Quarantine Day 5 - Incompetence - Red Cross in Association with Borough of Quarantine

 After spending about 2 hours writing this blog... tired me, managed to somehow erase it. No control-z won't bring it back... 

I spent days and hours trying to figure out how I can get to the Philippines without getting vaccinated and was able to find a way! 

While many of Filipino government sites do have conflicting information, I gathered a few points that seem to be agreed on

1. You need to be fully vaccinated in order to get in
2. Fully vaccinated people did not need to quarantine
3. If you can't prove that you are fully vaccinated, you have to quarantine for 5 days

There's my heter... 

Well as the trip was coming closer, my gf keep sending me new articles about unvaccinated people coming and getting sent back, she looked at different sits too and from her perspective, better be safe than sorry and get the vaccine... 

From my perspective, better be safe than sorry and NOT get the vaccine. 

But, it's getting close and closer and I'm more and more attached to this project, I gave in and got the jab. J&J figuring it only needed on. By that time, even if I wanted to get another, I wouldn't be able to because I would have already left. 

So, now, there should be any problems. Right? Wrong. 

Flight to Qatar, no problem. Kosher meal. Served first. Bigger than the non-kosher meals, Free drinks. Plenty of leg space. Window seat. Entertainment has current movies on. All good to go. 

Land in Qatar, b line to the lounge. Take a shower, eat, drink, make some calls, wait out my flight. 

Flight to Manila, things started to get a little rough. 1stly, I ALWAYS make sure that I get a window seat. Somehow, I ended up with a middle seat. Fuck! Have to wait until the doors shut before I can switch seats. A pretty full flight... 

By the way, I find it hilarious that in the airport, they have seats blocked out for social distancing but, on the plan, they squeeze you in as close as legally and physically possible... Follow that science. 

Doors close, before I can say anything they guy in the aisle seat wants to move to a middle seat. Who in their right mind wants to move into a middle seat? I wasn't going to ask questions. To me, while I don't like the isle, it's better than the middle. So, we swapped. 

The flight was relatively smooth, again nice big kosher meal. free drinks. As their serving coffee, I ask the stewardess if she wouldn't mind putting whiskey in my coffee. Big smile on her face, of course sir. 

She hands me my Irish whiskey and keeps moving... A few minutes later, she comes down the isle to do something or get something and bumps into me... Coffee spills on my lap an on her pants... Ouch.

She profusely apologists, the head waitress has to come do an incident report, they give me a set of brand new pjs to change into. 

Fine, we land in Manila, have to go through a long maze for checking our papers. Passport, covid card, one health pass, verify we have tickets back, etc... 

This part is run by the coast guard. Comes my turn. They look over all my paperwork, again, and again, call some more people over, talk some more, I ask what's up. They say nothing just trying to verify all your info... 

Then he hands me a paper that says 5 days quarantine! Shit! Fuck! Has I know that, I wouldn't have gotten the damn thing! No I feel like such a fool and hypocrite.

He looks up a hotel, $86/night! I ask him if I'm allowed to look for my own hotel. He says I can but, it must be licensed to hold quarantine. I look around I find one for $14/night + $1000PHP deposit (like $20). Much better!  

The neighborhood is dingy, narrow roads, people hanging outside, etc... I guess it's want I would imagine a 2nd world country like. 

Get into the hotel. Kinda run down, not fancy or anything but, I'm not picking. $14/night, I wasn't expecting anything nice. If anything, I thinks its a little nicer than I expected. 

Room is large than my bedroom, has a bathroom, shower, a little dinette, something to hand one's cloths on, WIFI, and a/c. I notice it's really dark though. The lights are on. Turns out there are 2 windows. One in the main room and one in the bathroom. They both lead out to a "chute" of sorts. So, you're just looking at the inside of a chimney or something. 

I'm still furious about the vaccine... Need to settle down... Think. What are my next moves. 

Lost my flight to Bacolod. Will I be able to get a refund?

Lost the lounge I paid for to chill at Manila airport while waiting 8 hours for next flight. Will I get a refund for that?

I'm stull unsure at this point when they'll give me the test and when I'll get the results so, not sure what time / day I should reschedule my Bacolod ticket. 

I decide to unpack and "let loose" a bit before I do anything too rash. 

Pretty much spent the next 2 days trying anything I could to get out of quarantine sooner. I asked the hotel guy... What's to stop me from just leaving. 

Him: Nothing

Him: I do have to report it to the red cross who then dispatches the borough of quarantine. From there, it's up to their deaccession what they do. They can bring you back here, let you quarantine here if you can convince them you're not going to leave again, they can put you in a cell to wait out the rest of the time, or they can put you on a flight back to USA (at your cost). If, somehow, you manage to get far enough that they don't catch you, you'll be blacklisted on all modes of travel including taxi services. So, I won't stop you if you'd like to go. You're free to go. 

Thanks bud. 

Can't get a hold of anyone at red cross or borough of quarantine to find out what the deal is and what the next steps are.

Finally yesterday I get an email from red cross, please fill out this spreadsheet with your information so that we can schedule your swab test. Also, send us all your vaccine documents, etc... 

I look at the spreadsheet, it's basically asking me for all the info they already have. ok. Fine, I'll fill it out. I attach it along with the other documentation and ask what happened. Why am I being quarantined even though I'm vaccinated. 

I get an email back confirming that they got my info and an explanation of why I'm under quarantine:

1. The vaccine needs to be your system for 14 days before arrival (never saw that on ANY of the websites, etc... but, ok). I took mine 9 days before. 
2. The RT-PCR needs to be done 24 hours before your flight. Mine was 48 (that's what the websites and airlines said)
3. Guidelines change all the time and it happens to be that the guidelines changed that every foreign national needs to be quarantined (sure didn't seem at the airport that a lot of other people were getting quarantined)

They are coming sometime tomorrow (today) to do the swab. They can't tell me when. Then I still have to wait here until I get the results which can be between 24-48 hours. 

My sleep schedule has been really off as I've got several things that need to be taken care of in US time... So, it's about 4a now on the 7th, I have another few hours before I call the kids. Then, call with my men's team, then, depending on how tired I am, either sleep or continue working on the things that I've been working on... I'll post about that another time...