Oh, coronavirus. Cutting trips short and canceling travel all over the world. (I recognize there are much worse outcomes to the virus, but the travel implications are the ones relevant to this blog.) Since COVID-19 first starting being covered in mainstream U.S. news in mid- to late January, we’d been getting some questions from friends and family at home about whether or not the virus was affecting our trip. Up until mid-March, the answer was: not at all. But quite suddenly, that changed.
Note: The story of our journey home is also available on my Instagram as a story highlight. I actually recommend viewing it there, as I think the storytelling is a little more engaging, but I’m also writing out our journey below for those who prefer a long-form story. Also, even if you’ve already seen my Instagram stories, you may want to scroll down to the last sections of this post (beginning with “Are you happy you’re in the U.S. now?”) to see how we are feeling about it all now, two weeks later. Enjoy!
A little background information.
Let’s begin our story on March 12. Jonathan and I left Hoi An for Da Nang, where we were meeting Jonathan’s parents. They were flying in from California to visit for about a week. While they were in the air, the WHO declared a pandemic and the U.S. issued travel restrictions for passengers coming from the Schengen Zone. Let’s just say from the time Jonathan’s parents boarded their plane in California to the time they landed in Da Nang, it seemed like everything had changed!
Up until this point, we had been keeping an eye on the news and local guidelines/regulations regarding virus prevention, but we hadn’t had to change any of our plans. It seemed most of Southeast Asia was handling the virus pretty well and containing transmission, especially in Vietnam. But in early March, while we were in southern Vietnam, a plane from London landed in Hanoi with several passengers who tested positive. The country slowly started shutting down major tourist attractions from the north. When I checked the Vietnamese tourism site on March 12, Ha Long Bay, Cat Ba, Ninh Binh and Phong Nha were closed to tourists. We had hoped to visit Phong Nha after Jonathan’s parents left, but that obviously wasn’t happening. What to do now?
Evaluating our options.
Our original plan after Vietnam had been to visit Laos, Myanmar, the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand before heading back to California sometime in mid- to late May. At the time (mid-March), neither Laos nor Mynamar had reported any cases of COVID-19, but we thought this might be due more to lack of testing/reporting than an actual lack of cases. We looked at hopping down to the Philippines, but Manila airport canceled all domestic flights, which hinted at more travel restrictions to come. Around the same time, New Zealand issued a mandatory self-quarantine for all passengers entering the country. I had heard from other travelers that a campervan counted, but I couldn’t find affirmative proof of this from any NZ government sites, and we would still have to interact with people for gas, food, etc., which didn’t really seem like a proper self-quarantine. Plus, what if the rental companies stopped operating before we arrived? And if we got stuck in New Zealand due to quarantine measures or further travel restrictions, that would be an expensive place to wait things out.
Next, we considered waiting it out in Vietnam so we wouldn’t have to travel anywhere. I found an apartment in Hue for only $12/night, but our visas were expiring on March 25 and we weren’t sure if we would be able to renew them. I looked into going back to Tbilisi and renting an apartment, as Georgia is very affordable if we got stuck there for a month or longer, but on March 16 the country announced it would be closing its borders to foreign travelers on March 18. We knew we wouldn’t be leaving Vietnam until the morning of March 18 at the earliest, as Jonathan’s parents were scheduled to fly out that afternoon.
With all our options slowly closing, you might think this is when we decided to come back to the U.S. Well, not really. From what we had seen (mostly anecdotal from friends and family), it did not seem like the U.S. was handling things very well, so we didn’t think it was the safest place for us to be. Instead, we decided to fly right into the other hotspot on the globe that week: central Europe. My mom lives in Switzerland, so we figured we could hunker down with her for as long as needed, and the Swiss government was taking things seriously and enacting measures to prevent the spread of the virus.
This was a huge gamble, and we knew it. Precisely because Switzerland was taking things seriously, we knew it might close its borders before we arrived. But we also knew if we didn’t act now, we would almost definitely not be able to get in later. We tried to get there as quickly as possible, but the fastest route we could find still took 30 hours. We bought our flights on Tuesday evening (March 17) for the next morning and hoped for the best! The European Union was already discussing closing its internal and external borders, but it had not been confirmed yet. Switzerland is in the Schengen Zone but not the EU, so we were hopeful that even if the EU closed its borders, Switzerland would wait a day or two before doing the same.
The journey begins!
Hour 0: We left our hotel in Hoi An (above left) and traveled with Jonathan’s parents to the Da Nang Airport. Masks were required in the airport (above right). Luckily we had bought a few masks in Hoi An after a woman in a convenience store shamed us for not wearing them. (Side note: I have a lot to say about this topic, but TLDR: We did our best to follow the guidelines in the countries we were in, to be respectful. I was really bothered by other prominent travel bloggers I saw purporting recommendations from Asian countries to wear masks to be “fake news.” Just because it’s different doesn’t mean it’s fake, or even wrong, and guess who is recommending cloth masks now?? That’s right, the CDC. Hmm…. Please think twice before you judge another culture or government.)
Hour 2: Da Nang Airport was empty (above left)! Luckily, our flight was not cancelled, though almost all other flights were (above right).
Hours 3 to 6: Flight from Da Nang to Singapore.
Hours 6 to 15.5: Long layover in the Singapore airport. We tried to get an earlier flight to Geneva or Zurich (anywhere in Switzerland would do), but we were politely informed that every flight was full. Luckily we have Priority Pass lounge access, so we were able to spend our layover in a lounge and we even took showers. (Showering in an airport was a first for both of us!)
Hours 15.5 to 23: Flight from Singapore to Dubai.
Hours 23 to 27: We spent our 4-hour layover in Dubai in another lounge. While waiting to board our flight to Geneva, I was obsessively checking all the browser windows I had open on my phone (Swiss government site, NYT travel restrictions list, IATA, U.S. embassy in Bern, Schengen Zone visa site, etc.), and I saw that the EU had decided to close their borders. Eek! Still nothing from Switzerland, though, and we were so close! At this point, I figured surely if Switzerland were going to close its borders, there would be a 48- or at least 24-hour notice, so we’d make it. We were only a 7-hour flight away!
Hour 27.5: Our flight was delayed. At this point, I was getting pretty nervous. Was it being cancelled? Then they announced the flight was delayed 30 minutes for additional cleaning and disinfecting of the cabin. Okay, that seems reasonable. While we were boarding, a woman in front of us was pulled out of line because her final destination was Lisbon. I heard the gate agents explaining that she could not enter without being a citizen or permanent resident, and they needed to re-route her. I was pretty nervous handing over my passport; this was when we would know if we couldn’t go to Geneva. But, no problems! She welcomed me on board with a smile.
Hour 34.5: Landed in Geneva! We got to passport control and I went up first. I handed over my passport, the immigration officer asked where I was staying, I showed him my mom’s address, and then he said something in French that didn’t look promising. I apologized for not speaking French and waited while he found an officer who spoke English. I’m sure you know where this is going because you know where we are now but … we were denied entry. The border had closed that morning at 00:01!
Hours 35 to 38: We sat in the immigration area for at least three hours while airport personnel tried to figure out what to do with us. There were about 10 people in our position (i.e. non-Swiss who were coming to Switzerland to stay with family or friends because the virus had disrupted our travel plans). Normally, the airline would just send us back to Dubai, but Dubai was also closed to passengers at this point, so we could only go back as transit passengers.
Hours 38 to 40: We were allowed to leave the immigration area and taken to a small wing of the airport upstairs [above left] with about six gates and one take-out cafe. Geneva Airport had closed all its lounges and restaurants a few days before to prevent transmission of the virus. The airport had taped off every other chair to encourage physical distancing [above right] and there was an announcement about every 12 minutes or so reminding people to stay two meters apart or face a fine.
Hour 40: An airport employee finally found us and told us we had been rebooked on a flight to LAX via Dubai the next afternoon. (Yes, that’s a very roundabout route! But we were flying with Emirates, and that was the only route they had to California.) The employee also took us to our home for the night, a secret apartment in the ground floor [pictured above]! There was even a shower. Check out my Instagram stories for videos of the apartment.
Hours 41 – 59: We spent the night in the airport apartment, all the while (except when we were sleeping) continuing to evaluate our options. We still didn’t really want to go back to the U.S. for the reasons mentioned above, plus if the point of finding somewhere to hunker down was to avoid potential exposure, we shouldn’t really be taking another 30-some-hour journey to get home. We looked at going to Portugal instead (Jonathan is a citizen) or maybe somewhere in the Balkans. But there weren’t any flights to the Balkans, and even though the embassy said I’d be allowed into Portugal as the legal spouse of a citizen, I was wary of having the rules change on us again. Plus, if we flew to Portugal and weren’t allowed in, then we just lost our free flight back to California. This was the same evening the U.S. issued their worldwide level 4 travel advisory and called all citizens home. This wasn’t the reason we decided to come home (see above), but we knew that more and more flights would be canceled and if we couldn’t get in anywhere else, we might really be stuck or have to pay thousands of dollars to fly back to the U.S. So, we decided to accept the flight to LAX and head back to California. (California also became the first state to issue a statewide shelter-in-place order that evening.)
Hour 59: After an unsuccessful morning looking at our options and begging immigration officials to let us in, we left our airport apartment to head to our gate.
Hour 60: We boarded our flight to Dubai. The plane was empty (one flight attendant told me there were fewer than 40 passengers on the whole plane!), so I stretched out on an entire row and took a long nap. The flight attendants actually remembered us from the flight the day before (insert sobbing face here) and kept offering us more drinks and snacks. They were very kind, and despite this crazy experience, Emirates is still one of my favorite airlines. (It wasn’t their fault, after all.)
Hour 67: Back in the Dubai airport for a 9-hour overnight layover. Sigh. We found some armchairs in a lounge and slept for a few hours before they kicked us out (there was a 4-hour limit on lounge visits), then went to another lounge for breakfast.
Hour 74: When we were getting our coffee, the lounge employee told us they didn’t have any milk because they had stopped ordering it in anticipation of the airport closing. Yikes.
Hours 76 to 92: Flight from Dubai to LAX. (Yes, that is a loooong flight. We flew right over the North Pole!)
Above left: Departing for our RTW trip on April 6, 2019
Above right: Returning from our RTW Trip on March 21, 2020
Hour 92: We arrived at LAX and I’m pleased to say we were actually pulled aside for CDC screening! I say “pleased” because we had heard stories of very lax screening at U.S. airports, despite all the restrictions. Ironically enough, the only reason we were pulled was because we’d been in Switzerland. Nowhere we’d visited in Asia was on a restricted travel list, and had we flown straight from Vietnam to California, there would not have been any special health checks.
Hour 96: We arrived at our self-quarantine house in the mountains of Southern California, where we still are today. (And it looks like we will be here for a few more weeks, given the recent extension of the federal social distancing guidelines until April 30.)
Are you happy you’re in the U.S. now?
So, with the benefit of hindsight, how do we feel about our decision now? We agree there was nothing we could have done to get to Switzerland sooner (we did buy a quicker route, and we weren’t going to leave Jonathan’s parents in Vietnam alone), so we’re comfortable with our decision there. We did our best, and given the parameters above, there wasn’t any way we could have gotten to Switzerland before the border closed.
When we first arrived back in California, I was feeling like maybe we should have gone the campervan route in New Zealand or Australia, as I saw some other RTW couples I’d connected with through social media doing that and the virus didn’t seem to be affecting their plans too much. But then, within a few days of us being back, New Zealand issued a very strict 30-day lockdown to contain the virus. Our main fear with going to NZ was that we might get stuck in an expensive country for a long time, and that’s exactly what would have happened, so now I feel much better about not going there. (And liquor stores are not essential!)
Also, looking back, we probably should have stayed in Vietnam to avoid all the hours of travel (and potential exposure) we underwent to get home (and hoped they wouldn’t punish people for overstaying their visas during a pandemic). Since we’ve been back, however, I’ve seen news reports that all land borders in Southeast Asia are closing (so good thing we didn’t go to Laos!) and many tourists are being quarantined in Vietnam. Plus, we would have just been sitting in an apartment in Vietnam doing nothing, which is pretty much what we’re doing here in Southern California, except we don’t have to pay for our accommodations here and we were reunited with all our stuff we stored when we left on our trip last year.
So, overall: We’re in a vacation home in a beautiful area with all our cozy sweats and our Nespresso machine. We are now on the same time zone as (most of) our family and can FaceTime to our hearts’ delight. Even though the journey home was long and tiring, we always knew we had the funds and the passport to get us somewhere safe, and though the U.S. wasn’t our first choice to ride out this storm, we know there are many other Americans around the world who are trying to get home and can’t. We didn’t plan much in advance on our trip, so we didn’t lose any money by having to come home early. And though we had to cut the trip short, we still got to travel full-time for 50 weeks and see more places on this Earth than we probably would have seen in the entire rest of our lives, so no complaints there. All this to say: We are very fortunate, and we acknowledge that, and I don’t want anything in this post to sound ungrateful. It’s simply meant to be a diary of how we got home during a chaotic time in the world.
What’s next?
We had originally planned to spend the summer in the U.S. to visit some family and friends in multiple states, but of course now we don’t know when that will be feasible. For now, we’re staying home, following health guidelines and looking forward to the day we can travel again! (FYI, we took our temperatures twice a day during our two-week self-quarantine, which ended this past weekend, and we are happy to report we are showing no symptoms.)
You traveled too much! now you’re grounded.