Actually I didn’t need this, because I could get a ‘holiday’ travel permit instead, where I had to detail my travel dates, airline, ticket number, hotel reservation number. It wouldn’t have surprised me if they wanted my inside leg measurement! But I did get a code sent to my phone and double checked with the police that all was in order.
So I was ready to travel Or was I? It transpired that Turkish Airlines did not apply my HES code, so another hour’s conversation put that right. Anyway, the day of travel I had to go to the shuttle location. They had to take my temperature and issue (yet) another piece of paper to say that I was fit to travel. Was that it? No. It was 1000 am and the temperature outside was already 34 degrees centigrade. They took my temperature – twice – and it showed 32 degrees Fahrenheit. Apparently I had hypothermia and was medically about to die.
And then I politely pointed to the air conditioning unit, under which we were standing, and suggested that this might be impacting the reading. Yup. After a few minutes, all was good and we were on our way.
When we got to Dalaman Airport two hours later, there was a short line of police checking all papers of cars and individuals entering the airport. I handed mine over and seemed to wait an inordinate time to be given the OK. A little stress here, but all OK.
Then, on entering the airport, another temperature check. I was actually very impressed by the professionalism of the staff, all of whom were properly PPE’d and where everything was fully sanitised. They were all putting on a brave face. Not so good was the clear discomfort of the passengers, most of whom were not masking their mask experience. In domestic departures no one was anywhere near the F & B offering and all were sitting quietly. If anyone coughed, everyone turned around to look at the ‘guilty’ party as if they had the plague. Paranoia in extremis.
