Travel Bits: July 2021

Missing those weekend trips.......

The saying goes that often we only realised the importance of people or things after they have left or are no longer around us. In this case, it is those weekend trips that I am missing.

Prior to the upheaval caused by COVID, going away for a short trip over a weekend was so simple. And because it really was very simple, I did not pay much attention to these trips. Actually, I did not even considered them as overseas trips despite the fact that I was actually crossing borders for these trips and a valid international passport was required to be produced at the border checkpoints.

But now that international travel has all but vanished, these little weekend getaways started to be remembered as enjoyable overseas trips and a longing to undertake these same trips now feature as high on the agenda as those bucket list travel items.

In December 2019, I went on a short weekend getaway to neighbouring city of Johor Bahru (a.k.a. JB), state capital of the Malaysian state of Johor with my family. We stayed over in a nice hotel, enjoyed the local food and shopping and met up with a friend of mine for coffee. Just for the record, JB is just 16km (about 10 miles) away by road from my home in the north-western part of Singapore! All I required was a passport and I could just drive over. Simple. But with the borders now heavily restricted to only essential travels, these weekend sojourns to JB are no longer possible.

Until we are allowed to travel again, even simple weekend trips can now only be taken through reminisce, via photographs taken on past trips. 

And when do I personally foresee that I can be driving to JB again? Probably not in the foreseeable and immediate future. We are already more than half way through 2021 yet things had not gotten any better despite more people getting fully vaccinated, myself included. In fact, even as I wrote this article, my city is currently into another semi-lockdown mode where dine-in is not allowed and we are restricted to a party of two if we need to go outdoors. This, despite a relatively high vaccination rate among the local populace. Thus, I no longer buy into the argument that things are going to be getting back to normal soon. For me at least, I am seeing the much heralded new-normal as anything but normal.

Meanwhile, I continue to wait whilst spending my time working-from-home in front of my laptop....... 😢

Chendol, a South-East Asian dessert and delicacy, Johor Bahru, Johor, Malaysia (2019)