Plane tickets are booked, next we need the Covid Tests.

We need negative PCR Covid Tests in order to get on a plane departing for Canada. In theory this is easy in Singapore; in practice it's a little bit complicated.

There are tons of clinics offering the PCR tests. You can pick your test time online or you can call in. Most clinics are open 9 am - 6 pm. One of the hospitals is open till 9. The airport clinic runs 24 hours, but I really don't want to take the kids in the middle of the night. The clinics are all linked to the Government and provide electronic documentation of your test via your government ID. You just need to receive the results electronically before checking in for your flight. Depending on which company you go with you get your test results within 24 (really we are told it's 30 hrs) or 36 hours.

One of our first questions was how many tests do we need? The online booking system allowed 4 people and we still weren't sure if MsI needed a Covid Test. She doesn't need one to enter Singapore (under age 7 are exempt) and to enter Canada under 5 is exempt so we figured she shouldn't have any problems. But we did want to check what Japan's rules were. Eventually we found a line saying that no documentation is required to transit through Japan. It was hard to find. The Japan government website is in Japanese, so we were relying on translations, and lots of the pages on the website are in Japanese only.  Hope that's good enough. We also tried using the Expedia entry restrictions app tied to our flights, but it only told us about the final destination, and I already found Canada's official government website quite clear.

In order to board our connecting flight in Japan, our Covid test must have been taken no more than 72 hours before departure from Japan. We needed a spreadsheet to figure out what our ideal testing time window is. We fly Sunday morning. Ideally, we should get the test as late on Friday as possible.

Only problem, our shipping container was being loaded by us on Friday. It was the only day we could book when we scheduled it. The shipping company wouldn't confirm the loading time until the day before. We could risk it and go get 24 hour Covid test out at the airport, but that seemed pretty flaky. We called the shipping company again and asked what time the drivers work: 9 am - 6 pm. We were thinking about getting an evening slot at the hospital, but thankfully asked again if any shipping containers had opened up on an earlier date. Success! They had! Our shipping date is now earlier in the week which makes life so much more manageable.

Our Covid tests are booked now. I'm not looking forward to telling MsE that she gets to get 3 of these tests: One in Singapore and two in Canada. MsC is fine with the idea.