Surviving a 21-Day Quarantine in Hong Kong (while pregnant, with a toddler)

When my husband Mark and I first decided to go back to Hong Kong (where all my family lives) to have our baby, the policy at the time was that you had to quarantine at a hotel for 14 days. We wondered how we could possibly survive such a long time in a small confined space with our 2-year old daughter, while I would be 7 months pregnant… We complained and dreaded those 2 weeks every time the upcoming trip was brought up.

Then 2 months before we were due to leave, Hong Kong increased the length of their quarantine period to 21 days, and we died a little inside. For weeks we hoped and hoped that they would bring it back down to 14-days — because that would be oh so easy. I re-learned the meaning of everything being relative.

Fast forward a few months, we’re now finally out in the wild of Hong Kong, and since we’ve come out alive on the other side of the experience, I wanted to jot down a few thoughts for anyone else (esp. families with little children) about to take on the dreaded Hong Kong quarantine.

The Logistics

There was so much to figure out around our trip. Which flight should we take (though this was soon decided for us as the number of direct flights to Hong Kong fell to just a few a week by the time we left)? Where should we get tested? Which hotel should we stay at? What do we need to bring?

Tips

To figure out the details and HK-specific requirements around your trip, do join the HK Quarantine Support Group on Facebook — the information from the group was SO helpful for us in planning our trip, from testing details, setting expectations for your experience at the airport, hotel reviews… etc.
If you’re traveling with a toddler (or multiples), I STRONGLY recommend booking connecting rooms at your hotel. Not all hotels have this option, but it was so worth it for us. Every night, after our little one went to bed, it was immensely helpful to be able to retreat to our own room and relax without having to be careful not to wake our child.
Mentally prepare yourself for your transit to be more a marathon than a race. We had been prepared for a wait at the NY airport and a long flight (16 hours from New York to Hong Kong), but we hadn’t been prepared for just how exhausting it would be navigating the Hong Kong airport after you arrive. It’s not just that you have to wait 4-6 hours for a negative Covid test, it’s that you have to take multiple shuttle buses to get from one terminal to another where different checkpoints are stationed, and would have to have different paperwork ready for something like 10 checkpoints along the way.

The Hotel Stay

We ended up staying at the Nina Hotel (previously L’Hotel; we were there for so long they actually rebranded in the middle of our stay) in Aberdeen. I’ve heard good things about other hotels as well, so I can’t say this is the definite choice for families, but for your information, here are the pros and cons of our chosen hotel.

Pros:

The service is great. The staff are extremely responsive and really do try and meet your needs where possible. Whenever my family dropped off a package for us, the staff would bring it up immediately so we’d receive it within minutes of their dropoff.
The sense of community there is incredibly encouraging. There is a Whatsapp group run by several quarantine veterans for anyone staying at the hotel, and they host weekly happy hours, game nights, and more. We received multiple packages from other quarantine-rs while we there (with snacks and drinks), even one from someone who had already finished her quarantine but wanted to come back and share some love.
The view is lovely. We got rooms with mountain-view, and that really helped.

Cons:

Our rooms were a little dirty. Within minutes of our arrival, I couldn’t take how dirty the floors were and requested supplies to do a round of cleaning on my own. I’m not sure if this is a consistent issue for their rooms, but it was definitely noticeable in ours. I cleaned the space almost every day and still felt like it was always just a bit grimy.

General tips:

Manage your expectation for staying at a designated Covid quarantine hotel. Because of tight government regulations, there are many rules for the hotels on the quarantine list — and the net effect of those rules mean you are treated like a scary, untouchable alien. For example:
- Everything was wrapped in cling wrap when we arrived, including our pillows, phone, etc.
- All your meals are delivered in disposable containers.
- You have to carry all your luggage to your room on your own with no assistance.
- You don’t see a soul during your stay. It almost felt like they would sprint back down the hallway the second they dropped off a delivery for us.
(I can’t be sure this is true for all the hotels, but from what I hear they seem like common policies.)
Re-arrange the furniture to create more space! Immediately after moving in, we pushed all the beds to one side, so there would be a lot more open spaces in our rooms. This really helps take down the feeling of claustrophobia a notch.
Figure out a way to exercise every day. Mark bought a stationery bike and some weights from Decathlon (because buying one ended up being cheaper than renting one from the hotel — and he was able to resell it to another quarantine-r when we were leaving), and had a little workout session every day.
Try to stagger when you and your partner hit a mental wall during your stay. Obviously, your emotional health is hard to predict, but it was very helpful that Mark and I had our mini breakdowns (“AHHHH I CAN’T DO THIS”) on different days. (FYI I had about 3-4 really bad days, Mark just had one.)
Try to come up with ideas to differentiate between your weekdays and weekends. We ordered nicer takeout for Saturday lunch, and tried to do a movie morning on Sundays (though for better or worse, our two-year-old didn’t really stay interested in anything on a screen for more than 45 minutes).

Toddler tips:

As mentioned, my biggest recommendation if your budget allows, is to book connecting rooms. For us, it wasn’t just that our daughter could sleep in a separate room, we also re-arranged the rooms so that one would be more of the activity room, and the other would be more of the down-time + dining room.
Long, long, long bubble baths. Every day at around 4/5pm, when our minds would be numbest and we’d be the most tired, we’d put our little one in a super frothy bubble bath with a few toys. We managed to make these baths last for 45-60 minutes on most days, which would bring us close to dinner time. This was by far the easiest part of our days.
Have a toy stash and try to bring out a new toy every day for something new. My family in Hong Kong was incredible helpful in this way, and brought us a series of toys for our daughter (as well as many yummy treats). We would always put away the toys when they arrived and only bring out one new one a day, so it was something to look forward to every morning.
Have one energy-expending activity for each morning and afternoon. Here’s what we alternated between:
- Balloon parties (blow up balloons and turn up the music)
- This exercise video
- Chasing each other around the two rooms
- Good old jumping on the bed over… and over… and over…

Pregnancy tips:

Move around as much as you can. I was miserable for the first few days at the hotel, and mostly lay in bed being furious at the HK government for having such extreme measures. BUT I must say, even though I never actually felt like it, each time I forced myself to move around (walking, exercise videos on YouTube), I really could tell that it lifted my spirits.
Order yourself a little treat as often as needed. I love congee and Cantonese-style toasts (多士), so almost every other day, I would order one or the other to give myself something to look forward to. :)

The Personal Project

My final recommendation for surviving quarantine, is to have some kind of personal project to give yourself something to focus on other than planning a covert escape out the bolted windows.

As a singer-songwriter, I had finished recording an album in January, and decided to release my first single the day after our quarantine ended. This gave me something to be excited about and look forward to, so that each night after my daughter went to sleep, I could brainstorm and come up with things to do around the release. I finished editing my music video, created a series of artwork, reached out to blogs… It was immensely helpful for me to have something I looked forward to doing every day.

That song I had recorded was actually called Dream Again: written around becoming a mother, getting through the fog of the first year of motherhood — and ended up feeling uncannily relevant to Mark and I getting through the haze of our year-long NYC-Covid life and finally getting to the other side where we could regain a sense of “normal” again, to have more freedom again, to dream again. :)

**You can hear the song wherever you listen to music!**

*Featured on over 20 curated playlists (including one by Spotify).*

Listen Now

The Summary

I won’t lie. Quarantine was really, really hard. Being 7-months pregnant in a small space without any fresh air meant that I was uncomfortable most the time. There were definitely moments where I wondered if we made a mistake in coming back. But thanks to my rock of a husband who really was the one who did most the planning and childcare (well I guess I provided 24-7 childcare to the one in my belly) and my sweet, sweet family who made endless deliveries to help us through, we came out of it with our sanity mostly intact.

If you have any other questions about traveling to Hong Kong, getting through quarantine, please feel free to leave a comment below!