Why You Should NOT Plan a World Tour During COVID-19
At this point you may have heard a few tales about routinely simple trips turning into logistical nightmares under the pressure of COVID-19. It’s pretty much common knowledge that travelling is objectively a BAD idea right now.
However, an acquaintance of ours at My Telescope, who works as a personal tutor, set out on a six month world tour on New Years Day 2020. The insane story that follows is one of many that people have experienced trying to get to their homes in 2020, and this is Fenella’s.
The trip started January 1st with a flight to Singapore for a fully-planned trip around Asia. The family that she was working as a private tutor for had decided to initially settle for three weeks in Singapore at the Shangri-La Hotel to get used to the idea of living abroad and for the children to find a good working / studying balance (tough life we’re sure!)
Toward the end of January was when the scare about Coronavirus started to spread. Coincidentally it was also Chinese New Year so up-scale hotels around Asia, such as the one Fenella was staying at, were flooded with people from China for the celebrations. The hotel staff started to wear masks and there was a sense of discomfort in the air, particularly in crowds areas such as the pool or confined spaces like the hotel elevators.
Day by day queues also started to form outside of pharmacies and before long people were limited to purchasing one box of masks and two bottle of sanitiser each. Within a day the supermarkets has run out of sanitiser and hand soap, and Fenella was also wrapped up in the panic bubble and also started to stockpile where she could.
Despite the increasingly gravity of the situation the family decided to power through with the trip as planned, and the next stop was Bangkok. At this point it was thought the virus would pass and there was no point NOT travelling, but they all wore masks not he plane just to be safe.
When they arrived in Bangkok at the start of February, it was the second most infected country in the world, after China, with around 30 cases. The hotel, The Peninsula, was however geared up for the virus with hand sanitiser all over the lobby and the concierge was advising against visiting busy tourist spots such as the temples.
A couple of weeks later and the next part of the trip was a-go. A cruise to Hong Kong visiting Vietnam, the Philippines, and Taiwan en route. There were already rumours about cruise ships being stranded at sea but the family she was travelling with were convinced it would be fine...(flash forward - it was not all fine.)
When stepping onto the boat the only health check in place was a paper questionnaire asking if you have visited China in the past two weeks. All you had to do was tick ‘yes’ or ‘no’, say if you were feeling okay, and step aboard. Under normal circumstances cruise ships have hand sanitiser at the ready, as the boats are petri
dishes for the spread of disease. Many people confined in a small space is a recipe for any virus to spread like wildfire, even a common cold. So the lax precautions should have been a red flag.
Two days later they sealed in Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam. But it felt like they’d been at sea for much longer. In the centre of town by their famous Nature Damn cathedral, officials were handing out masks and making people already wearing masks change into fresh ones. A subdued, tense panic throbbed through the crowd that walked with faces down as far from each other as possible. This scene combined with the obvious nonchalance of the cruise ships’s health precautions pushed Fenella to decide to come home early.
She arrived in London with as much sanitiser and toilet paper as she could gather, as when she landed the supermarkets in England were about to get ransacked.
MEANWHILE, the family has decided to stay on the cruise. They had left Ho Chi Min and been denied entry to the Philippines and also to Hong Kong. Seeing as that was the final destination the only option was to turn back and try returning to the port at Ho Chi Min. However, two passengers had boarded the ship in Ho Chi Min who had transited through China and the ship’s crew hadn’t checked their passports thoroughly. So they were stranded at sea.
Their only course of action was to return to Bangkok. A trip that should have taken a few hours took 2 days of painfully slow travel because the ship had to negotiate entry back into Thailand. After drinking copious amounts of free champagne the boat finally docked and the family decided to get out of Asia and head to Australia instead.
My Telescope started predicting the spread of coronavirus on March 3rd, at which point Great Britain was as greatest risk. So Fenella decided to re-joint he family in Australia ASAP.
They stayed in Bondi Beach, a chill surfer town close to Sydney. SO chill in fact that the government was struggling to get people off the beaches, but the real wave hadn’t really hit Australia yet. By the end of their second week, there was news that the pandemic had been spreading rapidly through Italy and South Korea, and Fenella noticed more and more Italians arriving in Bondi Beach. Nothing sticks out quite like a pale March body dark hair amongst a sea of tanned Aussie surfers.
Case numbers began to rise and the stories quickly ran out of sanitiser. Their next stop was New Zealand but it was announced towards the end of March that the country would be enforcing a 14-day quarantine for any international visitors. The family needed to re-book flights in order to avoid the lockdown and decided that night (2 days before the lockdown rule would start), to leave Bondi at 11pm to catch a flight from Sydney at 5am to avoid the deadline by a few short hours.
Queenstown was serious about the virus even though they had zero confirmed cases. There was constant coverage on the radio, adverts, and sanitiser EVERYWHERE. Stock-piling was heavily frowned upon and social distancing was really enforced. They finally felt safe.
But not for long.
After a couple of weeks there, it was rumoured that the country was going to go into lockdown for the indefinite future and the search for flights home was becoming increasingly difficult. Singapore and Hong Kong has stopped all transiting flights, and Vancouver was an option but last-minute flight cancellations were becoming increasingly common. Fenella had the choice of do I stay in New Zealand for however long this lasts, safe but alone and away from family and friends? Or do I fly into the eye of the storm with the family back via America?
At the time in our predictions USA was globally most risk and Great Britain was 4th.
She decided to leave, and the journey took 4 days.
Queenstown to Auckland: In Auckland airport the only store open was McDonalds, and a whole load of whiteboards announcing airlines had completely shut down.
Auckland to Houston: They took a New Zealand Airways flight to Houston, Texas. There was a kerfuffle at the border as while they were in the air Trump had announced there would be no entries from Europe into the US. So on arrival they saw Fenella’s British passport and detained her for two and a half hours until she could proved that she hadn’t been in England for the past 14 days. At the Four Season Hotel in Houston they were the only guests. The concierge was open for the upstairs apartments, but other than that the hotel and the city, was a ghost town.
Houston to Boston: After so much contact with people on their journey, they decided to fly the next leg by private jet! The family have a house in Boston and have been staying there since they landed.
Boston to London: Fenella had to carry onto London. She arrived in a deserted Heathrow airport and got a taxi to her boyfriend’s house. After two months apart his greeting gift was a can of dettol rolled across the driveway and a glass of beer left at the recommended 2 metres distance. Welcome Home!
Thank you for reading!
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