Hello, I'm Simon Calder and you are very welcome. Thank you for joining me for today's travel podcast. Goodness me, Thursday the 24th of March, nearly a quarter of the way through the year. And getting to the end of a week in which we have seen more competitive reopening. And that's what I really want to talk about, the fact that

places are opening up, but at very different speeds and with very different rules. So take you

back to the start of my day and Singapore. In their afternoon, our morning said, okay, we're going to get rid

of our very, quite, very complicated, vaccinated travel lane. And basically, if you're fully vaccinated

and you've had a pre-departure test, then you can come in and you don't need to take a test when you arrive and self-isolate until you've got the result in.

That seems fairly straightforward.

And it's also going to benefit Singapore because, of course, many British people will stop over there on their way to Australia, which since the start of this month has been fully reopened, and New Zealand, which opens to British tourists at the start of May.

Well, other places are opening up too. Korea has said that it is going to drop the

mandatory testing on arrival and quarantining there which is going to be an

improvement it still looks pretty complicated but there's other good news, and this is South Africa tourism, where

I am just trying to extract exactly the truth of what's happening, but South Africa tourism has

always, well, for weeks, I mean, since basically we're allowed back in by our own government.

They've said PCR tests taken within 24 hours of, forgive me, 72 hours of getting in.

Now they appear to have dropped that in favour of fully vaccinated proof.

And of course you've got to fill in the official travel health questionnaire.

Has you kind of assumed that you have to in all kinds of cases?

But not everywhere is open and it's interesting.

I didn't ask me anything this afternoon and lots and lots of it was basically along the islands of do you think x will drop y in time for easter and let's take maggie's question will morocco drop the need for pcrs for vaccination travel in time for easter i don't think so they have been incredibly strict.

Let me take you back to October last year.

Suddenly a travel ban announced because the infection rates in the UK were rising,

but just before the main half-term week,

at least for England and Wales,

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