Travelling on the mainland? Don't forget your thermometer

Oh, how I long for the days when China tried to pretend Sars did not exist. Life was so much easier when the virus was raging on the mainland but nobody wanted to talk about it. Catching a flight and checking into a hotel was as simple as showing up with enough money to get to where you wanted to go.

Friends, those halcyon days of travel in China are over.

It is a cruel irony, now Sars has all but vanished, that the nation's transportation system is mired in a sea of medics with thermometers.

On a recent eight-day trip to the mainland, I had my temperature taken no less than 25 times. It took five checks just to get out of Hong Kong and on to a plane in Shenzhen. I filled out Sars declaration forms (I promise I still do not have Sars, I still don't know anybody who has Sars and so on) so many times I had the questions memorised.

I was scanned, poked, prodded and eyed up by suspicious nurses at every turn. I was hit in the forehead with infra-red beams, explored from head to toe by thermal scanners and had my ears poked with electronic temperature-taking gizmos that I had never envisioned in my wildest science fiction fantasies.

Screening takes place when you leave Hong Kong and when you enter the mainland. You are screened entering the airport. You are screened on the plane. You are screened when you get off the plane. You are screened going into your hotel.