We are to stay in our rooms and not come out until morning. We are entitled to 10 total meals – 2 per person which we can order anytime and they will be left outside our rooms. When done, we put the empty trays back on the luggage racks they place outside the door to be taken away be the cleaning staff later. Despite this being a very comfortable transit hotel, there's an element that feels half like a prison.
Checking in certainly didn't help. While the desk staff couldn't have been nicer, the fact that they were dressed in full PPE as if they were Emergency Room nurses tending to a freshly arrived group of lepers didn't have that service oriented feeling of the Novotel. Somehow. neither did having to sign several waivers and offer our information for contact tracing documents (even thought they had all our information in our reservation). Moreover, our choice of six set meal options was in one way nice, but in another added to the institution feel. But this is Singapore in the time of COVID and we are among the lucky. Because we are arriving from Thailand which has low case counts and strong masking and hand sanitizing requirements, we are allowed free run of the airport – albeit wearing purple wrist bands to designate that we are transit passengers with full privileges. Transit passengers arriving from the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark and a number of other particularly omicron hit countries have to stay in a restricted area. At least we can freely go to Starbucks.
Coming to Singapore, even if only in the Changi Airport, feels like coming home. Two years living here and countless flights from here to other places including frequently flights back and forth to Bali makes Singapore and Changi very comfortable. Only it feels like no one's home. The airport has maybe 25% of its usual passenger traffic – and that feels like a generous estimate. The same can be said of Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport which had maybe five flights leaving in our time slot across the entire International segment of the airport. In fact, we pretty much walked right through it with no lines at immigration, security, entry checkpoints or anywhere else. The airport drive usually heaving with taxis, cars, shuttle vans and other manners of transport was so empty our driver pulled us right up to the door without any effort. Our first times in Thailand, Emily and I both experienced a Bangkok airport that was teeming with life, sounds and smells. Bailey experienced a sterilized express lane.
While the first short leg of the long road home was smooth as silk (to borrow my beloved Thai Airways' slogan), anyone used to travel in Asia would find the experience almost jarring. Until you think about it. The collectivist heart of most Asian cultures usually means less personal space than Americans and Europeans are used to, not caring about lanes and order when navigating public spaces and even habits we sometimes consider unsanitary like using sticking your chopsticks in a family plate of food or even serving others with your already used chopsticks – among other things.
But COVID has used those collectivist values to a very different end. If the thing to do is to wear masks, wash hands, sanitize and avoid unnecessary travel – then from orderly Singapore to disorderly Thailand to sometimes chaotic Vietnam – it shall be done. Like America's "War Effort" during each World war, Thais, Singaporeans, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Japanese and possibly even Lao (although I'd really need to see it before testifying) consider it their duty to be part of the solution and minimize the impact of COVID on their society.
Of course there are multiple ways to define impact and this is what highly individualistic American society debates. What matters – minimizing who falls ill, who dies, toll on the healthcare system, long-term health issues, psychological trauma, educational deficiencies, economic losses, foreclosed homes, hungry families? I don't believe there are any cut and dry answers and there are no shortage of important competing priorities.
But whatever the right call - or maybe the best call being made today – is, for better or worse, Americans will question their government's stance and some portion of society will protest, drag their heels, refuse or at minimum vote differently in the next election. And we all will be Monday morning quarterbacks.
Bailey pointed out yesterday that in Thailand, "seems more like a community, kind of – more in agreement."
That's it right there. Whether or not checking body temperatures at the door to every public space and business actually has efficacy isn't important. It's what people are told they need to do – and so they do it. From a Western perspective, this looks a little like blind obedience – people are sheep. But from their perspective we look a lot like crazy people who can't get it together despite our vast resources and who are suffering the consequences.
Whose right? Both. Neither. Jinx.
My first generation American grandparents and my immigrant great-grandparents told me that America is the greatest country in the world. A big part of this greatness was our freedom – which could be construed as our ability to be Jews, or people with inalienable rights, or to pursue being who we are as individuals. At the time, I didn't ask what exactly they meant by it – but from what I absorbed it was some amount of all of these things. Given that my family escaped the authoritarian tyranny and anti-semitism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries – before things even hit their worst – it makes sense that the freedom of an individualistic society was like escaping from a suffocating room into fresh, open air.
But my time in Asia gave me another perspective that helped me understand why not every society is like ours. Freedom is precarious and often chaotic. It lacks stability. Governments change every few years. People don't agree easily. Courts take time to affect critical issues. Environmental issues are hard to address. Many are the tragedies of the commons. Anyone CAN succeed, but those who don't face some harsh realities.
The Paternalism endemic to more collectivist societies brings stability. In a time of emergency and uncertainty, people feel less turbulence. There is a sense that someone is handling the issues of the day and will figure out a way to navigate everyone through them. If nothing else, everyone has each other – and we can count on one another to be there for us in some basic and reliable ways. Maybe we can't fully be ourselves and maybe justice is not available to all. We are not necessarily all created equal or holders of inalienable rights. But there is a social contract that ensures we are not forgotten and that someone is responsible for us in some way.
I understand this perspective. This is the feeling we remember about our parents taking care of us – someone who worries when we're sick and who will see us through the crowd at Disneyland or after a baseball game. We don't have to figure out everything because someone else will carry the weight and temper it to make our burdens right-sized for us. And of course the need for stability is exactly why we have the Senate with its longer terms of office and in turn give it higher levels of responsibility. In some ways, the Senate is the seat of continuity of government.
Of course, children also want independence – to do things themselves, to be the one to decide, to have their turn. What kid doesn't wish they were an adult so they could have the power and agency – not necessarily comprehending the tremendous responsibility and weight that accompanies these things.
The East and West are in a sense the Yin and Yang of these two outlooks that somehow form a whole when you zoom out enough. Thailand and Singapore have had much lower death tolls even by percentage than the United States or the United Kingdom. Yet some of their restrictions may serve no purpose at all – such as riding a mask while riding a motorcycle or scanning body temperatures at every doorway. After all, the most insidious part of the SARS-CoV-2 virus is that it has enlisted hordes of asymptomatic people to help it spread. Plenty of people with COVID-19 do not have fevers.
Luckily for us, none of the five of us have fevers and we all got clean COVID tests, allowing us to fly home. As we passed through the Bangkok airport, we found a branch of a popular drug store chain with a nice supply of home COVID tests and KN-95 masks. We did a little stocking up…
Now we rest up, exit our penitentiary-esque hotel and take the long flight home. Singapore to Los Angeles with a stop and no change of planes in Tokyo. Seven hours to Tokyo, 1:25 on the ground, then 10 hours to Los Angeles. Never fun. But our one ray of sunshine is that we were upgraded to Premium Economy and may have a little more comfort. The days of Ko Samet sand, jumping off the boat, Thai iced teas, elephant swimming and penthouse living are over. But we at least get all the movies we want on the way home.
