Riau

Travel Bubble Indonesia – Singapore starting October 2021 is off. Why?

Travel Bubble Indonesia – Singapore starting October 2021 is off. Why?

I am someone who thinks travel bubble is the best way to test the readiness of a certain place to reopen. If it’s successful, it can be expanded to cover more places. Thus far, I think Langkawi’s travel bubble for domestic tourism seems to be working well. A good friend will be going there for a few nights starting tomorrow (8th October 2021). She and her family will stay in a 5-star luxury resort which is definitely good for Langkawi’s economy too.

Here’s that earlier article for reading on Langkawi Travel Bubble if you like to know more.

Now, we have one not-so-good news. Not directly for Malaysia but definitely slows down the ASEAN travel bubble progress. There’s one particular arrangement between Riau Islands and Singapore and it’s now cancelled.

Article in nst.com.my Governor of Indonesia’s Riau Islands Ansar Ahmad said the “travel bubble” scheme with Singapore, initially slated for October 2021, has been cancelled following a surge in Covid-19 cases in the nearby city-state.

The Antara news agency cited Ahmad as stating on Oct 6 that the Riau Islands administration is looking to attract domestic tourists to the province pending the central government’s decision to resume the travel bubble scheme between the province and Singapore in the future, Vietnam news agency (VNA) reported.

On Oct 4, the Indonesian Government declared that the country will reopen to tourists from six countries, namely the Republic of Korea, China, Japan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and New Zealand, to Bali from October 14. Do read the article in full here: Article in nst.com.my

Travel Bubble is NOT the same as inter-state travel yeah

I am not favouring that we reopen inter-state travel until we reach a 90% of actual vaccination for majority of Malaysian states. Here’s that earlier article with my views using numbers yeah. Not just simply say. Read it here.

However, I favour travel bubble yeah. The reason is because it’s a controlled one where we are tracking everyone who’s going to that place. Testing is done for everyone too. Inter-state travel means everyone can travel anywhere and no one tracks anything at all. Thus, we can suddenly have many clusters all happening at the same time yeah. If clusters are to form from travel bubbles, it can be tracked quickly and easily.

Plus travel bubble allows us to test the readiness and to apply similar SOPs to all other potential travel bubble destinations too. ASEAN needs one yeah. We are 660 million strong and definitely can support one another during this difficult period. No need to spend some other foreign currencies lah. Just spend ASEAN currencies can dee. Let’s see if ASEAN really do have that solidarity for the benefit of our economies.

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