Two years ago I was wrapping up my junior year of college and the article I was writing from my time in Phuket, Thailand covering wildlife tourism.
Led by one faculty and staff member, I, along with 9 other students embarked on a 3 week long reporting excursion to uncover the truth about environmentally focused topics. Many students go on short term study abroad excursions because it’s a fun chance to travel with their friends. For us, it was drilled in from the start that this was a work trip.
We were reporters going to cover meaningful topics. From talking to folks getting kicked out of their historical village site along sparkling beaches by property developers…
Or analyzing the impact of legal and illegal wildlife tourism…
We had a job to do and we took it seriously, student journalists or not.
After a long day, the views certainly did ease my reeling mind from the heavy interviews conducted however.
And I found myself taking more time to appreciate the the cats lounging around the temples we visited at the end of our trip.
While in Bangkok, on the final leg of the trip, we started to get news notifications that this ominous, fast-spreading virus was starting to show up around the world. We were given N95 masks to wear while visiting the tourist heavy Grand Palace in Bangkok—this was also in part due to the high density of people in one area as well as the high pollution levels that day.
Little did any of us know that shortly after returning from this trip, the pandemic would intensify to a point where our university would be shut down, the people we saw every day would scatter off to their hometowns, and the world was simply… different now.
AUDRA GRIGUS 