Remember in the olden days – a little over two years ago – when travel was something you did for fun? Not now, not if you’re in Hong Kong. The airport is bleak. The duty-free shops are closed and the place looks forlorn. Not that those boarding the handful of daily flights are in any mood to splurge; most are leaving the city for good or making a dash back home for a family emergency. Emigration and family crises top the list of stressful life events – combine that with travelling in the dynamic zero-Covid era and you have a recipe for mind-blowing anxiety. Can you get a ticket? Can you afford the escalating prices? Will the flight be cancelled at the last minute? And if you plan on returning to Hong Kong, it’s a whole other headache. Anyone would think they wanted to discourage people from coming back. I have friends who left for Christmas and haven’t been able to return. Other pals are stranded in Thailand having gone for the required “washout” period, which has since been abandoned. I need to get to the UK urgently for a family matter and the flip-flopping of policies is giving me whiplash. When I message a Cathay pilot friend hoping to find out if my return flight will fly, he tells me the crew roster will be out in a few days, “If it’s listed there’s a good chance, but it’s not guaranteed.” Nothing is guaranteed. Uncertainty and anxiety are bedfellows and my trip has me suffocating under their covers. I can’t hold out for that maybe-it-will-maybe-it-won’t-fly return journey without having a quarantine hotel lined up, and I work my way through the list, my heart racing as I discover most are full for a few months ahead and the others have been turned into community isolation facilities. Trying to explain what’s going on to anyone outside the zero-Covid bubble is frustrating because there’s no rhyme or reason to it. My sister in Scotland, used to me buzzing around the world, struggles to understand the challenge. “ Hong Kong has the world’s highest death rate and you still need to quarantine on arrival?” She’s right, it doesn’t make sense and attempting to apply logic or scientific rationale is futile. What I wouldn’t give for a good old-fashioned pre-pandemic holiday to recover from planning this trip.