We were in Phuket as COVID-19 was just getting started in February of 2020.  In fact, WHO had not yet declared this to be a pandemic.  Here is what I said almost six years ago: Phuket is the largest island of Thailand, but also a province and city, including 32 more tinier islands.  The area is slightly less than Molokai, which is slightly smaller than Singapore.  The ocean it faces is the Andaman Sea.  The population is approaching 400,000, although there are an additional 200,000 unregistered migrants, ex-pats and others.  The city is 536 miles south of Bangkok . That disastrous Indian Ocean Earthquake of 2004 brought tsunamis to the west coast of Phuket, where we are staying.  While 5300 were killed in all of Thailand, Phuket reported 250 deaths. Like Hawaii, Phuket gets around 10 million visitors per year.  Caucasian tourism is high, from Europe, Russian and the USA.  We'd guess that 80% of the guests at the Le Meridien is white.  Am...

      From  Worldometer  (new  COVID-19 deaths yesterday):            DAY    USA    WORLD      Brazil      India      South Africa 2020 June     9     1093     4732         1185        246       82 July    22      1205     7128         1293      1120     572 Aug    12      1504     6556        1242        835     130 Sept     9      1208      6222       1136       1168       82 Oct     21      1225      6849         571 ...

Today was supposed to be my nostalgic Tuesday posting...until we were blacked out.  We now find ourselves in Phuket, Thailand.  Incredibly enough, I was here in 2020...at the beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic.  When we began that trip, Thailand was #2 in Covid cases to China at #1.   However, by 17 February 2020 Thailand had dropped to #7.   Today, it is #31. Why would we take such a chance?  Well, I was just accompanying my travel partner, who was joining eleven of her high school classmates on this Thai adventure.  The problem is that only one other person actually showed up, and we saw him for maybe an hour for a drink.  But we were there, so made the best of it. I'll share some highlights of our couple days in Phuket, beginning with  17 February 2020 . We stayed at the Le Meridian Phuket, a Marriott property.  However, turns out that Marriott resorts do not have any executive club, so that was a downer as a beginning.    O...