Here I am sat in a 5-star hotel that I would never normally consider staying in… and not allowed to leave my room...
How did this happen? Yes... that's right ... I'm experiencing my 2-week isolation period after travelling.
Some background
I was back in London for work in mid-December. This was a secondment that would take a few months and I would make my return journey to Singapore in April.
This was before the words COVID-19, pandemic, lockdowns had come into our vernacular,
In fact, London – Singapore is such a common trip not just for me, but for many on FT, that I didn’t even think about writing a trip report or making any videos.
In any case while I was in London, I decided to go to France for Christmas. When I got back to the UK in early January, news of this virus was only just beginning surface, but little did I realise 3 months later so many people around the world would have sadly passed on.
As I and my local colleagues continued to work in the first couple of months of the year slowly business restrictions started being imposed. First there was advisories for people who had travelled to possible virus zones to stay isolate for 14 days. Then came travel bans to and from Asia, then to and from the rest of the world. After this, came intensive work from home testing. What was quite remarkable was from the international travel ban, to forcing everyone to work remote, it couldn’t have been more than 2 weeks. This was the beginning of March and everything in the UK was shutting down. People were panic buying. Mainly loo roll. I mean loo roll of all things?
On 23 March, the UK was put into “lockdown”
This is my story of getting to Singapore during the time of corona – detailing my travails with dealing with flight cancellations, taking a “ghost” flight, and serving out my isolation period.
There are going to be some of you might find this an inappropriate "trip report", but I think it might prove to be an interesting record of what it was like to travel during the unfortunate situation.
Unless there are any objections, I will continue to add this.
Trip Index
Planning my trip to Singapore