So on day 9 for whatever reason myself and a group of friends were up on the roof of our building totally not social distancing and drinking beer / having chats about this and that when the topic of the really harsh lockdown that we are currently in came up (as it would.) We put together some bets about whether or not we thought the government was actually going to stick to their promise of releasing us all from our cages after 10 days or if they were going to extend it.
We couldn't get any bets going no matter the odds offered because we all just kind of unanimously thought that there was no chance they were actually going to stick to the promise of ending the locked-in lockdown in the timeframe they promised.
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We had expected that they would tack on an additional 4 days so that the 2 weeks that everyone around the world enjoys so much whenever referring to anything Covid-ey cold be achieved. We all experienced a little bit of shock and awe when we woke up the following day to discover that the government was in fact extending the lockdown but not for 4 days. Nope! They are extending it for an additional 10 DAYS.
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It is a little bit difficult to acquire food right now because while there are authorized stores, you are technically not supposed to go to them but are rather, meant to order from them and they will deliver to you with someone who is vaccinated or something like that, but this system has already broken down and it is taking them days to get the order to you and sometimes the orders just "disappear into the void" and when you call to inquire about what is taking so long I have heard two people that have been told that their order was cancelled and no reason was given as to why.
The other night when we were drunk myself and 3 friends decided that we were just going to go to the shop, consequences be damned. The sentinels at the checkpoint in our area didn't do anything to stop us and when we arrived at the shop they told us we can't go in. My friend, who is probably the most bold out of the bunch of us anyway, walked in anyway, grabbed some bottles of wine, and just laid the money on the counter. He had overpaid and then we just walked back home.
They didn't pursue us and no police were involved. We would not have been difficult to find if they did want to chase us because there really aren't very many foreigners left here and all of us frequent that store so even though we had our masks on, we would be easily identified.
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So why 10 more days? I can only speculate but i think it is because of the fact that each of the provinces have kind of been operating by their own methods rather than coordinating the entire country as a whole. Nearly the entire 10 days that we have been in total lockdown, the largest city in Vietnam, Saigon, has NOT been. So let's assume for a second that the 14 day thing has some credence to it. The whole thing falls apart if everyone isn't doing it at the same time.
Now Saigon and the rest of the country are doing the same thing although as you can imagine, enforcing this sort of stuff in a city of nearly 10 million people is a big job, so the military has been brought in to enforce it. Nothing quite smells like freedom as uniformed soldiers with AK-47s patrolling the streets to make sure you stay inside. You can definitely prevent someone from dying of covid if you shoot them!
There have been pockets of resistance around the city such as people who are starting to refuse to stay indoors and depending on the strictness of their local sheriff and I suppose combined with that the danger level of their area is, they are kind of allowed to do so. For example, last night the kids were playing in the street and nobody did anything about it. I also walked about a block to another friend's house and had a few drinks with her because it was her birthday. I, no doubt, killed at least 4 thousand people with my very selfish moves and by going from building-to-building.
So looks like Nadi and I are going to be getting a lot more pasta into our systems in the next 9 days or so.
She won't mind... she loves lockdowns because it means I am home dropping food on the floor more often
The problem that we are going to run into now is the fact that the food delivery system that was set up by the government doesn't work at all and we will have to wait and see how the people react to that. Hunger can drive people to do some pretty crazy stuff, even if they have been indoctrinated by the government their entire lives.