Swine Flu

Before I go into all of the glorious details of the trip, I will start out by saying that I am now in Singapore and doing fine, though I am a bit sleep deprived and hoping food will arrive soon. I will go into the details of sightseeing later, but this post is going to be dedicated to swine flu hysteria.

Thursday evening, 10 people on the trip left Singapore and flew to Macau. The adventures actually started at the Singapore airport. Being students here, we all received national student identification cards so we could be residents. As residents, we show immigration this card when we enter or exit the Singapore airport. Well, some silly person forgot her ID card. Okay, that person happened to be me. Luckily, immigration in Singapore managed to look me up online and pass me through. However, I ran into trouble in Macau. There, the asked for my ID card since I did not have an exit stamp from Singapore. Since I am a resident, I had no stamp. After about 30 minutes of negotiating with five different immigration people, I was allowed to go through. Then, the whole group went through the health screening. We turned in our forms saying we had no symptoms and had not been in close contact with anyone known to have the flu in the past seven days. However, when the inspector saw our forms, she became alarmed by us being American and asked how long ago we left the US. We explained it had been 4 weeks and so she let us through.

My favorite part of Macau was customs. The customs inspection consisted of a man sleeping behind a desk. There wasn’t even an x-ray machine for if he decided he did want to check anything.

We spent Thursday night in Macau and took the ferry to Hong Kong on Friday. We did some sightseeing and were out in the town when we received an email from someone’s phone saying that a member of our group from Tech had tested positive for the swine flu (the ministry of health papers I received still call it that). We said crap, that sucks, but we continued with our sightseeing. He had felt fine the last time we saw him and none of us felt sick.

That night, we had just arrived at our dinner location when we received a phone call from the Ministry of Health in Singapore telling us that we were going to be held in quarantine when we got back to Singapore. We had not heard about this from any of our Tech representatives, and they started asking us for identification details including passport numbers, birthdates, etc. At this point, we became nervous about identity theft and not actually knowing who we were talking to. As such, we called people back at the school to get confirmation that we should in fact pass on this information. They gave us the go ahead, and we proceeded to cooperate.

Saturday, we decided as a group to continue with the sightseeing, but avoid really crowded places and wear masks on the MTR (their subway) and on other crowded transportation. During our contact with people in Singapore, we learned three people were being tested and others were waiting for results. They also started going back and forth about where we would be held in quarantine, whether it would be in our dorms or at a government facility. Eventually, it was confirmed that we would be allowed to stay in our dorms.

That night, a few people started to feel some flu-like symptoms. We had an assortment of medicines among the group that everyone was taking liberally. We were planning on spending all day in Hong Kong so we could see the horse races and a few other things, but we decided to go ahead and take the ferry in the morning. More than anything, we were worried we would be stopped in Macau and put into quarantine there. Given the option, we knew Singapore would definitely be better (if for no other reason than the fact that they speak English). With all of this in mind, we realized there was no way sight-seeing in Hong Kong would be any fun.

Sunday morning, we woke up and all took our temperatures. No one was even close to having a fever, but some people were not feeling great. No one was sure if this was in fact the flu, or just caused by the air quality in Hong Kong, or something else all together. We loaded up on drugs and took the MTR to the ferry terminal, wearing our masks along the way. We noticed then and on Saturday that there is no way to be Caucasian and look inconspicuous while wearing a mask. It is not at all unusual for Asians to wear them, but we never see white people with them on. At one point on the MTR, we saw a woman look at all of us with our masks and promptly cover her mouth with a cloth. She glared at us for awhile and promptly got off the train at the next stop.

The ferry ride was about an hour and everyone’s hearts were pounding when we got off. I honestly started shaking as I went towards the temperature screening. It ended up that we had nothing to worry about. They were actually changing shifts when I went through, so I’m not sure they even saw my reading.

In Macau, we had several hours to kill at the casinos before going to the airport. Once at the airport, myself and several others checked in without a problem. Then we had some more fun. Two people had accidentally booked their plane tickets for the previous day. Of course, the flight was booked and there were four people ahead of them on standby. We spent some time trying to help them look for different flights, but everything out of Macau was already booked. We eventually went through security and said we hoped to see them soon. Luckily, as boarding started, we saw them and they said they made the flight.

On the plane, we were once again all wearing masks. I never felt so bad in my life then when a man who seemed to be from Britain or Australia sat down in a seat surrounded by a bunch of us and then laughingly said, “this doesn’t feel suspicious, being surrounded by all of these Americans in masks.” We all laughed with him then silently said a few prayers for his sake.

The flight itself was not too bad. Since we are cheap and took Tiger Air (Asia’s equivalent of Ryan Air), we were not served drinks for the three hour flight, and that kind of sucked. However, the landing was absolutely terrible. By that point, we were all at least a little congested, as much from the smog in Hong Kong as anything. The change in pressure was probably the most painful experience in my life. My eyes started watering as I thought my ears were going to start bleeding. Even once we landed, it took a good 15 minutes or so to feel pain free.

We got into the airport at 2:20 am (getting in that late was a good $100 cheaper than any other flight), and braced ourselves for immigration. The temperature screening was first, and that was not a problem. For immigration, since I did not have my student card, I had to go to the ICA desk while everyone else went to the lines for residents.

I handed over my passport and explained I forgot my student card. They said it wasn’t a problem and started looking me up. As I waited, the first of the Tech students were going up to the immigration officers. Before anything had been found on me, the first of them was escorted over to the ICA desk. The officer told my agent the passport had been flagged, so I went ahead and said, “yeah, about that. . . I’m going to have the same problem. My passport is also flagged. In fact, there’s ten of us.” My agent looked at me and said, “what?! All ten of you forgot your student cards?!” However, by that point, everyone was quickly being escorted over and he soon realized there were ten flagged students.

It quickly became apparent they had little idea of how to deal with this situation. They were all very glad we were wearing masks and kindly asked us to keep them on. They collected everyone’s passports then started escorting us to a holding room (actually their breakroom). As we walked away, they counted us. Ten students. Then they counted the passports. Nine passports. They counted us again. They counted the passports again. They counted us three more times. They finally took us to the room anyway. They came into the room and counted us. They asked us if we all handed in our passports. We assured them we had. They walked away. They came back and again asked about the passports. Finally, they left and found the tenth passport.

While we were waiting, we heard that people who left in the morning took three hours to get out of the airport. We laughed, confident in our ability to get out faster. First, the MOH knew well in advance the time of our flight, unlike the other flight which was booked at the last minute. Secondly, one of those people was from El Salvador. We had gone through enough airline check-ins with him to know it usually took people at least thirty minutes just to figure out where El Salvador is.

After about an hour, we were told the doctor should arrive in 1-2 hours to check us out before taking us to our dorms. That meant he should be there by 4:30 (I believe. I don’t honestly remember for sure now). We were all starving and asked if we could have food. The immigration officials took down our orders, we handed over money, and they bought us some McDonald’s. That was at 3:30 am.

We spent the next hour or so walking away the immigration area. No other flights were coming in, so we got to know the heat scanning people and the immigration officers really well. Some people tried to sleep, with varying levels of success, though there only a few really uncomfortable couches and a lot of plastic chairs.

Two hours and fifteen minutes after the doctor had been contacted, we were told he had virtually cleared us. That meant we just had to went for the MOH to sign off and contact the company responsible for transporting us.

We spent the next hours trying to sleep. As morning approached and nothing had been changed, we were told various tales of how the MOH hadn’t signed forms, or NUS hadn’t approved us coming back to the dorms yet, or how the transportation company hadn’t agreed to move us yet. I slept for about an hour and few people did much better than that.

Finally, at 12:30 p.m. Monday, the transportation/security company arrived. They then informed us that we would be transported two by two. With our dorms at least 45 minutes away, we realized this was still going to take hours. Luckily, myself and the other girl were the first to be taken to the vans. There ended up being two vans. Each van could hold two of us, so four people could be transported at a time. Actually, each van could have easily held all ten of us. However, they were not allowed to put more than two people in a van so that we could not contaminate each other. Say what you will about that logic.

While some of the security people were sent to get two more students, we had our temperatures taken. Mine was a very healthy 36.5˚C. I also reported that I was not suffering from any flu-like symptoms.

Shortly after the other two people were brought out, we were handed our official quarantine orders. I glanced through them and quickly saw that I was not being taken to my dorm. Instead, I was going to a government resort. I told the security guys this had to be wrong and they got on the phone to check. After many phone calls, we learned the MOH had changed its mind. We were supposed to go to the government resort and someone would later bring us our belongings from our dorms. At this point, I had no computer and no phone battery or way to charge my battery. In fact, three-fourths of the group at the airport had no way to contact the outside world without first returning to their dorm.

After an hour of negotiations, begging, and threats over the phone, we were allowed to return to our dorms to pick up our belongings. At 3:30 pm, I finally arrived at my government resort. It would have been quicker, but the driver managed to get lost twice.

The accommodations here are not terrible. The food will probably make me starve, but we’re close to the beach so we have a nice breeze. I have my own room in a bungalow. I can leave my room to walk around the rest of the bungalow and talk to people. The common areas are all open, so I can get fresh air. The room is actually bigger than the dorms and the bed is more comfortable. The worst part is that I still have no internet (obviously that will have changed by the time this is posted).

At this point, four Tech students have tested positive and several others are waiting for results. Everyone not in the hospital is being transported to the resorts, with the guys at one and the girls at another. For some reason, they decided to start this process at 11 pm on Monday.

After getting some sleep, I am feeling fine, though I know boredom will hit soon. That is where all of you come into play. You should all send me nice long emails, realizing I have plenty of time to send equally long (or probably longer) replies. Hope all is well in the US!