Seeing just one red line on day nine

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Martin Moodie
Martin Moodie is the Founder & Chairman of The Moodie Report.

The latest addition to my travel retail-exclusive collection of Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT) sure is a welcome one.

A nice shiny single red bar under the ‘C’ and not even the faintest of outlines under the T. My first – and I hope last – encounter with the dreaded COVID has drawn to an end and as a result I can head home from Bangkok to Hong Kong tomorrow.

Time to close my Interim Bangkok Bureau/Recovery Unit

COVID-restrictions in the Special Administrative Region may have eased considerably in recent months but one thing hasn’t changed – the need for a clear RAT test in the 24 hours before you depart for Hong Kong.

That poses real difficulties for a resident such as myself if you happen to get infected while abroad. I was lucky in being able to lean on my good friends’ kindness to use their empty apartment in Bangkok while I recovered. Otherwise it would have been a lonely hotel room somewhere, waiting it out while feeling awful until that dastardly second red line disappeared.

I know I’m lucky to have lasted this long without picking up COVID. Lucky and careful. But as mentioned in my recent Blog, how can you be careful amid all those hugs, kisses and handshakes that go with the terrority of attending international events? Does one reject such greetings and would it make any difference anyway given that mask wearing seems to be largely a thing of the past in such settings?

Apparently I was far from alone in catching COVID during the recently flurry of travel retail events. The infection stats will, of course, never be reported. Is learning to live with the prospect of catching COVID therefore just an implicit and inconvenient reality of attending such gatherings? Probably.

Each to their own. For me, I will, as written, be adopting my version of the Thai wai greeting (pictured below) and being more selective about which events I attend. One case of COVID in three years is quite enough thank you.

{Image: Treety, Shutterstock official Moodie Davitt account}

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