Enduring the humdrum of quarantine, one day at a time

Film-maker Pete Lee directing a shoot in Austin, Texas, over Zoom during his mandatory quarantine at the Roaders Hotel in Taipei.
Film-maker Pete Lee directing a shoot in Austin, Texas, over Zoom during his mandatory quarantine at the Roaders Hotel in Taipei. PHOTO: NYTIMES

Ms May Samali knew she had reached her limit when she saw a tentacle emerging from her hotel dinner in Sydney.

"I called downstairs and said, 'I'm a vegan now, thank you'," she said. She swore off the seemingly unlimited seafood during a required quarantine in the Hotel Sofitel in Sydney recently.

An executive coach, she was repatriating back to Australia after her United States work visa expired. Besides an excess of fish, she was confined to her room all day for two weeks.

Air travellers around the world are finding themselves in similar situations, enduring mandatory quarantine in hotels as they travel to countries that are serious about containing the coronavirus.

In January, Britain announced a mandatory 10-day quarantine from high-risk areas with a cost of about US$2,500 (S$3,300) for one adult.

Travellers journeying to countries with mandatory hotel quarantines, which include New Zealand, China and Tunisia, generally must have compelling reasons to do so - visiting ailing family members, engaging in essential business travel or carrying out permanent relocation.

Pete Lee, a San Francisco-based film-maker, was not concerned about the quarantine when he flew to Taiwan for work and to visit family.

"I was a little bit cocky when I first heard about the requirement," he said on his eighth day at the Roaders Hotel in Taipei.

"I was inside my San Francisco apartment for 22 out of 24 hours a day. But (hotel quarantine) is a surprisingly intense experience."

Much of quarantine life is determined by one's hotel. Depending on where you are travelling, you may choose your hotel or you may be assigned one on arrival.

Lee was able to choose his hotel from a list compiled by the Taiwanese government, complete with information about location, cost, room size and the presence - or lack - of windows. He also footed the bill.

Similarly, Ms Ouiem Chettaoui, a public-policy specialist who splits her time between Washington, DC, and Tunisia, was able to choose a hotel for her week-long quarantine when returning to Tunis with her husband in September last year.

She based her selection, the Medina Belisaire & Thalasso, on price and proximity to the Mediterranean Sea. "We couldn't see it, but we could hear it," she said.

Mr Brett Barna, an investment manager who relocated to Shanghai with his fiancee in November, could select a district in the city but not the hotel itself.

To improve their odds, he chose the upscale Huangpu district where, he hoped, the hotels would be higher quality. To their dismay, they ended up paying for quarantine in the budget Home Inn, which had peeling wallpaper and bleach stains on the floor thanks to aggressive cleaning protocols.

In Australia and New Zealand, there is no choice in the matter - upon landing, everyone on the flight is taken by bus to a quarantine hotel.

After arriving in Auckland from San Francisco, Ms Pim Techamuanvivit and her New Zealander husband were promptly directed to board a flight to Christchurch and taken to the Novotel Christchurch Airport hotel.

"At that point, we just really, really wanted to get to the hotel," said Ms Techamuanvivit, a chef-owner of Thai restaurants in San Francisco.

Relief at arriving at last might be the initial reaction, but it does not take long for reality to set in. The hotel room is all one sees for a significant period of time.

Mr Adrian Wallace, a technology project manager, was quarantined at the Sydney Hilton in August after visiting his ailing father in Britain. "That moment when the door slams... it's reminiscent of the opening scene of The Shawshank Redemption," he said, referring to the 1994 prison movie.

The challenge is managing the tedium. Working remotely helped pass time for a number of the travellers, including Mr Tait Sye, a senior director at the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, who travelled to Taipei from Washington, DC, in November.

He attempted to maintain East Coast hours for the majority of his quarantine at the Hanns House Hotel, working from 10pm to 6am.

Mr Wallace ran a half-marathon around his Sydney hotel room - he was unable to adjust the in-room air conditioner and got very sweaty.

Mr Barna and his fiancee in Shanghai had date nights on Zoom, since official policy required them to quarantine in separate rooms.

Meals can become very important in quarantine life - to mark the passing of time and as regular occurrences to break up the monotony of the day.

Food quality, though, varies widely, as Mr Sye learnt in Taipei, where meals were ordered from nearby restaurants. He recounted the highs of a Michelin-starred meal from Kam's Roast Goose and the thoughtfulness of a Thanksgiving dinner decorated with a paper turkey to the low of a terrible pizza (at least it was accompanied by a beer).

For Ms Techamuanvivit, ordering food and grocery delivery was a lifesaver. "I'm a chef. I suppose I am, shall we say, a snob," she said. "But ordering Indian takeaway proved to be important."

She spiced up hotel meals with leftover Indian pickles and found that Greek tzatziki sauce ordered from the grocery store worked well as a salad dressing. She and her husband also treated themselves to bottles of wine from the hotel restaurant's wine list.

There are Facebook groups dedicated to hotel quarantine by region and even by specific hotel, where members share tips for boiling eggs using in-room kettles and "cooking" with an iron.

They were also a source of community. Mr Wallace, who learned of the Sydney Hilton's Facebook group while on the bus from the airport, participated in a daily Zoom call with members of the group. The meals of the day were a constant topic of conversation.

Lee also moderated film-making conversations on Clubhouse, an invitation-only social media app, and spent time on Tinder while in quarantine.

There was even a bit of romance - he connected with a woman nearing the end of her confinement in another hotel across town.

NYTIMES

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on March 02, 2021, with the headline Enduring the humdrum of quarantine, one day at a time. Subscribe