We spent two nights in the Sama Sama airport hotel in Kuala Lumpur so we could pickup the early morning All Nippon Airways flight to Narita airport in Japan. Total travel time from leaving the boat in Rebak island to landing in Seattle was four and half days. Fortunately we got one day back when we crossed the International Dateline. 4 flights, 5 airports and 2 hotels. The Kuala Lumpur airport was basically empty when we arrived at about 5:30am. This airport handled 62 million passengers last year. It was a ghost town now as we started the international portion of our travels.
Normally I wouldn't bother to comment much on the public health safety precautions being taken at the airport because they are just plain common place in Malaysia now. Before you enter the airport you have your temperature checked with an infra-red imager. You have to show tickets for a flight that day and you must be wearing a face mask. Before you enter the hotel, a non-contact forehead temperature check. Everyone is wearing a mask. At this point I might as well mention shopping in Malaysia. Outside a store will be an area marked off with 2m (6 feet) taped off zones for waiting your turn to enter. Busy stores will have spaced seats. At the door there is a log to write your name and phone number. The phone number is to assist in contact tracing should someone latter show exposure. There's a spot on the log to note your temperature taken by the attendant. A bottle of hand sanitizer to use once your done with the pen going in, and another bottle at the checkout. Stores limit the number of people inside based on square footage, actually square meterage.
The photo above might look like I stole it from the HBO Chernobyl special, but its not. These guys are just the hotel staff cleaning the halls on our floor. If you are one of the few traveling now, social distancing hint: one couple per hotel is pretty safe.
The ANA 787 Dreamliner flight out of Malaysia to Japan was basically empty. We each had a row to ourselves with no one seated within a row of us. Friendly crew and decent food. We only had 45 minutes scheduled between our flights in Narita. It was an easy connection, being routed directly from our landing gate to takeoff gate with minimal interaction with anything or anybody. This next flight was also a 787 but operated by United. Not sure the flight attendants were happy to be on this flight based on their attitude. And United has decided for our safety onboard during these stressful times there is no coffee or hot tea, nor any beer or wine. I had about 10 hours on the flight to think about this situation.
Landing in San Francisco at SFO airport was pretty surprising, it being our gateway to the country with the most covid-sars-2 infections in the world. SFO requires face masks, but it's not strictly enforced. Turns out that is the limit of any pretense of protecting the country. No temperature checks on incoming passengers. No one asked us where our travels originated. No suggestions of self-isolation or quarantine. Show your passport and come on in. To be a little more thorough in my story I should also note that we were asked if we had any fresh fruit such as an apple, orange or banana. Hopefully this will protect our indigenous banana plantations from catching the coronavirus.
We are doing some self isolation in a Holiday Inn in Bellingham right now. It is similar to self isolation on the boat in Rebak except you don't have to march 15 minutes in the scalding heat to the toilet. But, you don't have the beach either. To test the precautions in practice in the US we decided to go to Walmart. We also needed a water filter for our trailer, as the last one broke in the hard freeze we had just before left last time we were here, along with some new cell phone SIM cards. If a good percentage of the customers and staff are being careful at Walmart, you can safely say the country is on a good path to getting over this pandemic. The country isn't on a good path.
Paul
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