Travel is hard yakka these days. If you're not doing it for the sake of seeing family or doing your work, I don't know why you would bother. There are layers and layers of tests and paperwork, and everything is constantly in flux. Which means it's all very stressful and tedious.

I'm going to document our end-to-end experience because I'm hoping that in years to come it will all seem very quaint and incredible, a bit like using (paper) road atlases to get around with, or using a typewriter to create tables.

God forbid that this should become the norm from here on in...

So we'll start with Sunday 7, and breakfast with friends:



Then we finished off the luggage. This is not a backpacking trip. It just doesn't feel like a viable option at the moment to be jumping on and off trains and buses in what used to be our usual fashion. So we packed a big suitcase (plus one lightly loaded rucksack for the small amount of overspill), and we'll be hiring a car for the duration.


Check-in at Kuching airport was painfully slow. We felt very sorry for the counter staff, who now have to work with a vast array of different requirements from different countries (governments, it seems, make airlines responsible for ensuring passengers comply with their covid entry stipulations, which doesn't seem quite fair...).

It would certainly have been better, though, if they'd fielded more staff (given the interminable nature of the proceedings), and it would have been useful if we had known that all documents (vaccination certificate, covid test result, the UK's "passenger locator form", PLF) needed to be printed out (nothing we'd read had indicated that electronic copies would not suffice, so we didn't have a hard copy of our PLF, and had to mess about emailing it for printing).

So, it was a long and tedious business, and I wished I was spending all this time in a bigger space with a higher ceiling... But all the waiting passengers were very considerate. Everyone was masked; no-one was crowding in.

Finally, we were done, and could go through security to the departure lounge. The flight to Singapore left late. This was because it couldn't go until all the passengers from the incoming flight had gone through immigration, and for some reason there was a hold-up there. I've never experienced this before, but I guess these things are now logistically more difficult as there are fewer flights. Anyone who turns out not to be validly in Sarawak would have to wait days before a flight home was available.

As the minutes ticked by, we were becoming anxious that we'd miss our connection to London (even more worrying was the thought that our duty-free order might make it onto our original flight whereas we wouldn't...). But we finally left. And for some reason we were given goody bags with muffins and bikkies and chocolate.

The ground-staff at Singapore handled our lateness very efficiently. We were told to board one of those cool buggy things that you must have seen gliding over the vast expanses of airport carpet, and we were transported to the gate.


The flight time to London was a whacking 14 hours and 20 minutes. Unprecedented in our experience. We were told they'd had to take a more southerly route (no idea why), and there were also strong headwinds. Still, the food was good; the entertainment system worked; and the seats were comfortable. Definitely could have been worse.

On both flights we were optimally seated, with no-one directly behind us. And both flights were quite lightly loaded. Even so, I was crossing my fingers that our double masks would keep us safe...

The place where we felt most vulnerable was at the E-gates at Heathrow. Another low-ceilinged space (why are airports designed so pokily...?); no assurance of ventilation; and a vast throng of people, not all of whom were wearing masks. In any case, you have to take your mask off to go through the gate, so you start to imagine the hefty build-up of viral load in that area...

At no point did anyone actually verify that we had filled in a PLF... I guess they're just trusting that those check-in staff have done their job...

We picked up our hire car, and headed for Hitchin to do a little necessary shopping. We were really taken aback by how lax everyone here is about covid (especially given that daily cases are really quite high). Every time we go into a shop in Kuching, we have our temperature measured, we check in and out via MySejahtera, and we wear a mask (or two). But in the UK, many people don't mask up in shops, and there are no checks whatsoever.

We stayed overnight at a hotel in Wellingborough. Again, although there was a notice asking people to wear their masks when serving themselves from the breakfast buffet, very few clients complied.

On Tuesday 9 we journeyed on to Newark, Nottinghamshire.


The deal for entering the UK at the moment (for those who are double-vaccinated, and arriving from countries with approved vaccines and vaccination programmes) is that you complete your PLF (which enables the authorities to contact you, should it turn out you've been in contact with someone who tests positive), and then, on Day 2 (your arrival day is Day 0), you do a covid antigen test (which you have to pre-book) .

Our Boots test kits had duly arrived in Newark, so Wednesday was Test Day. They don't exactly make for a pleasant experience (running the little collector thing five times round each nostril makes the inside of your nose feel as though it's on fire), but these tests sure beat the ghastly stick-up-the-nose-and-down-the-throat version that we endured so painfully and frequently last year.


The 15 minutes when you wait for your result to show up in the little window are the longest you'll ever know...

We both tested negative. Yay! Of course, we're not out of the woods yet, as the disease sometimes takes its time to emerge (which is why we're going to do another test on Day 8, even though that's not an official requirement). Still, a negative covid test is always something to be celebrated.

Uploading the results was very problematic. You have to photograph your little test pack, with the indicators showing, and then activate your account by reading a QR code. I wonder if something was up with their website, because when we came to do the QR code reading, nothing was working, nothing was working, nothing was working, and then suddenly it was... Later in the day we received the official confirmation of our negative result.

So..., we're in. Our plan now is to lie low (walk in the countryside, drive places, but not enter any premises) until Day 8. This is not at all arduous, however. Our family have stacked the house with goodies; the weather is surprisingly mild for the time of year; and the autumnal colours are still fantastic (there's more on all that here).

In fact, we're planning to follow the same cautious modus operandi for the next few months. No-one quite knows which way things are headed in the UK, so keeping ourselves to ourselves-and-family definitely seems the way to go.



Here's to a few months' peace and calm before we have to start doing this all over again...