Travel Bits: February 2021

Keeping track of continuous changes in travel plans.......

One year into internal border restrictions due to the pandemic and there is still none of the proverbial light at the end of the dark tunnel of cancelled and disrupted travel plans. While previously the rollout of vaccines have been touted as the silver bullet in the fight against the pandemic, the now often-touted phrase is "vaccines ain't silver bullets in the fight against the pandemic".

Meanwhile, international travel remains an impossible task. Like many travellers who previously had trips booked in advance and had to rescheduled and then further rescheduled these trips or even cancelled them, I have had my own share of dealing with the logistics and administrative hurdles of doing so and seeking refunds. Thankfully, most of my trips had now been cancelled and in most cases, I have had refunds being credited back to my bank accounts. However, I still have a hotel booking in Bali which was originally booked for April 2020 being rescheduled to March 2021. This booking has now been further rescheduled to March 2022!

As at the time of writing this blog post, the pandemic has been largely contained in some countries but is still raging wildly in many others.

In my opinion, travel, whether it is for business or leisure will likely re-start first in North America and Europe where relatively large single markets exist. For Asia, where I am located, cross-border travels are going to take a much longer time to re-start. The fragmented travel map in Asia where no large single market exists (except maybe for mainland China, Hong Kong SAR and Macau SAR) makes it difficult to foresee when inter-country travel may re-open.

Meanwhile, we shall continue to hope that travel may soon be allowed to resume. And while we wait, let's help others and ourselves by following international and local safety guidelines such as observing social distancing rules, wearing masks (properly) when in public, self-isolating when we are sick and seeking immediate medical attention if we suspect any of our family or ourselves may have been infected (touchwood!).

A Starfish as seen at low tide near the beach, Nusa Dua, Bali, Indonesia (2018)