Since 28 March, travellers returning from overseas had been ordered into a 2-week luxury hotel isolation by the Australian Government to keep the coronavirus from possibly spreading.
If you have been wondering what that would be like, Nik Loukas can give you some insight.
“It’s been fine! Honestly the whole process from when I landed to when I got to the hotel, I thought I was going to be treated a lot worse. I thought I was going to be treated like a criminal because that’s what I had read,” he told Neos Kosmos.
Although based in Switzerland, border closures meant that Mr Loukas was unable to return as an Australian national.
So after staying in Athens for work and moving onto Corfu to be closer to family, he eventually found himself having to return to Australia to keep safe.
“It was a nightmare to book tickets. I had looked at booking while I was still in Athens and they were about the equivalent of $600 one way. Of course as each airline started grounding flights it became more and more expensive I ended up paying about two grand,” says Mr Loukas.
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Mr Loukas runs the InflightFeed Instagram and blog, sharing in-flight catering information and reviews from over 150 international airlines.
With over 15 years of experience in the travel industry, Mr Loukas knows a thing or two about hotels and flying 40,000 feet through the air.
This time around it would be different.
“I love travel but I thought ‘oh my God, how is this going to be?’ I had to make sure I had enough masks to last me each 12 hour period… Once you get past the quietness and the scariness of the airports, it was actually quite pleasant because I had a whole cabin to myself at one point,” he said laughing.
Mr Loukas was only 1 of 5 people on a flight from Corfu to Athens, 1 of 10 from Athens to Doha and 1 of 14 from Doha to Melbourne.
“What I found on this trip overall was people really stuck to themselves. You know normally when you travel someone will say to you ‘where are you going?’ or ‘where have you been?’ and it wasn’t like that, it was really quite sombre.”
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Despite being stuck indoors at Melbourne’s Crown Promenade hotel for almost a week now, Mr Loukas has stayed fairly positive acknowledging that he does not want to make an already stressful situation more difficult for himself or staff.
“If I step out in the morning to get my delivery of food and there’s a security person there I will always say good morning. If I put myself in their shoes, I think, ‘well they’re sitting there with a facemask potentially risking their job, they might get COVID’ because they’re surrounded by overseas travellers, so they’re probably under a lot of stress as well.”
Keeping spirits high, Mr Loukas continues sharing his ‘quarantine meals’ with over 30 thousand followers on Instagram.
“My favourite meal so far was the first night; they had a really nice butter chicken. The main meals are good quality meals and the variety is really good too.”
Sometimes however, he feels like he is being fed by an overenthusiastic yiayia.
“If you see the breakfast, normally it’s three pastries, chocolate milk, an orange juice, a piece of fruit, two eggs, a muesli bar, a yogurt. It’s lot of food! And sitting around and not doing much and eating like this everyday… It’s nice to have the options in there, but it’s a lot of food… But I’m trying not to be too wasteful. I’m conscious that there are other people in the world living through a much harder quarantine than us and we’re really, really lucky.”
Mr Loukas has another week of his quarantine detention left and looks forward to being able to see his family as he attempts to wrap his head around Australia’s restrictions.