Kathy Lin was visiting from Shanghai,partly because it was easy to get a visa but also because she was concerned about risks of catching COVID-19. “I don’t dare to travel overseas yet,” she said as she and a friend took photos near the ruins,originally the 17th century Church of Mater Dei.

That worry is keeping many would-be holidaymakers at home even after China relaxed the zero-COVID restrictions that sought to isolate all cases with mass testing and onerous quarantines.

“The elderly in my family have not been infected,and I don’t want to take any risks. There’s also the possibility of being infected again by other variants,” said Zheng Xiaoli,44,an elevator company employee in Guangzhou. Africa was on her bucket list before the pandemic,but despite yearning to travel overseas,she said,“there are still uncertainties,so I will exercise restraint”.

Cong Yitao,an auditor living in Beijing,wasn’t worried about catching the virus since his whole family has already had COVID. But he was put off by testing restrictions and other limits imposed by some countries,including the US,Japan,South Korea and Australia,after China loosened its pandemic precautions.

“It looks like many countries don’t welcome us,” said Cong,who was instead planning to head for a subtropical destination in China,like Hainan island or Xishuangbanna,to enjoy some warm weather.

According to Trip.com,a major travel services company,overseas travel bookings for the January 21-27 Lunar New Year holidays were up more than five-fold. But that was up from almost nothing the year before,when China’s borders were closed to most travellers.

Reservations for travel to South-east Asia were up 10-fold,with Thailand a top choice,followed by Singapore,Malaysia,Cambodia and Indonesia.

Travel to other favourite places,like the tropical resort island of Bali and Australia,has been constrained by a lack of flights. But that is changing,with new flights being added daily.

“You will see an increase,certainly,compared with last year,when China was still closed,but I don’t think you will see a huge surge of outbound travellers to different destinations within Asia-Pacific,let alone Europe or the Americas,” said Haiyan Song,a professor of international tourism at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Tourism Australia forecasts that spending by international travellers will surpass pre-pandemic levels within a year’s time. Before the disruptions of COVID-19,Chinese accounted for almost one-third of tourist spending,nearly $US9 billion (about $13 billion today).

Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport has increased staffing to cope with more than 140,000 arrivals a day during the Lunar New Year rush,though only individual Chinese travellers will be coming now — group tours from China have yet to resume.

As a brilliant orange sun set behind ancient Wat Arun,beside Bangkok’s Chao Phraya river,a Shanghai man who would give only his surname,Zhang,posed with a companion in colourful traditional silken Thai costumes.

“It’s very cold in China,and Thailand has summer weather,” said Zhang,adding that he knew many people who had booked tickets to get away from his hometown’s cold,damp weather.

Still,for many Chinese,the allure of world travel has been eclipsed,for now,by a desire to head to their hometowns and catch up with their families,nearly three years exactly since the first major coronavirus outbreak struck in the central city of Wuhan in one of the biggest catastrophes of modern times.

Isabelle Wang,a finance worker in Beijing,has travelled to Europe,the Middle East and parts of Asia. After three years of a slower-paced life during the pandemic,her priority is to be reunited with her family in Shangrao,a city in south-central China.

“There’s still a lot of time remaining in our lifetimes,and there will certainly be opportunities to go abroad later when we want to,” she said.

AP