SASKATOON -- Saskatoon’s Eric Forest spoke with CTV Morning Live Saskatoon’s Mike Ciona on Friday from Thailand, where a vacation turned into a quandary after the worldwide spread of Covid-19. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

As the COVID-19 pandemic pushes our world increasingly toward isolation, the phrase, “there's an ocean between us” seems more ominous these days. And for one Saskatoon man, that ocean is the Pacific. Eric Forest joins us this morning. Eric, you're trapped in Thailand?

Potentially, potentially trapped in Thailand. Yes. Currently I'm looking at flying home through Japan, through Tokyo. And then if I can survive a 13.5 hour layover, to Seattle and then to Vancouver.

Okay, so give me a sense of the situation. You've been there for a little while but getting home has not been easy. Cancelling flights. What's happening?

So I got here on (March 7) and it was before I was aware how serious the problem was going to be. I assume most people were in my same boat, from Saskatchewan never really having dealt with a pandemic like this before. Everything's been quite fine in Thailand, everyone's quite calm. There's food on the shelves, there's really no panic yet. However airlines, as soon as you go to an airport, about 80 to 85 per cent of flights are cancelled.

So that's obviously the biggest roadblock and then because it's cancelled, there's no refunds … how is this working for other travellers?

As far as I've heard, from other people travelling on most airlines, they'll give you a credit. So you'll have from the day they cancelled it, plus 365 days to fly with that airline and use that credit. But I don't think they can afford to give anyone their money back.

Now you had mentioned you've eaten twice today, but I'm guessing restaurants there are closed like they are here. How do you get food?

Right now, I'm fortunate enough to be in a bit nicer hotel than I would usually stay in, it's costing me a little bit more money than I'd like to spend, so the hotel staff are still coming in and still cooking food. If you go to a local stall on the side of the road, that the locals eat at, you can still get food there. I don't think the government has a way of shutting them down. Other than that, restaurants are closed.

Now information, and more so accurate information, can be the hardest thing to find sometimes. Are you able to actually find out about what's going on in Thailand?

Not exactly. Everything is completely subjective. There's no way of knowing if it's true or not. Obviously the news is not in English, so you can't watch the local news and getting any clean information is difficult. So, we've just been going off of what we see. So far they're talking about curfews. When they said they were shutting down bars, restaurants, beaches, pools, everything - they shut it down, so they weren't lying, everything was boarded up. But as far as what flights are available and what is not, you just have to roll the dice, roll the bones.

Well, you're going to next roll the bones on Saturday, is that the expectation? That's tomorrow?

For me it's about 27 hours from now, is when I'm supposed to fly, so yes. Third time though.

Alright, well fingers are crossed here. And when you do finally get home, we'll have an opportunity to catch up with you I'm sure, because as I'm sure you know, you'll have a mandatory 14-day quarantine period waiting for you back home.

Or six months jail, yes absolutely.

Okay, well you're obviously getting some of the information. Tongue in cheek of course. We do wish you safe travels and hope you make it back safely.

With files from CTV Morning Live Saskatoon