By the way, quick-snapped some pics while flying over the East face of the Rockies climbing up out of Denver. Looks like the snow pack was still good, although I’m sure skiers were social-distanced out of any remaining good skiing.
Crappy camera pic, but couldn’t resist sharing.
Exactly.
Absolutely no way for me to speak with a soul, either. And nobody was responding to emails, either. Queues for online chats w/agents were hundreds long, sometimes thousands in front of me. And many times the connection was dropped after I waited for hours. Sucked so bad.
In my case they declined my refund request on the grounds that I was a no-show, despite my having explained everything in detail in my request. I didn’t show up for my 1am flight (redefined by the airline, not me), so request denied.
I may still try to fight it.
I thought about fighting it too. In fact I wrote a very detailed complaint pointing out all the reasons why I should not have been charged. Rejected again on fare class basis. Not relevant in my case and total bullshit anyway as there only 30 pax on the flight so no class could have been booked out. Thought about going legal, but worried they might ban me. There are not many options for flights between Melb and Taipei.
Back in Singapore, I stood in the airport just before the exit for hailing taxis. It’s 2:45pm on March 18th, Taiwan will suspend visa-exempt entry at midnight, and my wife is asking on LINE if there’s any way I can book a flight back to TPE arriving before then.
Because it was supposed to be an overnight trip, I’d only packed a backpack. I had already booked a taxi (an expensive private car), but now I headed back into the airport to pick up wifi on my laptop and see if I could book a flight back. Not possible, as it turned out. Meanwhile the driver of the car I’d booked (and paid for) texted me to say that he’d waited a full hour and was leaving, no refund. Bye bye car, bye bye US$40.
So I went back to the exit taking me to the taxi stand. For shoes I had only the sandals on my feet, no other footwear. I was wearing a pair of cargo shorts, with a pair of swim trunks in my bag. I had a camp shirt on, too. Also in my bag were two changes of underwear and two clean t-shirts. Sum total of my clothes.
In effect I was about as close to being homeless as you can get, unable to return to Taiwan and halfway around the world from the US, in a huge Asian city I knew nothing about.
If you’ve ever found yourself in that position, then I’m sure you understand why I began to think the forces of the universe might be hunting me, and I’m not ashamed to say that a bit of doubt about my survival began to creep in.
Among the top five worst days of my life, no doubt. I’m sure I’ll never forget it.
This fashion faux pas may be the source of all your subsequent bad luck. 
In my defense there’s something about going from Brooks Brothers 5.5 days a week to no BB ever (ever!!) again that sends the pendulum way over yonder - and I suspect it ain’t got all the way over just yet. Just wait till you retire.
Besides, you’d think a guy’d get a minute of full maudlin here without fashion commentary. I was almost homeless, after all. Sheesh.
So anyway back to my ordeal. I took a taxi to my hotel, and soon learned that if nobody else knew English in Singapore (turned out almost everybody in Singapore speaks English), my driver certainly did. A born yakker, my driver. (He was actually very helpful, explaining the how-to’s of hawker stalls and pointing out the best as we passed.)
Booked the next night, Thursday night, too (at US$89, grrr) just to gain some breathing space.
The next morning I reconnoitered and learned there was a 7-11 just down the river, on my side. Bought an ezlink card, Singapore’s version of Taiwan’s you-you card (debit card, pay bills, buy public transport tickets, etc.).
Late in the morning I hopped the hotel’s shuttle to convert some US$ and NTD to Singapore dollars at Chinatown Point mall. The mall was packed, wall to wall with very few people wearing masks and seemingly zero thoughts given to social distancing. I estimate something like one in ten wore masks, and Chinatown was swarming with people. That weekend most Singaporeans did not seem bothered at all by the burgeoning pandemic.
Waiting on the bus back I learned that the post on my leather flip-flops, not having been worn all winter, had dried and thus gouged out a dime-sized chunk of skin between the great and next toes on my right foot. Great, I’m thinking. Fantastic. What’s next, the plague? Hobbled back into Chinatown Point, found a Watsons, and bought some band-aids (plasters).
Turns out that Airbnb works in Singapore, too. I lucked into a air-conditioned flat in Chinatown (with laundry/dryer-in-one-machine included) and rented for Friday, March 20 through Saturday, March 28 since I had absolutely no idea how long I’d be in Singapore.
I remembered that I’d seen a tiny Decathlon store in the mall that would take delivery of any Decathlon item I bought online. Picked up a pair of terrific Kasenji running shoes for the obscenely low price of US$8 (yes, eight dollars), some tees, socks, and underwear, and on Saturday hobbled over to pick them up. Bought a small amount of groceries, disposable shavers, soap, laundry detergent, etc.
Quick aside. Turned out the Airbnb place was located directly over, of all places, a brew pub. It also turned out that there were dozens of young Antipodians, Europeans, and Asians who obviously didn’t give a rat’s patoot about cv19, who loved the pub, and who happily partied into the wee hours, making a helluva racket while falling down or wrestling on the street outside. Ah, youth.
On Saturday, March 21, I came back from the mall and learned that the US State Department had advised all US citizens to hightail it home. Embassy staff all over the world were flooding back to the States, and State warned that if any US citizens found themselves stranded outside the US then they were not likely to receive help due to the hollowing out of embassies around the world.
Thinking that I better git while the gittin’ was good, I booked a return ticket via EVA Air to Austin, departing on Monday, March 23, and arriving the same day (I ate the cost of the unused Airbnb in Singapore) in Austin, TX. Booked an Airbnb in Austin’s Clarksville neighborhood while in Singapore.
Hopped the MRT to Singapore Changi airport on Monday morning, bound for Austin with a 4hr layover at, of all places, TPE. Converted NT$25k to USD in TPE, ate a big steaming bowl of beef noodle soup, and wondered if/when I’d ever be able to do that again.
Man, what a story!
How were you able to get back to Taiwan? As I understood, you don’t have official residence here, do you?
He was able to apply for one of those “special visas” that everybody is talking about. Can’t wait to hear about this part of the story.
On what grounds?
This is turning into a hell of a story. : D
Guy
I’m thinking conjugal visit, but I guess we’ll have to wait to hear it from the horse’s mouth. 
Better than the cow’s! : D
Guy
Would it be right to presume that Mrs bojack is none too pleased with her husbands unplanned 6 week absence and the financial cost of same and that a showdown awaits on May 15?
Mrs tommy had a trip home planned on Singapore airlines and some flights with Garuda
Neither will refund her tickets giving her the money as credit instead towards future flights
Airlines are broke with the virus and many will disappear
It would not be right, but I think your conclusion is conceivable or at least understandable.
Our story goes back to 2000, we were married in early 2017, it’s another story altogether, and one with its own drama. We are both very independent, hard-headed individuals.
Anyway, she may be singlehandedly responsible for my success in acquiring a special-entry visa a week ago. I’ll fill in the details this week.
Good, the one most important is on your side.
Bojack, master of suspense… 
More like bojack: too much whisky, danger Will Robinson.
Good you were able to transit because transit was later cancelled
Too bad you couldn’t get into Taiwan then though
Perfectly understandable after what you’ve been through.
The EVA flights I took on March 23 were almost unpopulated. The flight from TPE to San Francisco, there were just a handful of us. The “meal service” was limited to two paper bags filled with packaged snacks tossed to us about eight hours apart (yes, tossed: the flight attendants were studiously avoiding all contact with passengers).
These West to East flights from East Asia - bearing north, then east over the Aleutians and then south along the west coast of N America - often benefit from strong tailwinds, and the flight into SFO arrived 30 minutes early. Everything felt rushed. The attendants were obviously glad to get shed of the passengers. If felt like EVA couldn’t get us in their rear-view mirror soon enough. Frankly it was a little sad. Understandable, but sad.
The flight itinerary was SIN > TPE > SFO > Austin, landing in Texas late on March 23. The SFO > Austin hop was via Alaska Airlines. However, as was becoming normal, the itinerary was changed at the very last minute. Alaska Airlines moved my flight to Austin out by 12 hours. I suspect the FAA (with indirect input from the CDC) had a hand in this decision: do not send a raw, potential cv19 vector deep into the heart of the nation without a little time to see if symptoms emerge. This is sheer speculation on my part, though.
Anyway, now I had to spend the night inside SFO, or find a room nearby. My flight to Austin departed at 7am the next morning, Tuesday March 24. I found a Travelodge near the airport, and booked a one night stay.
And what a Travelodge it is. A snapshot of old San Francisco. Might have been new when Hitchcock’s The Birds was filmed in what, 1963. The decor could not have been any newer, surely. Humbled now, with its clerks taking cash from dodgy customers and issuing keys from within a steel cage, and run down, but clean and - the best part - the owner is obviously a big cable TV fan. A huge fan of cable TV. The room’s best feature, by far, was the cable access. I counted 230 channels before I quit. Fourteen HBO channels (four in Spanish), more than ten Showtime channels, every cable channel I’ve ever heard of, plus some. Local news, the whole shebang. A little bath in American eccentricity, Bay Area style.
The next morning I brewed and drank the one cup of coffee on the desk, stumbled out into the cold dark (I’d arrived in daylight, so was a bit lost), and made my way to the bus stop nearby where I shivered and my teeth chattered until the bus arrived. Mostly airport workers on the bus, none of whom wore a mask (neither did the driver).
Walked into the polish and gleam of SFO, huge and utterly empty, made my way through TSA in five minutes, and headed for my gate. The nice Alaska Airlines agent at the desk asked me to sit in an exit row (probably because early in the day I don’t limp), and we took off on time, bound for Austin 3+ hours later.
