FLYING DURING THE PANDEMIC (Singapore to USA)
Even though the airport is strangely empty which was expected it still feels so weird being in a public place for the first time in over three weeks weird Karen Nate we've been traveling the world full-time for the last four years and like many of you the coronavirus has completely changed our day to day life a few weeks ago we barely escaped a lockdown in Manila that could have prevented us from leaving the Philippines and definitely in mid-march
when the virus had just been declared a pandemic things felt even more uncertain than they are today are we thinking and given the information we had at the time we decided to take a short flight to Singapore and just stay put which is where we have spent the last three weeks in voluntary self quarantine since arriving here in Singapore it has been a roller coaster of emotions on one hand
we've been super grateful for this time to slow down because our lives have been so fast-paced for the last four years but on the other hand we feel like we've been living in this weird limbo where every single morning we wake up and have this super long conversation about whether or not we're making the right decision by staying here in Singapore which typically leads to us consuming way too much world news up until this week the decision had seemed pretty obvious our international health insurance covered us here in Singapore cases were spiking back in the US and Singapore was being used as a model for how other countries should deal with the corona virus
However things have been changing this week the CDC issued a level-3 warning for Singapore which means that our health insurance no longer covers us here if we were to get the virus plus in recent days Singapore has seen a significant rise in the number of cases and the country has entered a period of lockdown we had already been questioning whether or not we were making the right decision by staying here and then yesterday we got an email from the US Embassy
which basically said there aren't going to be any repatriation flights back to the US and if you want to make sure that you can get home you need to be on one of these 21 flights occurring over the next four days so given all the changes yesterday we were forced to make one of the hardest decisions that we've ever made today we're flying home we were fully prepared to stay in Singapore indefinitely we had accepted that so we tried to extend our visas and they were declined which meant that we were gonna have to leave Singapore sooner rather than later and we figured while they were still commercial flights available
we would go ahead and make the journey home now that's pretty crazy there are five flights leaving out of Terminal one at Changi Airport for the next seven hours there's nobody here even though the airport is strangely empty which was expected it still feels so weird being in a public place for the first time in over three weeks we haven't left our hotel room except to go to the grocery store and exercise so anything outside of that just feels completely foreign at this point surprisingly we found a lounge that's open and not surprisingly we are the only ones in here this all just still so weird and wrong but oddly familiar at the same time we were joined by a couple other people
All right we have officially started the challenge of not touching our face for the next thirty hours it is so much harder than it seems this will be one major takeaway for me from this period of time is just how much i unnecessarily touch my face constantly my nose in my heart always itch always our first flight is six hours to Tokyo Japan because it is one of the only Asia husband is still allowing transit passengers from what we can see every single person on this flight is wearing face masks everyone has their own row and there are even 50 to put that in perspective we're on a triple 7 that can hold over 300 people and there are about 40 on this flight try to get put together
So we started to get off the plane but didn't they made everybody just a nightgown applied attendant told us that they're doing health checks for everyone entering the airport and a flight of 200 people landed so we're just waiting also it's 4:30 a.m. on a positive note this is the best I've ever slept in economy having four entire seats to yourself really helps our second we're currently at the two-hour mark two hours since I landed so it's really isn't a big deal it's either sit on the plane or sit in the airport but we have three hours and so our necks lightly we should still have plenty of time it's just done all right two and a half hours later you're getting off plank now let's just hope we pass our health screaming Duncan quarantine in Tokyo it's the little victories in life these days like just embarking a plane there were six of us on that flight who had a connecting flight
So who weren't staying here in Japan and we're currently all being escorted to the airport and I'm not exactly sure where we haven't been screened at all I guess since we're just transiting through the airport we didn't have to go through the health screening process and we're going to a lounge first-class lounge forget this the only one that's open today has been so weird we just went from waiting on a plane for a health check to being escorted through the airport to the first-class lounge the business class lounge was closed and so we got access to the first class object
Today has been a mixture of so many emotions like it goes from sadness to fear to these little moments of joy I'm so happy right now this is so thank you we had no idea what we were missing sitting on that plane thank you this is so sad was a great last lounge like I don't want to be traveling right now but the same time I don't know when we're gonna get to do it again so try to just like soak up every moment of it I really can't imagine a better like last experience in an airport
I mean joy who knows how long I just don't know how to feel today it's so confusing alright eleven and a half hours till we're back in the US there are a lot more people on the slides on the last one but I think we're still each gonna have our own room eleven and a half hours later we have landed in Dallas so we had a two-hour layover here in Dallas and I was worried that we weren't going to make our connecting flight because we thought it was great for two hours and and it's been the exact opposite experience nobody checked our temperature there was nobody in line at customs there was nobody like baggage and we made it into the country in like two seconds this is just not
what I expected no they asked us if we have been to China or Iran or Europe but that's it I feel like it's like have you stepped outside okay we could have easily been like very sick and nobody would have known all right we have about an hour and a half to exploit boards our last flight saw the lounges are closed understandably so this is another one of those super joyful moments in this weird day it is this so long there are so many planes parked out on the runway rookie plus white two hours so I don't normally travel with the fanny pack but I've been carrying it because I wanted access to my wife's bedroom X and my vitamin C at all times I think this is the quietest island the human poverty rate lady and we are back in Nashville everything went surprisingly smooth given the current situation I feel like we said this a million times today but it just feels so weird especially being back in the Nashville Airport because we only come home like a handful of times a year and so anytime we're here it's like really exciting because our family's here it's Christmas it's like a family chant now we're going to point in ourselves for two weeks I was getting a little sad as the plane was landing going who knows how long it's gonna be before we can do this again with all that said we are very very grateful to be back in Nashville so our goal is to physically interact with this view of people as possible over the next couple of weeks so instead of having a family member pick us up for getting in an uber or something like that