International Travel in a Surging Pandemic

When we bought tickets to Thailand, Omicron hadn’t started to surge yet. It was something I should have anticipated, but didn’t. I bought nonrefundable airfare for a place half a world away, then kept doubling down: research, planning, getting financially and emotionally more invested.

I don’t recommend this. We are living in a period of high global uncertainty. Get travel insurance; it’s cheap. Consider reversible bookings. I don’t regret going on this trip, but there are a few moments where it would have made more sense to cancel. Each time, we raised the stakes instead.

Actually, this was supposed to be my sister’s trip. She needed to get out of India for a bit to renew her visa there, she mentioned Thailand, and I invited myself along. But as rules changed in early December, flights stopped going from India to Phuket, then overnight the only visa you could get was Phuket Sandbox.

I got slapped by that too- I had the Test and Go visa all queued up, just hadn’t clicked buy on the required insurance yet, and the next day, Dana and Gautam couldn’t go, Andre had the good visa, and I had to stay in Phuket for a full week on the Sandbox visa, changing every reservation we had already made.

This is not a complaint. To be honest, even Sandbox seems a bit lax in the face of the COVID surge. I’m pretty sure the only reason Thailand travel is open at all is a need for tourist money, not a safety-driven judgment. But we did go on the trip, and one of the reasons I write here is to share unusual experiences.

Christmas season was stressful this year. Flights tend to be cheap on New Year’s Eve, so we spent the last weeks of 2021 trying to schedule requirement-meeting COVID tests, just as test supply dropped in our area.

To fly Singapore Air, you need a professionally administered PCR test from no more than 48 hours before your flight. The only one that guarantees results in that timeframe is the 1-hour at the airport, for $250 per person — so we took the 2 hour transit ride to the airport both to our flight and two days prior. At least we had an appointment; the walk-in line was long, and everyone in it seemed past their stress limits. I was mostly glad that the appointment was real; the reservation system gave everything in CST and listed the same doctor for every one of its locations nationwide.

I should mention, the airport test website actually lists a $75 test if a 96-hour guarantee meets your risk tolerance, so I agonized over the choice for a week. But actually, that’s not available when you get there. A lot of things are like that right now. You also want your test to occur as late as possible. A lot of flights were getting delayed that week, and if the departure time shifts outside of your 48 hour window, you can’t get on the plane.

I’m good with most kinds of uncertainty. I take unplanned trips and enjoy the adventure of it. But I’m not (with notable exceptions) much of a rule breaker, and there’s nothing adventurous about being told no because your papers aren’t in order.

Unfortunately, that’s the thrust of this trip: the requirements aren’t clear, and they’re hard to meet, because the whole world is scrambling. Tack on the varied stringencies of the US, Canada, Singapore (layovers), and Thailand and add some language barriers, and you begin to see how few trips will go smoothly. It’s expensive, especially the COVID tests; you’re constantly concerned about catching ill; and there is no way to get your papers fully in order in advance. And: how irresponsible am I being, for myself, my family, other populations? Feel free to season with guilt.

16 hours in the air, 12 trying to sleep (mask on) in Singapore Changi’s Terminal 3, a short hop north to Phuket, and we exit the plane. On the gangway they are checking everyone’s temperatures (they did in Singapore too). We file in to plastic chairs, where fully suited up workers check for: vax card, passport, visa, proof of negative test. I wasn’t expecting that last one, but luckily we hadn’t thrown them out.

Past baggage we’re funneled through PCR testing, paid for in advance, administered through the plastic sleeve-arms of someone in an isolation booth. We’ve pre-arranged a (required) health board approved taxi to our (required) health board approved hotel. So it’s a bit weird when the hotel staff suggests we immediately go have lunch at the busy cafes across the way. Quarantine over, I guess. We get our COVID tests back the next day.

This is the part that bothers me: the performance of extreme protocol and then its uneven application. Coming home, more so than anything in Thailand.

The US requires a negative test no more than “one calendar day” in advance of the flight, and we put a lot of effort into balancing that need with the uncertain timelines of test results — a negative result an hour after your flight leaves does you little material good. Schedules were disrupted, activities rescheduled, all in accordance with the changing timelines quoted by the Thai clinic workers, who tried extremely hard, in broken English, to understand and accommodate our needs. I was fairly proud to present the test at the airline counter.

The stewardess handed us signature forms for US entry, agreeing we’d been vaxxed and tested (among other allowable options). But when we arrived in Seattle, two layovers later, they actually never checked. I was randomly selected to show my COVID test, but there wasn’t room in the hallway for Andre to wait for me, so when the guy realized we were traveling together he waved me on without looking. Nobody ever asked to see my vaccination card, either. We had a lot of runaround for a document that didn’t get checked, and who really knows whether air travelers into Seattle are COVID-free?

We take what we can into our own hands. We upgraded from cloth masks to K-94, which filter bacteria. We try to make reasonable choices without reliable guidance from the CDC, which seems overconcerned with economics, given its directives. I’ve got a booster shot scheduled. But it’s a global mess, and it’s my country failing the standards to slow the spread.

I think travel always teaches, usually about yourself. The change of pace was good for me, as it always is. But for this trip, the central learning was more to do with stress: its constant presence even through boat rides and warm tropical breezes. I learned, I think, that you can have that tension and that relaxation all bound up in your jet lagged body, weeks on end, all at once.

I probably shouldn’t have gone, but being allowed individualizes the burden of choice; a cancelled flight for COVID reasons would have been clear and let me get my money back. It’s what we would do if we were serious about slowing the spread. But neither I, nor the airline, nor the country of Thailand were willing to let go of money already spent — so we’re all a little more at risk.

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