stay up late and re-live those solo slumber parties of my younger days. But no actual partying, just whiling the hours away reading or writing into the still of the night. Enjoying the pleasures of solitude.
These sum up my exciting "travel" plans of 2021. :-)
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