Face masks at Singapore's Changi airport

I arrived into Singapore a week or so ago en route to a whl.travel regional conference in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Accompanying the immigration card on arrival was a health check card asking whether I was experiencing any symptoms of the H1N1 Flu virus.  Many of the Asian population at Changi airport were wearing face masks which left me feeling somewhat exposed, to what exactly I’m not quite sure.  Arrival into Malaysia was a similar experience and they even had heat sensitive cameras focused on arrivals to pick out any abnormally high temperatures.  Vietnam issued a health check card on arrival.  Air Asia staff have been wearing face masks as they move around the airports.  It really seems like there is something terrible out there.

Did I have Swine flu?

After a week in Vietnam I noticed that I had a sore throat, then my nose started to run, then I started to have a bit of a headache and felt low on energy.  It seems far too coincidental that this was anything other than the much publicised H1N1 (Swine) Flu, but may have been just be a heavy cold.  I felt as though I was starting to recover after about 4 days but still had a bit of congestion a week later.  My approach was to rest, drink huge amounts of water, eat lots of Pho – the famous Vietnamese noodle soup – and a few fresh coconuts.  I was stuck in my room for much of my final days in Vietnam, fortunately there was WiFi.  In terms of feeling ill i’ve felt far worse before,  so if this was indeed the H1N1 Flu I’m beginning to wonder what all the fuss is about.  Sicknesses are always being passed around and in many cases it’s better just to catch it and get it out the way, so why the big scare around this Flu?  I understand that if you’re old or very young you could do without catching it but as someone who might have had it (or might not) I think it’s a lot of fuss about nothing.  H1N1 Flu certainly isn’t the only thing out there and we don’t usually wear face masks or stop travelling for fear of catching something.

Have you had the dreaded Flu?