In Red List Quarantine - part one
Day minus3. Still no reply from CTM, the Quarantine Management service regarding the twin beds, or the shower. No reply about how/where I join my mother either, (emailed 10 days ago) or who assists wheelchair guests to the shuttle bus, or how a “Quarantinee” aged 90 manages her suitcase. But I've given up on that, and am now on her terrace in swimsuit eating roasted breadfruit and green mango salad, and being admired for flying out for 3 days just to return with Mum to London.
Potential problem is the 3 warning text messages reminding me to get my day2 and day8 PCR tests. We should be confined to our room at the exciting-sounding Ramada Hounslow, where our £2400 is supposed to cover the tests. I've emailed requests for clarification about who books those. No reply.
Day minus2. Govt has just announced that next week the cost for 2 sharing a room for 11 nights goes up to £ 3700.
Day minus1 Still no reply from CTM. Why am I not surprised? We will trust that the package works.
The passenger locator forms (PLF) are done, the PCR tests are done... When your travel agent tells you to check your documents, DO IT.
We accidentally gave the tester Mum's expired passport and only just managed to get the certificate fixed on time.
DAY ZERO The handbag contains my passport, E-ticket printout, exit declaration, PCR certificate, vaccination certificate, passenger locator form, quarantine hotel booking confirmation, Quarantine hotel receipt with crucial receipt number, masks, sanitiser, reading glasses, phone charger and cable; on top of all the stuff a normal person travels with.
We have checked in (passport, PCR Cert, PLF) security immigration (passport, boarding pass, exit form) boarding (passport, boarding pass). We have disembarked in Dubai and boarded the plane to London (passport, PLF, PCR Test, boarding card) and are now enroute to London.
Everyone has been incredibly helpful, Mum in her wheelchair being treated like royalty.
The huge plane is almost empty. But the rules changed 2 days ago. Dubai is now on Amber list and the crew tell me when they turn around the A380 will fly back full. Meanwhile, I've got 3 seats and am having a little lie-down.
On arrival Emirates and airport staff helped mum into the wheelchair, and on to a shuttle bus to take us from Terminal 3, (Emirates) to Terminal 4, a 30-minute ride through the interesting working sides of the airport, with two pointless security checks on the way, given that the 4 people on the minibus included two elderly ladies in wheelchairs and 2 companions hardly likely to try to excape.
Escorted to a special immigration hall looking like an ill-lit warehouse, where our sweet wheelchair man tried to take us to a free agent. A supervisor who had got out of the wrong side of bed insisted that we stick to the wheelchair queue, which was the only desk with a queue, sorting a large group whose papers were not in order.
We were cleared very quickly. My niece, who got the passport number fixed, is irritated to learn that the PCR test was barely glanced at.
Then another desk where someone wrote the name of our hotel on a chitty for the shuttle bus driver. Bags, and on to the waiting bus. This is where we come back into the oh-so-efficient remit of CTM. 25 people on a shuttle bus, booked into 6 different hotels, ours incomprehensibly the last, since we were at T4, our hotel was on the A30 and all the other hotels were on the Bath Road. At each the security escort would take the passports to the hotel door, hand them over and we would wait. Finally, the passengers would be allowed off, escorted into the hotel by security, and bus could leave. Next time you are offered a 2-hour transfer time from airport to hotel, be grateful you are going somewhere interesting, and not to a hotel less than 5 miles away. We were checked in by another employee of CTM, which took another half-hour, including 4 forms to be signed, but no information pack. And so to jail…