Same, but Different

Arrival into Thailand, New Years Day 2022

I have a few hundred airport arrivals in my logbook.  They are mostly the same with the usual, expected energy. The same scenario of a stored up supply of human behavior exhibiting all the characteristics of travel anxiety, excitement, fear of not getting there, moving in a bubble of self – basically a rush for the bathroom. Stepping over and around, between a couple hundred “in my way fellow travelers”.  Lugging too many carry-on bags, too many carry-on kids.   

But, this was different.

There was a calm, purposeful, business like bond amongst us.  The display of bravado of the more frequent travelers was not.  This was new.  There was an attentiveness to instructions of the flight crew, there was a courtesy to others in the row by row disembarking, there was an order to the single file spaced protocol.

Thailand hosted a little less then 40 million pre-Covid visitors in 2019.  The first 9 months of 2021 saw 106,000.  The recent “test and go” program was expected  to see 90,000 in the fourth quarter of the year.  It was not a simple process to enter the country: testing, arrival quarantine, insurance, prearrangement for transport, approved Thai Pass, etc…

The folks on the half full flight from Helsinki had done this and were now part of an orderly, well instructed greeting at the Phuket airport by people in white medical containment suits, masks, and face shields.  We were processed, through a series of stations, baggage claim, finally immigration, to a mobile testing center, then to an area for our prearranged transport to the quarantine hotel. 

No SIM card sales, no money exchange, no Chang beer guzzle, no hustle from a taxi driver. Same, but different