Background
The Covid Pandemic the past 2 years have change how people around the world live their lives. An experience most cannot imagine it would happen in their life time. One we see only in movies. For the first time, travel restriction is in place in almost every part of the world. All travel plans were scrapped, the world seems to come to a stand still. Just like how 911 changes the way we travel in many parts of the world, the covid pandemic added another layer. After more than a year of lock down, we are all ready to come out of our nests and flew our wings.
We had Taiwan 2022 circled on our calendar since 2021 with a big asterisk. The plan is to meet up with friends in Taiwan and travel to Thailand before going back to Taiwan. While the whole world is getting back to their new normal, Taiwan is one of the few countries that is still behind the curve is covid restriction. Entry into Taiwan for 2022 is still limited to resident of Taiwan. Of course there is the 14 days mandatory quarantine at designated quarantine “hotels”, not your holiday resort by any means. The 14 days became 7+7 days – meaning 7 days quarantine and 7 days self regulated quarantine, still limited to resident only. Sometime around late May and June, it became 3+4. July came with good news, travel restriction were lifted for citizen of US and a few other countries with a valid visas! Yay!!
Since i am the only one in the group that does not hold a ROC passport, i will need to apply for a visas. This is a first for me as visa was not required in my past visits.
The Plan
My past visits to Taiwan had been short and purpose specific and I would always kick myself after the fact about not doing the things i would like to do while there. Fortunately this year, a good friend of the wife named Chanel (yes that’s her real name) reached out to us about visiting Taiwan based on the anticipated easing of Covid restriction the later half of 2022. Chanel proposed taking a short trip to the Penghu island and visiting Thailand since her best friend offered to host us in Thailand. Knowing how connected Chanel, the wife and I were willing to jump through hoops to get this golden opportunity! Well jump through hoops i literally had to do, more on this later.
So the plan is to use Taiwan as our base for our Penghu and Thailand trips. I have heard so much about Penghu from the wife and Taiwanese friends. Penghu is known for their fresh seafood because of its geographical location off the western coast of Taiwan. It’s an archipelago of 70 plus islands. Though fresh seafood is on everyone’s mind, Penghu has a history dating as far back as the Tang dynasty. Well for me, my main goal is to go fishing while there if possible. Now Penghu is best visited before October when the weather condition turns windy. From my perspective, windy condition means bad fishing! Since we were planning this trip in early 2022, there were some unknown that we needed to account for on top of the fact that we cannot depart any sooner than mid September as Chanel and the wife (Claudia) were the co-host for their TBAA 44th Annual Convention the first week of September. So this is our starting point.
Now for the unknown, while most countries are starting to emerge from their covid restriction, Taiwan unfortunately is still trying to get it’s covid cases down to a more manageable level. To be honest, I think their CDC is just overly conservative in their approach. Travel into Taiwan is only available to residents of Taiwan (ie, Taiwan passport holders). Despite this restriction, we proceeded with the planning as there were rumors about easing of Travel. Hey it’s better to have a plan ready to implement when needed than not have one. This goes for anything we do in life, right? Chanel and her friends in Taiwan kept us abreast of the covid travel updates on a regular basis. In addition, there is still the quarantine requirement in effect. It was a 7+7 policy for early part of 2022 and there was expectation that it will be removed come September. The 7+7 policy was changed to 3+4. Lowering the quarantine requirement from 7 days locked down to 3 days or less days is a must for our Travel. Who wants to spend 7 days lock up in a designated hotel room as part of their vacation. Remember our plan is to travel to Taiwan and then travel to Thailand and back to Taiwan, that means two 7 days quarantine. That’s 14 days! The big news came in late June, where family members of Taiwan passport are permitted to travel to Taiwan beginning in July with a valid visas, that’s meant as a US passport holder and the spouse of a Taiwan passport holder, i can apply for a visa and travel to Taiwan. Nice!!!
What is with the math addition?
So what is with the 7+7? Anyone can do the math right?
In the early days of the pandemic, anyone entering Taiwan is required to be quarantined for 14 days. Your phone will be tracked and daily unannounced check will be performed to ensure compliance. There were reported violations in the news regularly where someone would sneak out and go clubbing being arrested. Starting late 2021, it was changed to 7 days quarantined and 7 days of self-imposed social distancing, hence the 7+7. So 3+4 is 3 days quarantine and 4 days social distancing? Well not exactly, your arrival day doesn’t count as day 1. For once not getting “charged” for something is not a good thing, you get to spend an extra day locked down. The CDC also eased the requirement that quarantine has to be in an approved and designated hotel, as long as there is an isolated room or home where there is no one else but you and spouse, it can be used as your quarantine location this is a big deal. Now the second part of the equation, is the number of days you need to spend social distancing. The way i understand it is you are not to go to crowded areas, it’s more of an “honor” system (wink wink) if you know what i mean. Of course we all have to be responsible if you tested positive during these period, to report to quarantine monitor for your area and take the appropriated steps to further quarantine and await further instruction.
A good friend was kind enough to vacate his condo for us!! You definitely need friends 🙂 As you can see from my screen, i am writing this article as a way of killing time but also the start of fulfilling my life long bucket list – writing something. Got to start somewhere!
Jumping Through hoops
Once it was determined that I was able to travel to Taiwan with a valid visa, we went ahead and start making our flight reservations and Chanel’s friends helped with our travel arrangements for Thailand. In my case, we decided to hold off on booking my flight to Taiwan until i receive my visa, just in case. Since it was July, Claudia and Chanel were busy with their convention planning activities, we kind of did put my visas application on the back burner as we need documents to support my visa application. It would be just a 40mins drive to the Taiwan Economics Affairs Office to submit my application.
Hoop1: Here comes the surprise, due to the pandemic, no walk-in accepted for visa application. I need to submit an online reservation just to get an “application” number before submitting my application. Now navigating their website is confusing as some of their policy and requirements have changed and their website is not very intuitive to say the least.
Hoop2: Time to make that phone call to talk to a real person! It’s hit and miss getting someone to answer the phone. Understandable, they must receive hundreds of call daily. But prop to TECOLA staff, they are very professional and very patience and very helpful. We confirmed that we will need to mail in our visa application, no end if or but. As for the supporting documents, we will need to submit an original marriage certificate. The first customer service agent we spoke to, asked when our planned trip was. When we told him it is in slightly less than 2 months, he said “you are not going to make it”!! Huh?? His reasoning was that, we will need to send in our marriage certificates first for verification and that process according to him takes 1 to 2 months and only then are we able to submit our visa application! Ooops, need to cancel that Thailand flight! At this point I have resigned myself to saying goodbye to my vacation. One thing I love about Claudia is her never give up attitude. She called TECOLA relentlessly until she got speak to another person and stated our issue. This TECOLA agent was more patience and when she found out our marriage certificate was issued in US, she didn’t see a need for marriage certificate to be sent in for further authenticating and she verified with her supervisor just in case.
Hoop3: Marriage certificate issue resolved. Next, will need my flight itinerary with my application. Not a problem called the travel agent to book my flight. Now since the plan is to fly to Taiwan and then fly to Thailand before flying back to Taiwan, I will need a multiple entry visa. Chanel reminded me of that as well. With the help of another TECOLA agent, I found the link to download the visa application form. The form was straight forward except for the reason for my visit. Since at the time of my application, visitation is not for tourism but for family visitation only, I was hesitant about my actual reason. Once I gotten past that, the rest is a walk in the park. Line up all the docs and head out to nearest CVS to have my passport photo taken. My good looking face in front of the mirror turned out to be one ugly face in the photo. Oh well, the truth does hurt. So much for a picture is worth a thousand hurtful words! As I walked out looking at the photo, I realize that i had my glasses on and there are reflection. Being the typical lazy self, I thought nothing of it and sent it off with my application. A week past and I got a call from an unknown number (I received more spam/junk calls a day than a legit call) and thought nothing of it. The next day, i noticed there was a message from TECOLA about having to resubmit a new set of photo without my glasses on. Maybe it is just their polite way of asking “Hey how about a good looking photo?” Now we are looking at about 5 weeks left before my departure so we are cutting it close it the process does take about 4 weeks. I just burned 1.5 weeks due to my ignorance. So i rushed to the nearest CVS again and unfortunately, their camera was out of battery and will take an hour at least to come back online. In order to be able to mail it out the same day, i have 30 mins to find another CVS location take my pics and rush to the nearest post office. Made it with 5 mins to spare! Close call.
Hoop4: Good thing the visa application didn’t take the required 4 weeks to process. Got a call from TECOLA a week after my mailed the replacement photo that my visa was ready. Due to my schedule, i was not able to pick it up until 3 days later. I still have about 3+ weeks left. After picking up my visa, i went home happy. But you know the wife, she asked if the visa was multiple entry, ooops, i forgot to check. As it turned out, it was a single entry visa. Panic mode set in for everyone in our travel group. Since it was friday, I had to wait till the following week to call TECOLA to seek a quick remediation. The answer provided wasn’t very encouraging, in essence, they don’t provide multiple entry visa. I would need to apply for another visa while in Thailand. Having gone through those hoops, we decided not to risk getting stranded in Thailand in case my visa application doesn’t pan out. My travel plan just went up in smoke.
The Roller Coaster
A low for me. After some discussion, it was decided that it is best for me to skip the first 2 weeks of my 5 weeks vacation and rejoin the group in Thailand directly from the States bypassing the first entry into Taiwan, thus saving my single entry visa for my return from Thailand. Called our travel agent to cancelled my flight and rebook a new flight. She was calm and said, there is still time and suggested we wait till closer to our departure date to see if there will be any travel restriction updates. She assured us that, she can get me a seat then. This was late August. While we waited, I was resigned to the fact that my 5 weeks vacations is now 3 weeks and informed my manager about it and made myself available for the project work that span the entire September. As for my flight plan, I will need a flight with an arrival date in Taiwan to coincide with the departure date for Thailand and I would just be in transit thus not needing an entry visa to Taiwan. This is the best option as it saved us the cancellation fees.
And so we thought. Well like a roller coaster, here comes the high. As August turn to September, there came news that Taiwan CDC lifted the visa requirement for US passport holders among several other countries. As it turned out our travel agent was correct to wait, it sure felt like sitting on pins during the wait. So I called my manager and said, “Guess what?, my 5 weeks vacation is back on!”
And so “All my bags are packed, I’m ready to go …” (humming to the Leaving on a Jet plane tune) and the Countdown begin.
