Hong Kong’s “3+4” (three days in hotel isolation and four at home under medical supervision) requirement, which has been cast aside for “0+3”, was far better than the 21 days of self-funded quarantine seen during the darkest days of the pandemic, but still added a niggling, expensive, off-putting complication to arrival in, or return to, the city.

But no more. Arriving passengers must still get tested at the airport, but, assuming they’re negative, they can then go free with no more of a millstone round their neck than a yellow code, which means no dining at restaurants for three days, and a commitment to take several more tests. Pah, easy!

The fear among those wishing to leave the city for a holiday or a long-overdue family duty tour now is that plane ticket prices are going to skyrocket and seats will be harder to come by than quarantine hotel rooms once were.

Such was the demand for outbound travel as soon as the announcement was made that Cathay Pacific had to install a virtual waiting room for online customers. We’re guessing they’ll be bringing back some of those airliners mothballed in Alice Springs – or wherever – as soon as possible.

In a statement put out by Cathay wel­coming the announcement, the airline said it “intended to add more than 200 pairs of passenger flights in October to both regional and long-haul destinations.

“In view of Japan’s relaxation of travel restrictions for inbound visitors, Cathay Pacific will resume daily flights to Tokyo (Haneda) from 1 November and four-times-weekly flights to Sapporo from 1 December. We will also increase flight frequencies to Tokyo (Narita) to 43 pairs and Osaka to 50 pairs in October.”

Which brings us to Japan, and its own news.

“From 11 October, Japan will relax border control measures to be on par with the [United States], as well as resume visa-free travel and individual travel,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced last week. He namechecked the US because he happened to be in the country at the time.

Since June, Japan has allowed tourists to visit in groups accompanied by guides, a requirement that was further relaxed to include self-guided package tours.

In October, individual travel and visa-free entry will return. And there are far worse places for a first holiday in more than two years than Japan. Or indeed Taiwan.

Taipei will do away with its own 3+4 strategy on October 13, when it fully reopens the island’s borders, the government said last week.

The authorities will eliminate quarantine but ask arrivals to self-monitor for seven days. Visa-free travel for visitors from certain countries will resume from September 29 and the ban on tour groups will be lifted in October.

Over in Macau, Chief Executive Ho Iat-seng announced last week that it aims to open to mainland Chinese tour groups in November, drawing an almost audible sigh of relief from the city’s casino industry.

Understandably lost in the euphoria greeting developments in Hong Kong and Japan, in particular, was the news that the Kingdom of Bhutan reopened its borders to international guests on September 23. Furthermore, the tiny Himalayan country has beefed up its brand.

Bhutan saw the Covid-19 shutdown as an opportunity to upgrade its tourism infrastructure, retool its workforce and reset its “high value, low volume” approach to hospitality. If it cared about its people and the environment before, it now cares even more about its people and the environment.

To help fund the doubling down on these commitments, the country, one of only a handful that can claim carbon-negativity, has raised its Sustainable Development Fee, which every visitor must pay, from US$65 per night to US$200.

This extra income “will fund national investment in programmes that preserve Bhutan’s cultural traditions, as well as sustainability projects, infrastructure upgrades and opportunities for youth – as well as providing free healthcare and education for all,” according to a press release.

“Some of the Sustainable Development Fee funds go towards offsetting the carbon footprint of visitors by planting trees, upskilling workers in the tourism sector, cleaning and maintaining trails, reducing the country’s reliance on fossil fuels and electrifying Bhutan’s transportation sector.”

The day before Bhutan reopened, Prime Minister Lotay Tshering unveiled the new branding in the capital city, Thimphu, as well as a new (but not especially imaginative) national tagline, “Believe”, which “aims to encapsulate the optimism and renewed ambition of the kingdom as it opens its doors to guests once again”.

Perhaps we can all start to “believe”; believe that the worst of the Covid-19 disruption is behind us and that we can begin to both enjoy the world again and seriously get to grips with the existential problem of climate breakdown.

What is happening on Hanoi’s ‘train street’?

An intriguing battle of wills – complete with a mysterious accident victim – is unfolding in Vietnam’s capital Hanoi.

“Train street” began wooing visitors in 2017, when social media pictures of cafes just metres from locomotives passing through a narrow opening between colonial-era buildings began to go viral.

Following the Covid-19 pause, interest in the urban curiosity has returned along with the international tourists, but earlier this month, police set up barricades to keep people away from the tracks and ordered 30 cafes that were encroaching on the line to close, for safety reasons.

Then came the apparent striking by a train of a South Korean visitor who had sneaked through a barricade to take photos. Remarkably, the unnamed tourist walked away almost unharmed.

Local commentator Michael Tatarski has cast doubts on the incident, for a variety of reasons outlined in his Asia Travel Re:Set newsletter, which is published on Substack. He also reports that cafe owners and other vendors on “train street” have asked the authorities to reconsider denying access to tourists.