Swab Appointment, Phuket Central Floresta
Passport?
All the blood in my body tingles, slow-spreading electric shock. I, an idiot, failed to bring my passport to the long-scheduled second PCR-RT test that is a condition of my Thailand visa.
I had this wave of stupid shock under an hour ago, the last time I was standing at this table. She asked for my passport, I realized I hadn’t brought it — electric shards, my nerves as nails on a chalkboard. But she had said, I was pretty sure, that a printed photo would do. I don’t speak Thai, nor she much English, but the gestures felt clear.
Only now, she’s holding the printout of my passport, paid for just minutes ago in the basement of the mall. And she’s asking for my passport. Nerve-shock again.
I point down at the printed passport page, and notice my hands shaking: nerves, dehydration, low blood sugar. “You have it.”
She looks, her eyes probably more tired than mine. Nobody’s having fun here. I watched her get harangued twice by the man who got out of line in front of me to ask why it was taking so long, watched her mutely wave him away, stonefaced.
She nods, writes a note on the printout, hands me a number, points to the chairs. I sigh relief into my mask, taking a seat, surrounded by people from all over the world, none of whom is social distancing.
We’re in the parking garage of a mall. The plastic chairs are a holding pen for a light-skinned mob of foreigners, waiting for the man with the clipboard to hold up the right numbers, penned in highlighter to avoid the confusion of spoken language.
The number-holders filter into a room for a documents check, then back out with swab kit in hand. We’ve paid about $65 apiece for the unique pleasure of that early-COVID brain-tickling deep swab, administered by a woman in a blocked-in booth, her arms sticking through portholes in the plexiglass in built-in rubber sleeve-gloves. It’s deep enough that I can’t help flinching my head back, left nostril, then right, but still I say thank you — kop kun — as I walk away.
Next: Bad Instincts, Phuket
