lost or what?

First World Problems

Melbourne to Singapore departing at midnight

Finally, after years of no travel at all due to the GLOBAL PANDEMIC, it is time to go somewhere. The first place on my list of places I like to go that opened up was South Korea, I booked almost immediately, flights were hard to find as there's only limited slots available. But... and its a big but, travelling is not as easy as it used to be.

If there were such at thing as Zero world, I would be in it, because my moaning seems petty, pettier than usual.

Here is a list of things you now need to do if you are me, to go overseas, it all costs money -
Register for a visa for visa free entry into South Korea, you read that right.
Get a COVID clearance certificate that is not recognised in Korea, probably useless.
Get a pre departure PCR test within 48 hours, this is the tricky one.
Get an on arrival test day of arrival (not taken yet, more on that below).
Get a Korean SIM card as you kind of definitely need a local number - read on to find out why.

So in my situation, I had COVID at the end of March. Some people still test positive on a PCR test for more than a month after recovering from COVID. The earliest you can do a pre departure test is 48 hours before departure. The places that do them advise it takes over 24 hours to get a result (for me it took 12). This is the first gotcha, lets say they lose or stuff up your test, they probably wont tell you until less than 24 hours until your flight, so that would just mean you can't go as there would not be enough time to do another test and get results.
Then if you test positive, you definitely cannot board your flight, regardless of recovery certificate, the Korean government is very specific about this, but read on it gets worse. The timing of this means, you will not know if you are negative, until less than 24 hours before departure, which then means you cannot cancel or change your flight should you need to, you just lose everything, which would be really cool.
Fortunately, my pre departure test has come back negative, but... read on.

The rules for entering without Quarantine have been changing weekly, so I have been following a number online discussion things filled with anti vaxxers trying to enter without being triple vaxxed (also a requirement, by far the easiest one, and the only part of this that is free, quit bitching, get vaccinated please you idiots). It seems in Korea their PCR test is more sensitive and more brain piercing than a 'western' PCR test, and quite a few people, especially those who have recovered from COVID are testing negative on departure, but positive on arrival... then what? Well it depends, the ministry of defence gets involved, your hotel can decide to throw you out, in which case an ambulance comes for you, and takes you to a military quarantine camp for 7 days. This is where a couple of people claim their recovery certificate got them out of the camp full of positive cases and into some place on their own. It is also why you want a local number, because if you don't have one, the quarantine police will call your hotel and tell them everything they need to do to barricade you in your room, which they will panic about and throw you out instead which is fair enough, it is not in their interest to be quarantine police. Where as if you have a local number, they will call you directly and tell you what your options are.
So there is a high probability I will be sent off to a military camp soon, that's where North Korea comes into the picture.

In the last few days, North Korea has gone from no cases at all during the pandemic, to 1 case, to 25,000, to 325,000 and now in the millions. They will almost certainly invade the south while I am in a military quarantine camp within artillery range from the border.

So like I said at the top, first world problems, mostly made up, generally exaggerated, that is after all, why we (me) are here.

This was a much longer intro rant than usual, but it has been years since I could get diatribical, plenty more rants to come.