The Last Trip, For A Little While

I don't exactly remember what woke me up that night but I remember I wasn't surprised in the least, maybe it was just being a light sleeper in a new location that I only had a couple of days to get accustomed to.

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I called out to my sister on the other bed next to me and told her the news. She got up pretty much immediately after that, looking at me with the same anxiety-ridden eyes she had on the day we booked our trip, just a day right before our prime minister announced that all Singaporeans should defer from non-essential travelling.

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I had my mind set on the opportunity, I told myself that this was the year I would challenge myself to do things I never dared to do. What more could a student dream than incredibly cheap plane tickets during their semester break?

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We arrived in Taipei on the 16th of March feeling helplessly out of place but we quickly got used emptiness of tourist places and sideway glances that people, usually in Ximending where our AirBnB was, had when they realised we weren't local.

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The night markets were especially interesting, almost even a little sad. We made talk with most of the stall owners there and they were more friendly than expected. Every stall was the same old story of how coronavirus really made their life difficult, they depended on people like us after all. While we enjoyed not having to queue at all, we did reflect on how serious the virus was.

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Only on day five out of eight was when it really sank in. That we were thousands of kilometres away from our family, worried sick for our wellbeing. I should remind you that this was when people were not used to the idea of a pandemic, when people hoarded supermarkets right before a minister's scheduled announcement. Headlines of countries starting to close had started to appear left and right, it started with Malaysia.

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The announcement that Taiwan would be closing its borders came out that day too but it would only take effect about a couple days after we would leave. We were relieved, until I got a text from Scoot saying that our flight back to Singapore got cancelled at 3am in the morning.

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Honestly, we didn't have to call our mom, I was already in the checkout section for another plane departing to Singapore on the day after when she picked up. It was settled then, we were going to make the best out of the last day in Taipei.

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It wasn't that spectacular though, we spent the earlier part of the morning hiking the Elephant Trail but I very much enjoyed strolling down Jiufen and biking through Shifen.

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We boarded the barely empty midnight plane and were on a four hour flight back home. My sister slept through much of it, we had enough space to lie down on the entire aisle of seats. I was actually walking back and forth around the plane, find a good spot to stargaze through the night, something we originally intended to do.

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I think it was then that the ramifications settled uncomfortably in. We were reckless for traveling? What if we had the virus? What if we give it to our grandparents?

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We were greeted with a 14 day stay-home notice when we got back, we knew what we signed up for after all. Looking back, it was more of a precursor to life during circuit breaker. I already had cabin fever seven days in and when it was announced that school would be online, I was almost glad.

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In even more hindsight, we were lucky and we got away with it. So many things could've gone wrong and it would've been deservedly so if it did.