In a rather warm Sydney for a day or two more before heading around Australia. Git yer travel pr0n here:

Tahiti
New Zealand
Australia

2021.05.18 Sint Maarten/St. Martin

2021.05.19 – Sunset Cruise

2021.05.20 San Martin Brewery

2021.05.21 Sint Maarten Beach, Topper’s Rhum & Gelato, Pelikaan Brewery, Le Tropicana, Marigot, St. Martin

First day after flying into Sint Maarten

Monday we hired the taxi who’d driven us from the airport to show us around the island.

Unedited pictures from the first full day on Sint Maarten.

On March 6, 2020, I got on a plane in Bangkok for one of those long days that stretch across the dateline and the Pacific. We switched planes in Narita, and thought we had time to hit the lounge, but headed for the gate and that ate up the available time. We got asked twenty questions by a rather irritating official before we were allowed down the elevator to the gate. We had been traveling since the end of January through airports and border stations in Seoul, Bangkok, Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia without hitting quite that level of questioning. They also only questioned me, and I’m not great at responding to COVID-19 questions. Let’s just say that Bangkok was a model of decorum compared to Japan. We thought we were fleeing from close to the epicenter of the pandemic — little did we know that we were flying into the heart of it instead.

The flight was nonstop from Tokyo to Minneapolis, but getting off the plane in Minneapolis was like time had warped somewhere over the Pacific. Signs warning about COVID-19 had vanished. Temperature checks had gone too. My traveling companion had to report for jury duty on the Monday after we arrived from S.E. Asia. After Someone picked us up at the airport, we wondered if we’d left the frying pan for the fire. It turns out, we had.

Well! I came back from over a month in Asia on March 6th from Bangkok via Tokyo. When I first arrived in Bangkok, I was a little amazed at the signage and the temperature taking of everyone getting off a plane at the international terminal. I was a bit taken aback by being screened by temperature at all of the ‘posh’ shopping centers I went to in search of a spare battery for my Sony camera. There was hand sanitizer everywhere. There were security guards applying hand sanitizer to escalator handrails.

What was it like when I got off the plane in Minneapolis? Nada. Zip. Zilch. Although, the airline ticket agent in Bangkok did check through my passport to make sure there were no China visas, and in Tokyo Delta or the airport had a clown-car team asking ‘security’ questions. Getting off the plane at MSP was like a blast from the past. “These people do not know what’s coming!” I thought, “I haz seen the future, and this ain’t it.”

Well, sadly, for once, I was not just another ignorant, know-it-all tourist, I was right.

Several of us gathered in the bar at the hotel bar in Siem Reap, Cambodia at the end of the Road Scholar tour. I think it’s called destressing, but one person drank a wee bit too much, like a double martini or more too much, although she was having some trouble finding her mouth, so I was kind of aware she had had too much. There was also a bit of slurring.

When the last three of us left, she walked into a glass door, but only the edge, and got around it with a little difficulty. I had my camera and a drink to take back to the room while we packed for an early flight to Bangkok, but as we went down the three steps to the main level, she crumpled. The two of us kind of stood there watching it in shock. One had offered her hand to the drinker, but it was ignored. Both of us were carrying a drink, of course.

Two Australian men ran over to pick her up before we had shed our junk to help and got her standing with some very careful lifting. Some jokes were exchanged about Minnesota, but the woman’s white pants were turning red on one leg.

The Australians helped her into a chair, and a cloud of hotel staff appeared. They lifted the pant leg and displayed the 2-3″ of skinned shin that was bleeding. They started trying to clean it a bit, and then a kit arrived with gloves and bandages and cleaning materials. After cleaning it, they carefully covered and wrapped it.

After the bandage, two of them, one to each side stood her up and we navigated to the elevator. I think an additional one or two of the hotel staff went up with us, but in the elevator, I noticed that the other pant leg had some red on it as well. While it was possible it was from the skinned shin, I suspected another skinned shin on the other leg that we’d missed outside the bar.

The hotel staff often suggested the emergency room or a doctor. Let’s just say that the injured person was not in a state to make a decision, and while I ain’t a doctor nor do I play one on TV, I’ve taken enough cooks in for stitches to know that they can’t stitch a skinned shin. The woman’s slacks had also not ripped.

After we’d gotten her into her room and sitting on the bed, I said we had to check the other leg while we still hand bandages. So, they rolled up the other pant leg to display a 1-2″ skinned shin on the other leg. The called down to have the medkit sent up, and they repeated the process on the other leg.

We had the hotel staff, after the bandaging was complete, call the front desk for a wake-up call. Most of the group had an early bus ride to the airport for a Singapore flight, and we wanted to make sure she was on it. When the call and the bandaging was done, we left to walk from one end of the hotel to the other.

The corridor stroll ran past the tour group leader’s room, but it was starting to get late. Fortunately, there was music coming from the room, so we knocked. I still had ma drink in ma hand, of course, to explain that there’d been an accident and that he’d have to take a bit of special care with the woman and her bandaged legs to make sure she was on the bus to the airport. I figured she would be sore as hell and maybe a little hungover when the anesthetic effect of the alcohol wore off.

Anyway, we packed, slept for what seemed like ten minutes, and checked out of the hotel around 5 or 5:30 am. We’d asked for a box breakfast, but the front desk offered us a real one — which we declined to head out to the airport. (There’s a custom thereabouts of watching the sunrise over some old ruins outside the city which requires tourists to get up really, really, really early, eat a brief snack, bus the Angkor Wat, explore the grounds and temple, and then come back to the hotel for a ‘real’ breakfast, which we had just done the day before.)

As we exited the hotel, or at least hovered near the door with luggage, the doorman asked if we had a taxi. I was going to call a Grab, but he ran out and got a tuk tuk before I got it ordered. They piled our luggage between the motorcycle and the fifth wheel, we got in, and were off for the airport in the morning dark. (I don’t think I saw any fifth wheel tuk tuks outside of Cambodia. Most of the tuk tuks are either three or four wheel open vehicles, but in Cambodia I had noticed the ones that just attached to the back of the seat of a motorcycle.)

All in all, we were incredibly impressed with the hotel staff.

If you want/must/need to change a flight, contact the airline. They (Delta) changed my flight with no fee, but I tried to 1) be nice 2) request as minimum of a change as I could) 3) be prepared to pay if I had to 4) use CDC published levels and recommendations as a reason for requesting the change 5) be nice.

You can also contact airline ticket counters in cities and airports. Rumor has it that ‘being nice’ is still a wise approach. Ticket agents have a lot of rules and some ability to bend them. Being mean or demanding often isn’t a good approach when you need their help. YMMV

Airlines and airline call centers are very busy right now. Be prepared to wait or ask for a callback. While call centers are being overwhelmed, flights I’ve been on are often not full. The flight from Bangkok to Tokyo I was on had many, many empty seats. (Yes, I am generalizing from minimum data here, but airlines may have half-full flights they can change you to with little disruption.)

Your travel agent or booking company may also be able to help if you tell them what you need, but be specific with what you want to change and how. Also, it can be hard to communicate with spotty connections and many hour time differences.Do not wait until the last minute to try and change an itinerary. Call if you can on their time.

Your credit card company may also be able to help, especially Platinum American Express or any other card with concierge services.Big hotels with concierges can help as well, especially with local medical help. Capital cities also will have US embassies you can contact. If you want to play doctor, most SE Asian pharmacies will sell you most things you can name and you can at least ask for them. They can often recommend local medical help. If you want to see a doctor, an emergency room visit with a prescription in Bangkok cost my friend $60 USD. (I can’t remember if that included the taxi ride to and from or not.) Asians are not very concerned about medical privacy, so be prepared to be asked questions (triaged) in public before you see a doctor.

Most airlines and/or airports in SE Asia are performing temperature checks when you board an airplane and after you disembark. Many shopping centers are as well. If you have a fever, it’s going to be a very tough game. Most/many/some SE Asian countries are offering help (diagnostic and treatment?) if you already have corona virus’s symptoms. If you don’t have evacuation insurance, I’d try to get to a major city in a country with good medical facilities (Thailand or Singapore) as the first fallback. Second fallback, get to the largest city you can. If you’re on a tour, the tour guide is your first resource.

Yes, I am not a travel agent or medical doctor, nor do I play either on TV, but I did recently change my travel plans to avoid a 5-day stopover in Tokyo and fly as directly as possible from Bangkok to Minneapolis, and I’ve been in four SE Asian countries in January through March, and changed planes in Seoul and Tokyo airports.

At one point in my recent travels, I started having trouble plugging in my Samsung phone. I went off in search of a T-Mobile store at a shopping center in Bangkok — thanks Google for sending me to a ghost store, bounced off a phone store and a phone repair store (who wanted 800 baht to fix the phone). After failing to communicate blowing out the USB port to the repair place, they sent me to another floor where there was a Samsung store I thought, but it was a Samsung repair center.

I certainly did not impress the young Thai guy at the desk either with my Thai or my hand sign skills, but he went and got me a numbered ticket. I watched the TV monitor for the ticket number since I’m not great at reading or understanding Thai. Then to my surprise, when my number came up the announcement voice switched from Thai to English and I was directed to a desk where the Thai woman spoke English. Gadzooks, I thought. This ain’t the first idiot tourist that’s been in here! Anyway, she disappeared with the phone for a minute or two, returned after removing something from the port, and handed it back to me after plugging it in to show it would charge now, and she did not charge me for the repair.