My Experience in a Vietnam Quarantine Camp

In my life, I have never thought something like this would happen. The global pandemic caused by novel coronavirus is affecting everyone’s life in different ways, but we are all in this together. I am an international student from Vietnam and this is how the global pandemic has affected my life and my country.

First of all, I somehow knew the university was going to convert everything to an online form from the day that we received the news the classes were just going online for two weeks. I had planned that I would book my flight back home right after the school had released the news. However, I didn’t expect the news to come in the same week. Everything was happening so fast and I was panicking trying to figure the best way to cope with this issue.

About my feelings, I felt genuinely sad when all these things occurred as I have developed and maintained a good social life with all of my friends, and I didn’t think it would end so shortly for this semester. I also have to say I would have never thought I would miss going to class.

After the school released the news, I immediately called my parents to ask them what to do next. My parents were unsure because it is dangerous to travel by plane now and a lot of people in Vietnam got the novel coronavirus because they got infected on the plane while traveling back home. My dad told me that I should stay at school until May, but I was so scared of the idea of coping with a deadly virus without my family in a foreign place, which I eventually convinced them I should come back home. Even if I got the virus, it is better to deal with it with your family beside you.

The next thing I knew was, I was on an airplane with a lot of protective gear such as face masks, plastic gloves and of course, hand sanitizers. I flew back home with two of my friends. On the day that I started flying back home, the Ministry of Health in my country set out a rule that everyone coming back from abroad has to go to a quarantine camp for 14 days to make sure we do not have the disease. Right after I got off the airplane, they immediately took our passports and asked us to wait to be delivered to the quarantine camp. I was exhausted after three long flights and I had to wait for four more hours, but I was very happy that I had made it to Vietnam safely.

The quarantine camp is government-funded, so everything is free including food, electricity and water. We arrived at the quarantine camp at 3 a.m. I was so tired, but I had to take a shower and organize my stuff before going to bed. I stayed in a room with eight Vietnamese people including my friend, three women coming from the United States, two women coming from the Philippines and a mother and her child coming from Laos. We stayed in a room on the highest floor of a 19-story building, with eight bunk beds and two private bathrooms. The view was great, but we had slow or no service to access wifi or data, at first. After that, we eventually got access to wifi, but it was still slow.

The medical team came to each room twice a day every day to check our temperature. On the fourth day, we had to go through the first medical check where they will stick two long q-tips to the throat and the nose to check the substance. The second medical check happened on the last day where they would take my blood and test it.

Overall, the lifestyle that I had in the camp was very healthy. I slept early and woke up early. I woke up at 6:30 a.m. almost every morning except for the first one because of jetlag. I ate lunch and dinner at the same time every day. The only thing I wished I could do was go outside, walk around and enjoy some fresh air, but because the place we were staying at didn’t have a playground, we were asked to stay in our room only. I read more in the camp and I managed to finish two books there. I did try to stretch and exercise because my muscles became very stiff when I was just sitting and laying on my bed.

Staying with eight strangers for 14 days was a unique experience. We were not talkative at first, but we started talking more and more as time went on. Staying right next to my bed was a woman coming back from the Philippines, and she would ask me and my friend to help her learn English every day. I genuinely enjoyed it because I love helping people and seeing her getting better at speaking English satisfied me. Four out of eight people in my room were married. The next few days, we started talking about relationships, past relationships, marriage and a bunch of other stuff. There was one day we spent the whole day talking from the morning until the afternoon, and the time just whiled away like that. We were soon comfortable making jokes with each other. We tried to exercise in the room since we could not go outdoors. I was trying to do a dance workout with two people in our room. My favorite memory was that we even had a photoshoot where I was the makeup artist and one of the photographers. We were so creative, we used the flashlight from our phones and a comb to create the shadow. When we got out of the camp, we made a group chat to keep in contact. 

As far as my transition to online classes, it is relatively difficult. I now have six online classes. I was freaking out when I realized I have so much stuff due with all of my classes. Since I was having slow wifi, I contacted all of my professors via email explaining my situation and they all understood and allowed me to have more time to finish my work. I am very grateful because I feel like it was overwhelming with the workload that I received from all of my classes. I still have a lot to catch up on, even now that I’m at home. 

Staying at quarantine camp was a one-of-a-kind experience that I never thought I would have to go through. To be honest, I enjoyed it a lot and felt a little bit sad to leave the place and the people I had been with for 14 days even though the place lacks some necessities. I am staying at home now practicing my self-isolation and I wish I could stay as healthy as I was in the quarantine camp. Stay safe and healthy guys! We can get through this together!