“If you could go anywhere In the world, where would it be?” has always been a fun question to prompt some dreaming and laughing with friends, often over dinner.  It was the question that my Mom often asked to spark our next adventure together.  It is the question that leads to countless internet rabbit holes.  But I now realize that it has inherently included the condition “…and then come back home.”

On Monday, March 16, 2020, I was suddenly confronted by this playful question, in its rawest and urgent form.  It wasn’t “could go” but “needed to go”.  And it wasn’t for a visit or a jaunt but with the likelihood of not being able to travel anywhere else indefinitely.  “If you needed a place to feel safe during global uncertainty, where would it be?”  

Some might answer with ‘home’, which leads to the deeper follow-up question, “Where is your home?”  Ooof.  I had no permanent address.  My parents had passed away so I couldn’t go to them.  I didn’t even have a place that was sublet while I was traveling.  I had fully jumped into being a nomad, and thought I had another six months of someone else managing my accommodations around the world.  But the world suddenly hung up a “closed” sign.

I was in Bangkok, Thailand, so that was the first option to consider.  “Do I just stay here?“  I gave it respectful consideration, but quickly decided – No.  The heat alone was kicking my butt, but not being able to drink the tap water was an inconvenience that nagged at me when imagining a potential lockdown.  I also had little energy to research the Thai healthcare system, or guess if the government would subscribe to contact tracing detainment and forced institutional quarantining (which I was also trying to decide if I agreed with or not.)

The next option was New Zealand.  I had been romancing the idea of stopping there in late May anyway, breaking up the journey from Malaysia to Chile.  I could cobble together some contacts to get a bit of local assistance.  They had just imposed a requirement that all visitors isolate for 14 days, and that actually made it even more attractive for clear health measures against coronavirus.  The “pause” to my travels seemed like it would be at least through May, and then maybe (ha, how I tried to be optimistic) I would catch my group in Chile as planned.  But, it was just too hard to imagine hearing about family or friends in trouble and being on the opposite side of the world.  NZ was the answer to the dinner party version of the question.  It wasn’t the answer to the “where do you want to be when a pandemic changes your life?” question.

Where do you want to be when a pandemic changes your life?

So next I had to choose between the United States and Canada.  Being a citizen of both meant that either would relieve an unusual stress that had been growing. I had been traveling and staying in places with ‘permission’ granted through standard tourism maximum stays or actual visas. To be in a place where I was legally allowed to stay indefinitely started to be very compelling.

San Francisco/Oakland, California?  That’s where my stuff was stored, and where I had been building a life prior to Remote Year.  That is also where cost of living is high (okay, massively high!) and I would have to purchase health insurance – during a health crisis.

Washington, DC?  Cost of living is equally high, but a sixteen-year network of friends could help with riding out whatever this was.

Montreal, Quebec?  I’ve long said it is my favourite city in the whole world – even as I test it against more and more cities.  Is now the time to return?

Ottawa, Ontario?  The friends I’ve had the longest in my life, live in Ottawa.  Perhaps that’s part of my new definition of “home” – where I’m surrounded by people who know me at my simplest, not from accomplishments or titles.

In the end, it wasn’t an analytical exercise.  I let my brain go through all of that, but my heart knew.  My heart, when given the microphone, said, “Ottawa” – clearly, without hesitation, with certainty.  I hadn’t lived there in about three decades.  But it was where I felt I’d be most comfortable in a globally uncomfortable situation.

It was where I felt I’d be most comfortable in a globally uncomfortable situation.

But it wasn’t enough to figure out Where.  I had to also decide on When. 

As the coronavirus spread, and the CDC was issuing advisories for countries such as Japan and Italy, I was soaking in information – partly to crack the code on what a CDC advisory was based on (which I never did figure out satisfactorily) and partly to convince myself that I was okay to stay in Vietnam and then Thailand.  I was deeply resistant to quitting the Remote Year program and leaving the group.  Through early March, I was daily hitting the refresh button on New York Times and Financial Times graphs, and on my own risk assessment of going to Japan in April, or somewhere else.

One way to understand Remote Year is to imagine twelve groups of 20-35 people living in twelve apartment buildings on the same street.  On the last Saturday of the month, everyone packs up their stuff, takes it outside while all of the apartments are cleaned, and then simultaneously moves into the next building over.  When a flood of border closures happened, Remote Year acknowledged that it just wasn’t going to be possible for groups to move over to the next country on the next Transition Day.  Monday, March 16, 2020, was when circumstances outside of my control determined that I wasn’t going to Japan for April.  Quitting was now moot.  I had a lovely studio apartment in Bangkok, paid up through the end of March.  Is that when I would leave?

My heart was even faster on answering that one with an emphatic “No.” This is perhaps when being trained in risk management put me in overdrive.

• What if someone in my group gets sick, and we are all quarantined through contact tracing and I won’t be able to leave?
• What if I get sick and wind up in a Thai hospital?
• What if I have developed a fever when I want to get on a plane?
• What if planes get grounded?
• What if flights are cancelled for lack of passengers?
• What if a flight to Canada isn’t possible due to complications with layover cities?
• What if locals shift their welcoming behaviour to foreigners out of fear of transmission?

I learned later that around the same time I made my decision to leave ASAP, Prime Minister Trudeau announced that “if you’re abroad, it’s time to come home.”

It feels like a long, slow motion, pivotal moment as I write it, but really, it was instinctively quick:

• 11:40pm Monday, Remote Year announced that Transition Day wouldn’t be possible.
• 1:40am Tuesday, I bought a plane ticket for Bangkok-Tokyo-Vancouver-Ottawa.
• 2:00am I said goodbye to some friends.
• 4:00am I was packed and had called a Grab (like an Uber) to the airport.
• 7:10am I was in the air.

I’m pretty sure it was the most expensive plane ticket I’ve ever purchased. Partly out of health precautions (to have separation from fellow travelers) and partly out of self-care (to spend that 29 hours of travel in relative comfort as I processed a lot of emotions), I went business class all the way.  Once I sat in my little pod, relief filled my entire body.  

I have been intrigued at how various one-way tickets have launched new chapters through the course of my life, but somehow this felt like not just the newest but perhaps the biggest of them all.  I am glad there was plenty of sparkling wine as I ventured into a new unknown.

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