Final Update to Trying Times

March 20th 4:15 p.m. : Our flight is on the Departures Board, with a Gate # – thank goodness! Over 20 hours just moving from the lounge when it closed, and back when it opened at 5:30 a.m. was not much fun, but it looks like we made it.

Posted time of departure is 6:15 p.m. which is in 2 hours (Hong Kong is 12 hours ahead for Toronto). Not sure if you received our March 19th blog update below which provides details of how we got this far (a bit of a story).

Once we are back in Huntsville, with 14 days of self isolation and not much to do, I will finish our Vietnam blogs (1 more to go) and post our Malayasia blogs. As always, lots of pictures still to post.

We are not discouraged from travelling but we also are both saying “there is no place like home”.

March 19th, 7:35 p.m. Hong Kong time: Thank you for the many heartfelt comments, emails and messages – much appreciated!

Just when we thought we finally had things nailed down, we woke up to one more surprise. Our hotel in Hong Kong alerted us to new requirements. Effective March 19th (the day of our flight) “People arriving in Hong Kong who have been to any overseas countries/areas in the past 14 days, regardless of whether they are Hong Kong residents, will be subject to compulsory quarantine.” 

Of course panic – so I once again called on What’s App to our lifeline, better known as “Deb and Rich Help Line” . Just hearing their voices helped, and they started their research and would get back to me. Meanwhile I called the Canadian Embassy in both Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong. They said they were finding out things the same time we were and other than registering our whereabouts on the Canadian Government site, they had little to offer at this point. Of course our level of stress went up a few more notches…but our lifeline came through. Deb and Rich researched and made some calls. Deb found out from Cathay Pacific that if we were just transitioning through Hong Kong i.e. not going through Customs, then the quarantine did not apply. The catch was we had to be using Cathay Pacific the whole way – Kuala Lumpur to Hong Kong and then Hong Kong to Toronto. Due to the cancellation by Malayasia air, I had just booked through Cathay Pacific – that turned out to be a good cancellation.

Malayasia was in a partial shutdown, and more restrictions were coming so getting a taxi to the airport was our next priority. Luckily we had made friends with our tour driver (who in his spare time was a taxi driver) and he took us to the airport.

Getting through the Malayasia airport was much easier than we thought as they were happy for foreigners to leave. Not surprisingly, their focus was on arriving passengers with tough new entry and in transit restrictions. 

Coming into Hong Kong, they did a temperature check before we entered the “in transit” area – we were normal (well our temperature was). That was at 10:30 last night….and for the last 9 hours we have been hanging out in the Hong Kong Departures area. We tried sleeping on the chairs – not good, then Larry tried the floor – really not good. So we wandered around looking to see if there was anything else – of course there wasn’t. We thought of Tom Hanks in The Terminal movie – he was much more creative than we are.

It is 7:30 in the morning on March 20th – we are 12 hours ahead of Toronto time. Many cancellations on the Departure boards, so we are hoping that our flight does not become one of the casualties. We really need to leave at 6:15 tonight or we will become Tom Hanks

I will update again once it looks like we are actually boarding the flight home (15 hour flight from Hong Kong to Toronto). 

We will do our 14 day self-isolation in Huntsville – and we are glad to do it as long as we are home.