Oh Macau, so close and yet so far….

As one of my friends, Heidi, is leaving China soon, I wanted to go to Macau with her and Elaine and Donnie for the weekend. They since opened that border for foreigners as it had already been opened for mainland Chinese. As a special autonomous region like Hong Kong, it is leaving the country.

Despite what would be a rushed visit, I was excited and left for the metro straight from school to get to the high speed rail station. Foreigners are again asked to show more than just their green code since a Chinese man went to Germany, had sex with a man, and brought back the first case of monkeypox. Of course, before those specifics were reported the head of the CDC gave this warning:

They eventually walked back that first statement but the damage had been done and has brought some more anti-foreign sentiment. A person on the metro who could not just stand and had to sit next to me like this:

Back to the Macau story. I was able to leave school early so Heidi and I decided to move up the train booking but we did not notice that lineup had already happened and they would not let us through (totally our fault). Because of this, we took the next train. No problem except they wanted our passport information 20 minutes after we left the station which I thought was odd and then as the train slowed they locked the doors in the front and back of our car. They announced that the code of a person in our car of the train had turned to red in transit. Heidi is from Canada and speaks Cantonese. We did find someone who spoke Mandarin and Cantonese and a couple that could speak English. That helped but the information kept changing often.

He was possibly a close contact of someone who did test positive. Maybe…. We were herded to a gated area on the street where we were tested (2 nasal/1 rapid) and our passports/ID were taken. People who lived in Zhuhai were allowed to go home but isolate and get tested. The rest of us were to be sent to a hotel. When we asked questions, we were given a variety of answers but mostly a day in a hotel. The man’s test came back negative as we waited and we were told we would have to pay for the required stay now. People were upset. When I heard that noise I was just hoping the man did not test positive. No one was happy.

But it gets better. It’s not a hotel. It is a quarantine facility with cameras and sparse interior. We had to pay 1500 rmb ($210) deposit which is roughly a 6 day quarantine. That irked me along with the smell and pond of bleach sprayed everywhere on the floor. We were told the money was a deposit. We started calling it the “Ritz”.

For the record, not as bad as Shanghai. The central room here is all the space I had in Shanghai for 2 weeks. At least there are two bedrooms and I could take the mattresses (only a couple centimeters thick for each one) and put them together. With the two comforters on top as an added mattress, it made for a more comfortable bed. And there is a balcony…

Food was meager (and we had to pay) but you were allowed to order food from outside. But setting up any Chinese app for delivery is difficult. I have resisted so far as I feel I should cook my own food and walk to eat out. Healthier that way. I contacted admin and HR about my predicament and they had an IT guy walk me through. HR had to buy me my first meal as my app wasn’t set up in time to make the delivery window. I do know enough words to type into the Chinese keyboard to search what I want. Will I use it back in Guangzhou? Probably not. But I was pretty happy to know how to type in salad (shala) and eggs and tomatoes (jidan he xihongshi). Oh… And coffee (kafei) but had to look up the translation of coffee powder.

I also contacted the consulate, just in case. I only have so much asthma medicine with me and worried about the lack of communication with us and staff here. My HR is actually wonderful at calling to find information for me.

We were told at one point just one day… Then two days… And at the end, two tests in three days. We were tested Friday night, and each of the next 3 days.

Usually I pack extra things just in case this happens but let my guard down, so I did not have coffee or some other things with me. Lesson learned….. But I am adaptable and so grateful to be able to order in. A few people on the train did not have anything with them. I gave one person a summer dress to wear and others loaned their clothes too. I am glad I had my computer to do some work and read.

We were released Monday afternoon. They refunded some of the money and then just let you find your own way out of the complex.

I had to take a personal day for missing a day of school. I was able to get my Macau hotel refunded. I decided to take two more days off as well. I have already missed my scheduled China trip with the 11th grade and will join a 2 day trip at the end of the week with the grade 12′ s. I also plan to call the government hotline as people are not to pay when they were found in this situation.