I made a pros and cons list — should I stay or should I go back to the US? I agonized over the decision. I talked to my family, and together, we decided I should stay in Vietnam. My top concern was what would happen if someone in my family got sick and I wasn't there — but my mom argued that if she got sick, I couldn't help anyway, because she would need to be isolated. I didn't want to risk being a vector for the virus and getting anyone sick by traveling. I had been prepared to be abroad "indefinitely" anyway, and, like many digital nomads, I didn't have a "home" to go back to in the US, per se.
It was a complicated decision that I questioned a lot over the next few weeks — but, as of now, I think it was the right one.
So there it was, a stop to my 'nomading.' Time to stay put in one place — and prepare for possible quarantine. First, I needed to find a place with a kitchen. Luckily, a few nomad friends I met through Hub Hội An invited me to stay with them. We found a villa where we could wait it out, which we fondly nicknamed Casa de Quarantine. There were six of us: another American, a Spanish woman, a Polish woman, and a Dutch couple. We figured isolation was coming, so on March 27, we went for a supply run in DaNang, the nearest big city, about an hour away.