orwellianTwo

I’ll let you into a secret. I had not been overexcited about doing that last trip to Dominican Republic. For all the tropical beauty and the ancient colonial history, DR had always seemed to be the home of the all-inclusive. The idea of spending virtually your whole holiday trapped inside one great sanitised all-you-can-eat restaurant complex had never appealed before, and although it had its moments (like not being the office) I missed the local touch of staying somewhere more amenable near the main drag.

It hadn’t helped, I guess, that I was beginning to wonder whether I’d seen all the places I wanted to see, had gorged on all the travel excitement I wanted to indulge in, sat in all the departure lounges I ever wanted to sit in (easy really, because there’s only one departure lounge. And it’s in every airport. Ever built.)

So why did I go? Well, the original plan at the beginning of the year was Vietnam, but the beginning of the year is far too late to start planning for a trip there near the beginning of the year. I’d had a hankering to see the bigger Hispanic islands of the Caribbean, but Southeast Asia is one place I do still find endlessly beguiling and going back to Thailand was a strong and achievable backup plan.

But in the end it came down to reducing risk. At the time I was looking to book, January 2020, it appeared that a new variant of the SARS coronavirus of 2002 had reappeared in the region and cases were being reported in Thailand. So DR it was.

Far better to stay safe and keep yourself well away from something like that.