Stranded in Penang- Part 14

Eventually Emily's vomiting ceased, although my prayer petitions, requests to friends and family to pray and anxious wakefulness didn't. I needed just to watch her sleep. Upon awaking at 4.30 am, she vomited again, but quite sure she wasn't feverish, we donned our masks and decided to pursue our journey, having great concerns about what lay ahead in terms of waiting times, passenger health screens, etc.

Checking in our baggage and boarding was all quite smooth. Emily neatly vomited her way through passport control but he waved us through without raising an eyebrow. She continued to pick up through the flight and at changeover in Bangkok she was much better. We were temperature- checked at least twice in Bangkok and all received the green sticker of approval!

After a smooth flight with Thai Airways, we made the dreaded landing in Pudong, Shanghai. We were all told to remain seated, much to the annoyance of many passengers. Gideon and Emily found it to be a challenge to keep still from then on and the men behind them made their sentiments/reaction to this quite clear, by shouting angrily in Mandarin several times. We were all so desperate to stretch our legs. A few people in hazmat suits eventually boarded. I thought they would check all of our temperatures but instead they ushered a few passengers away, including the men who had shouted at the kids earlier. Only after about an hour, we were let off, and guided to a queue, having previously filled out a health declaration form. We were promptly collected by our driver and taken the monotonous freeway 2.5 hour journey back to Suzhou.

At our compound gate, there were lots of tents and forms and staff in personal, protective garments. They came to put an electronic seal on our door so that they could watch our every move should we attempt to leave the apartment. It was not compulsory from the Chinese government, (because we had travelled from Malaysia, not a high risk country), but the compound committee said they would withhold the letter permitting Mike to reenter his work if we did not accept the seal, so we seemingly had no choice but to agree to a 14 day complete confinement. Although not particularly happy to be back in Suzhou, my head hit the pillow full of gratitude to God that Emily had made such a great recovery and that our journey had been so much easier than we had thought it would be.