Journeying to Manila, Part 1 of 3: All the Stuff You Have To Do Aside From Getting on the Plane
International travel is very different in the time of COVID-19 (the pandemic caused by the SARS-Cov-2 virus). A lot of people have asked about my experience and suggested I write about it, so here goes: I am currently in home quarantine so might as well be productive and make use of my time.
This trip marks the beginning of the end of my Australian adventure, also known as my two-year expensive sabbatical from clinical medicine, and also known as completing a Master of Culture, Health and Medicine degree at the Australian National University in Canberra. You can read reflections about that in a separate blog post.
A Ticket to Ride
The first thing I did was buy a one-way ticket from Sydney to Manila. I wanted to fly direct (i.e., no layovers) because international borders have been known to close quickly – what if I get stranded in Singapore, Hongkong or Kuala Lumpur during the layover? Yes, a nonstop flight was more expensive than a flights with stops. Philippine Airlines (PAL) was the only airline flying direct to Manila as Qantas did not have flights yet – the airline plans to resume direct flights in April 2022. This meant my non-transferable Qantas flight credits from a canceled roundtrip Sydney-Manila-Sydney flight in 2020 will just have to wait in limbo till whenever I can use them again. They expire in 2023 so I am hoping to use them for a trip Down Under, or perhaps New Zealand?
Booking A Quarantine Hotel
My next step was to make a hotel reservation for quarantine. The Philippine government classifies countries into “red”, “yellow” and “green” based on the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic. Briefly, travel from “red” countries is limited to repatriation flights organized by the government, “green” countries posed a “low risk” to the Philippines, and the rest of the world’s “yellow” countries carried a “moderate risk”. Here’s a news item describing this in a little more detail. Travelers from green and yellow countries need to undergo hotel quarantine, followed by home quarantine. The duration of hotel and home quarantine will depend on (1) whether the country is green or yellow, and (2) whether the traveler is vaccinated or unvaccinated.
Australia is classified as a “yellow” country, and as I am a vaccinated traveler I am required to stay 5 days in hotel quarantine. Day 1 is counted as day of arrival, and day 5 is the day you undergo a COVID-19 PCR nasopharyngeal swab (PCR stands for polymerase chain reaction, the “gold standard” test for detecting the presence of COVID-19 from a swab done in the back of your nose and throat). Then you go home on day 6 if your swab is negative. Therefore a hotel reservation has to be made for 5 nights/6 days. Proof of reservation has to be presented at the airport before boarding the flight.
Note: the traveler pays for costs associated with hotel quarantine, unless he/she is a registered overseas Filipino worker (OFW) with the government.
The Bureau of Quarantine has a list of accredited hotels online, but this can be overwhelming. Philippine Airlines has a list of partner hotels as well – this list is a bit more user-friendly than the Bureau of Quarantine’s list. You can choose a hotel based on location and there are multiple price points available. One of my friends advised directly booking with the hotel, because they offer better rates, quarantine packages that may not be advertised on travel websites, and can arrange airport-to-hotel transfers for you. Hotel websites have their contact information (phone, email, address) for inquiries. I emailed five or so shortlisted hotels and received prompt responses from all of them. More on this in part 3.
International Vaccine Certificate
For domestic travel in Australia and for any other purposes like entering business establishments, you can present a printed vaccination certificate or more commonly, a certificate downloaded to your mobile phone as proof of vaccination. These can both be downloaded from a government website. However for international travel, Australia issues a different certificate which meets international verification requirements including a QR code and other information like your full name and passport number, aside from the dates and type of vaccine you received. Australian citizens can get this online as it is associated with their Medicare (universal health care) account. Non-Australians like me are not eligible for Medicare, so we have to present ourselves to Services Australia (government service centre) to get the certificate. I brought my passport and proof of individual healthcare identifier (IHI) number so the staff at Services Australia could look up my records and print out a certificate.
Poked in the Nose (pre-departure PCR Test)
The Philippines requires a PCR test 72 hours prior to scheduled departure (per regulations when I departed Jan 2; more recent Jan 16 regulations shortened this to 48 hours prior to departure… I’m sure this will frequently change so please check your airlines’ website for the latest update).
In the days before the test, I did my best to limit possible exposure to people and environments at risk for COVID-19 transmission. In the Australian setting, obtaining the laboratory report with associated certification necessary for travel, one has to go to a privately-run laboratory collection specifically designated for this. This certificate comes with a price, generally about 140-150 Australian dollars (except the one at Sydney airport which was around 80 dollars). The ordinary government testing sites will send you results by text messaging or email, so those results are not acceptable for international travel. Qantas has more on pre-departure testing on their website.
I originally booked a test at a Sydney-area laboratory which accepted drive-thru and walk-in customers. However with the changing COVID-19 situation and increased demand for testing, plus being short-staffed due to the Christmas and New Year holidays, this laboratory closed its walk-in site and retained the drive-thru queue only – this meant having to sit in line with lots of other cars who may or may not be there for travel testing. I cancelled that booking and asked for a refund.
The next option was to get tested at the airport. Express testing at the airport was cheaper (80 dollars instead of 140-150) and appeared to be more convenient, plus the general non-traveling public wouldn’t be in line along with you. One could take the train to the airport, get tested, and receive results in 90 minutes or less. I had planned to do this a day or two before the flight. One could register and pay online, then just walk in for the PCR test. However with the increased demand for testing and the holidays, this testing site changed their rules: they would accommodate testing only for people who were flying out the same day. Meaning: arrive about 5 hours before your flight, get tested, receive results, then get on your plane. A little too close for comfort. What if your test was positive? You’d have to cancel everything at the very, very last minute. I prefer a little more leeway.
After lots of internet research, thankfully a very convenient solution presented itself. None of the private laboratory places took bookings and one would really need to drive-thru or walk-in. I ended up registering and paying online, then going to a private pathology lab close to my uncle’s house (my Sydney “home” prior to flying) 71 hours before the flight… just inside the required 72-hour window. Since the testing facilities and laboratory processing places were under a lot of stress from the increased demand, long turnaround times for results meant you might not get your results in time for your flight. This was my reason for getting tested as early as possible. The private laboratory collection site was in one of those one-stop-shop places with doctors’ offices and a pharmacy. There wasn’t anyone else in line for specimen collection (COVID-19 related or otherwise) so that was thankfully a speedy visit.
On to the Sydney airport for departure in part 2.
Or you could skip to arrival in Manila in part 3.
