What it’s like to fly to Thailand
‘You get injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected.’ Arlo Guthrie’s song sounds uncomfortably like the gauntlet we run today should we wish to travel.
“You get injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected.” Arlo Guthrie was singing about being drafted into the US Army but it could well have been about travel in the time of Covid. His satirical, talking-blues hit, Alice’s Restaurant Massacree, which parodied the Army’s Vietnam-era induction process, sounds uncomfortably like the gauntlet we run today should we wish to travel.
Late last year, when Australians could again venture abroad, I book on the first flight from Sydney to Phuket. Thailand has just loosened its Phuket Sandbox program under which vaccinated tourists quarantine for a week. With the new, simplified Test and Go program, visitors first apply for an entry permit called the Thailand Pass. It is issued on proving you’ve been (as Arlo might have said) injected, inspected and detected to be not infected.
This involves gathering multiple documents confirming one’s vaccinations, flights, insurance (to $US50,000 cover) and pre-paid accommodation. I don’t quibble with the medical necessity of it all, even if at times a trip to exotic Wagga Wagga or Woy Woy looks far easier.
Applying online for the Thailand Pass is a breeze, until it isn’t. Come time to upload all the documents, the site declares: no PDFs, only JPGs. Return to Go. I convert everything to JPGs, upload, press “send” and wait nervously. Bingo! My pass comes through within hours. Meanwhile, I ignore the costs involved, including three PCR tests ($300) and Covid-class insurance. Travel is never going to be the same again, I tell myself. Just punish the plastic and think of take-off.
Vaxxed to the max (the spellchecker declared me “fully waxed”) and PCR tested within 72 hours of wheels up, I hit the airport three hours early. My phone and laptop bulge with my viral autobiography. I have it all in hard copy as well. At check-in they inspect the lot.
Fast-forward a couple of hours and we are gloriously airborne. The plane is less than half full. Central Australia stretches below like an endless ochre sand painting. A good book, a snooze and after eight masked hours, it’s touchdown in Phuket.
If anyone can make Covid protocols a pleasure it’s the Thais. Smooth as their fabled silk, they usher us through document inspections and Immigration. The final step is a nose-tickle test administered by a charming nurse sealed in a transparent Tardis. Her sheathed arms extend through a Perspex wall as she deftly executes my nasal invasion. A few hours later at the hotel, my result pings through – absolutely positively negative. I’m free from quarantine to roam the kingdom. How good is Thailand.
After three excellent weeks of elephant sanctuaries, beaches, old friends and hill country, it’s time to head home. Which means another PCR test, as required for my Australia Travel Declaration. My what? Hands up who has never heard of our Clayton’s visa, the highly unpublicised Australia Travel Declaration? Issued by the Department of Home Affairs, it is mandatory for anyone entering the country, including Australians.
So, there I am in Bangkok, applying on my laptop for the ATD. It starts with a registration code sent to your phone, but somehow mine can’t receive the code while the official application page remains open. Only by closing the laptop page can I receive the code: a mutually exclusive lockout.
This defeats me a dozen times. Madness. The hours to departure trickle out like sand from a sandbox. Finally I crack it by simultaneously using two email accounts, the phone and laptop. Lord help the digitally challenged, for they may be denied boarding. Not to mention those good souls who’ve never heard of this vital document. How good is Oz.
All that remains is the trip to a hospital clinic for my PCR test. I hail a motorcycle taxi to weave through Bangkok’s infamous traffic. “Got one for me?” I ask. The delightfully “Thaiglish” answer is something like, “Not need, mister. You already going to hospital”.
In the know
Australia, like Thailand and other countries, continues to streamline its Covid-related entry requirements.
Here are some tips:
■ Start your application early. For most travels, the documents you’ll need (in both digital and hard copy form) include Australian and international vaccination certificates, and Covid-specific travel insurance. Have them accessible at airline and hotel check-ins, and backed up on a laptop, cloud or USB.
■ Observe carefully the maximum allowed gap, for example, 72 or 48 hours, between any mandatory pre-flight test and your take-off time.
■ Check regularly for updated information with airlines, Smart Traveller and other relevant websites, but don’t expect them to be consistent. While regulations change at short notice, website information may not.