We just returned from our Iceland trip a little less than two weeks ago, and are now trying to change gears and get ready for this China Trip. We have never taken two major trips this close together, so it is a new experience for us.
It has not been as easy to transition as we had hoped, somehow Stephanie tested positive for COVID on the Friday after we returned from Iceland on Sunday, August 25. We wore masks on the flights, so we do not know if it was something she picked up before we left Iceland or during our flights home. She had some very minor cold symptoms on the flights home and thought she was getting better when the positive test result happened during routine testing at her workplace, a skilled nursing facility.
She is better now, and never had any severe symptoms, but had to stay out of work on sick leave for several days, just returning to work yesterday.
We were careful at home to separate at night and do some masking during the initial couple of days after she tested positive. I appear to have gotten through it all without catching it from her, at least not yet. It was a really strange period of time, she only tested positive on rapid tests for two days, and then was always negative on the other rapid tests she continued to take.
In the meantime, as we had already planned, I went ahead and got the new, recently released 2025 COVID vaccine late this week. We were both planning to go for the shots around September 5 so we would have the suggested minimum 14-day period for the vaccine to become effective before we leave for China on September 19. Now, Stephanie does not have to get the vaccine since she tested positive and should have sufficient immunity for the time we are on this trip.
This also solves our Paxlovid issue, we were going to have to make a decision on getting Stephanie’s Paxlovid script filled to take with us, just in case. However, it was going to cost us $350 for her script on her insurance, and we had not yet made the decision to get it filled. Mine was only $25 because I had met my insurance deductible for this year, so we had already gotten it to take with us to Iceland. Now, we should not need another dosage for Stephanie, we will rely on her immunity.
Speaking of medicines, we also have a script from our Primary Care Doctor for altitude sickness prevention for the time we are in Lhasa, Tibet. It is over 12,000 feet in elevation there, so we will be taking something to help with that, I will add the name of the drug later, I have to find it.
We are also considering taking antibiotics with us for the treatment of Travelers Dihareha. I already had a script for Azithromycin from a previous bout with what we thought was strep throat a few months ago. I was prescribed an Azithromycin Zpack for treatment, with one additional refill, so I got that refilled this week to take on the trip. We will work on using our Primary Care doctor to get something for Stephanie. I was able to find information on the CDC website and Azithromycin is the number one antibiotic listed for the treatment of Travelers Dihareha. We just recently read and heard about the recommendation to not ever drink anything but bottled water in China, even for brushing your teeth, so getting an accidental case of Travellers Diahirra is not out of the question.
I also went to an orthopedic doctor this week after seeing my primary care physician for a referral. I had some hip pain in my right hip before we went to Iceland, and was getting some physical therapy treatment for that before we left. However, with all of the cold and rainy weather in Iceland, and all of the hiking on irregular surfaces, it caused me quite a bit of pain. An initial x-ray last week showed some minor arthritis, but the ortho-doctor diagnosed it as bursitis after doing an examination and asking me about the location of the pain. I was able to get a cortisone injection to help reduce the inflammation and pain. Hopefully, this will help for the China trip. I also have a script for meloxicam, an arthritis NSAID commonly known as Mobic, to take daily if I need it once I get to China.
It seems like this may be overkill, but it might be hard to get any scripts or doctor’s care in China, and we want to be as prepared as we can for any possible situation.
We have been spending some time trying to pick out a couple of tours for the first few days we are in Bejing on our own before we officially start the Viking Tour/Cruise. We looked at what is included with Viking and then looked at other sites to visit, one being the Summer Palace. We did find out that there are two separate restored areas of the Great Wall to visit, one is near Badaling, and the other is near Mutianyu. Viking is taking us to the more popular and crowded Badaling site, but we are also looking at a tour that takes us to what is described as the more scenic and less crowded area of the wall near Mutianyu.
We did call Viking to verify that the Beijing hotel we are scheduled to stay in had not changed. We have a reservation there for three nights prior to the start of the Viking stay and wanted to make sure it had not changed. We do not know what type of room Viking is reserving for us, we have chosen a slightly upgraded suite for our initial three nights, it was only about $70.00 more per night. We were trying to see if we could coordinate rooms with both Viking and directly with the hotel, but that seems to be an impossible task to accomplish before we arrive, so we may have to change rooms after the first three nights when we transfer over to the room Viking is providing. That may mean packing up our suitcases and storing them at the hotel so we will be able to do a tour that day and not have to waste time in the middle of the day trying to coordinate checking out and checking in to the different Viking room.
We did modify our reservation for the hotel in Bejing, we initially reserved the room through Booking.com, but later saw that we could get the room for less now, and also remembered we had a Marriott Rewards account, so we used that to rebook the room for a lower cost. There was not an easy way to get the price adjusted on Booking.com, in either event, we probably had to cancel and reserve it again no matter which booking site we used. At least now we will get Marriott points. Stephanie was worried that we might mess up the reservation, and that is a possibility, but I felt better reserving it the second time through the Ritz-Carlton Marriott website than I would have using Booking.com to cancel it first and then make another reservation immediately through them. That adds some degree of uncertainty, would the system or people get confused and we wind up without a reservation?
I noticed that we had not provided an update here on our seat selections since the last post. At that time, we were still monitoring the price of the Premium Select seats for the return flight for the Seoul to Atlanta segment. The pricing never went down during the few weeks that we were monitoring them, and the seats on the sides were starting to sell out, there were just a couple of open rows left. We did not see an advantage to paying that much to be in the section in the middle with four seats across, it was much more of an advantage to be in the two seats on the sides of the plane, separate from anyone sitting right next to us.
Since we were getting ready to go to Iceland, and would not be able to monitor the seat pricing that easily, we went ahead and purchased two seats for $999.00 per person on the return flight segment from Seoul to Atlanta. It was a significant sum of money, but we should be much more comfortable on the 15-hour flight.
In addition to the seat upgrades, we had to pay the last installment of the travel insurance we had purchased for this trip. We have been increasing the total insurance coverage as the Viking Cancellation Schedule has changed. The last payment was based on 100% coverage to be in compliance with the cancellation schedule this close to the trip, well, right before we went to Iceland.
Now, the only items remaining are to find some tours for our first days in Beijing on our own and to monitor the projected weather forecasts so we have a better understanding of the temperatures we might see during the trip, helping us to pack the correct clothing
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