Escaping Hong Kong… Again | The Corona Diary Part 3

Headed to Malaysia

Great. After a semester of violent protests and online learning, it looked like this virus was going to try and mess with my uni life once again. At this point, it was clear that classes would be held online once more and many of my classmates decided not to return from overseas. Naturally, the prospect of living on a deserted campus for a whole semester wasn’t the most appealing notion, causing us to re-evaluate our options (my protest-induced empty campus experience a few months prior left a rather sour aftertaste).

Some of my friends didn’t faff around much and quickly decided this would be the perfect opportunity to travel around Asia, starting with Singapore. After much back and forth, my boyfriend and I decided we would join the team for two weeks in Kuala Lumpur. It would be an affordable mini-vacation and allow us to take our minds off the pandemic for a bit.

As bizarre as it was, we found ourselves fleeing to a warm South East Asian country two semesters in a row (in fall of 2019, we escaped the Hong Kong protests by flying to Phuket for two weeks).

Once again, I boarded a plane in a “high-risk region”, only to arrive in a safer place to rip the mask off my face and return to relative normality. No panic buying, no mask-wearing and no worries about getting sick; it was bliss. Major spoiler: Malaysia was just days away from getting acquainted with a certain Miss Corona.

While disease prevention efforts were stepped up, daily life remained unchanged. We spent the first week of our stay exploring KL’s city, gasping at the Petronas Twin Towers and climbing up the colourful stairs to the Batu caves. I particularly enjoyed the accessibility to donut stores such as Donkin’ Donuts or Krispy Kreme. But I digress.

As it turns out, however, as easy as it was for us to enter the country, those infected with the virus similarly had little obstacles in their way of getting in. It wasn’t long until there was talk of government restrictions. Within a few days, various facilities closed down and mask-wearing became commonplace just like in Beijing and Hong Kong.

Eventually, only partially into the Asia trip, our friends decided to go back to Hong Kong. But because my boyfriend and I didn’t want to waste our flight tickets, we decided to wait just another week before heading home. In retrospect, we probably shouldn’t have.

So there we were, doing our lectures online, barely leaving the Airbnb and simply waiting for our departure day. Suddenly, on a day’s notice, the government announced a tough lockdown, or as they called it “movement restriction order”. People were pretty much only allowed out for grocery shopping, and everything from offices to restaurants was shut.

Almost as expected, panic-buying ensued. Why people think they must stock up a year’s worth of food and toilet paper supplies, knowing that supermarkets won’t actually be closing escapes me until today. 

Flight Disaster

As if the lockdown wasn’t enough to process, the Hong Kong government decided to quarantine all international arrivals starting less than three days from then. This finally convinced us that it might be a good idea to look into flying back as soon as possible. The last thing we needed was spending fourteen days in isolation.

With that bombshell announcement, flights from Kuala Lumpur to Hong Kong began rising in prices by the minute. Every time I refreshed my search, flights would disappear or increase in price by ridiculous amounts. And whenever I would find a semi-affordable connection, more research would reveal that transit in these certain countries was denied to international travellers – oh the joys of navigating travel in a pandemic.

Then after hours of panicking and searching, I suddenly found a suitable AirAsia direct flight and immediately booked and paid for it. Finding an affordable and direct flight on that day was too good to be true. Upon checking our booking confirmation just moments after clicking ‘purchase’, we found what we missed. Instead of booking from Kuala Lumpur to Hong Kong, we had just purchased non-refundable tickets going from Hong Kong to Kuala Lumpur. How stupid of a mistake – one I hope to never commit again.

It was almost futile to hope for a refund or rebooking, but we tried. After more hours of attempting to change our flight online, we decided to head across the city and try our luck at the only AirAsia office in the capital responsible for booking changes (adding another few bucks for the cab onto our already dissipated money for the flight ticket). However, we realised we were not the only ones to have had that impulse when we saw the long lines and frantically arguing airline employees.

Needless to say, even after getting to the front of the line, we headed back to our Airbnb without luck. That money was gone.

The next morning we finally managed to get booked on a direct flight back, but we would miss the deadline to return before the quarantine order went into effect. We were massively disappointed but glad to get a ticket out instead of getting stuck abroad.

The day eventually arrived on which we packed our bags, waved goodbye to the apartment building security guard and got into the taxi to the airport. Looking out the window, we found ourselves in one of the strangest settings. We passed a police roadblock, designed to catch citizens leaving their home without a valid reason, and turned onto a completely empty highway.

With much time to spare, we checked in our luggage and waited for boarding. As Malaysian citizens weren’t allowed to leave the country, we were among only a handful of foreign passengers leaving on only a handful of flights that day.

From that point on, our journey back luckily proceeded without unexpected problems. Before boarding, our temperature was taken and before landing, we were handed some forms to fill out. Upon arrival, we were guided past immigration and health officers and given a paper tracking bracelet for our home quarantine (although these measures seemed over the top at the time, the arrival procedures just months later were updated to include arrival/pre-departure testing, hotel quarantine and house-arrest-style electronic wristband).

After an exhausting few days, we finally arrived back at our university, where we were required to quarantine in the on-campus hotel so as to not endanger people in our dorms. Of course, this added another hefty fee to our steadily increasing bill, but we were certainly glad to be back.