No, no and no. Nothing was said on the plane I’m very sure - I understand Japanese quite well and if anything was said would have caught it in at least one of either Japanese or English. I only slept briefly in the very middle of the flight.
In the terminal I didn’t see any signs specifically about meat, i.e. no signs of dogs.
There was a woman with one big sign with lots of photos which I didn’t look at particularly closely. I thought it was about fruits and veggies as I’ve seen those from last year and before.
When they said they found something on the xray I had no worries. I said I had sandwiches in the bag, I had no worries. Is this meat? Yes - I wasn’t worried in the least why should I worry when I had no idea they had any reason to be looking for that? If there had been any warning at all specific to meat, at a minimum it would not have been a shot out of the blue to me. Up till they said 10,000 NTD fine I didn’t have the slightest inkling that meat was contraband.
It is reasonable to enforce a huge fine if and only if it follows the kind of effort you all have described to inform passengers emphatically and done consistently enough that it would be very hard to simply miss the entire message as I did assuming there were pictures on display somewhere. It would have to be intrusive enough to ‘wake you up’ to the message when you are tired after a journey and just trying to get thru the terminal to ground transport home. Like ‘no fruits allowed’ as is displayed very clearly in Japanese airports. The campaign listed here sounds adequite warning. But clearly it’s not being executed at Kaohsuing, and definitely zero info was broadcast in any way on board Scoot. Maybe I wasn’t super alert, I was definitely feeling tired and just thinking of what train I could catch. But for this type of campaign the notifications should be strong enough to break through that and not be subtle enough that one just doesn’t notice them. That’s just common sense though a few here don’t seem to have the same understanding that I do.
Thanks for the warning! Now that you mention it, better not carry poppy seed pastries etc anywhere across borders. What would the result be if one carried into Taiwan and were caught? Deportation? Fine? Jail?
iirc, meat products have been banned since I moved here 6 or 7 years ago. I don’t know why you assumed meat product is ok. It is banned in many countries, including the US. and Japan too if without quarantine.
There is one handout with a dog which was attached to the fine sheet after the fact, but it’s from before, a beagle with a threat of NTD 3000 fine. I’ve seen the live beagles before, didn’t see any yesterday tho I didn’t go into the baggage claim area - I skirted around it. If there were any binds they were inconspicious - no cue there.
Actually, many people have been surprise dby teh definition of “meat”, since teh ban now included beef jerky, not just pork jerky. Many people actually think foodstuff from the plane or cooked like sandwiches or buns are OK.
What I am worried about is why the message is not geting through and why the mechanisms before the Customs area are not that obvious, meaning the bins and the canine officers inspections.
True, people should be aware of the general ban on pork, but teh specifics, no ham no ham products no meat no beef products- seems to leak through.
I do not support making cards or printing stuff. It has been done before. the dog mascot should be working fine. And the bins give people the option to bail before having to pay. It is working in Taoyuan. In Kinmen. In Penghu.
I think OP should make a stink and write a letter to Taipei Times or someone can help him translate to Chinese in order to give the Kaohsiung airport people a good wake up call.
Makes me hungry for an everything bagel. I have a confession to make. The last time a friend visited me, they forgot they had a giant pack of sealed, packed, dried beef jerky in their checked bag. They weren’t caught and it was delicious! Next time he flies over, I will remind him about how serious this is.
I would assume cooked meat for immediate consumption was not a big deal. Hey, for any amount by all means confiscate it. A reasonable fine for emphasis, no problem. 100 times the cost of the item is draconian! I understand that this is a special emergency situation, but the whole program should be implemented including all the clear warnings. With that level of warning, the very high penalty is reasonable. But until recently the fine they threatened was 3000 NTD. If jacking it up to 10,000 is required under the circumstances so be it, but you’ve gotta make the real effort to do the education part of the deal in that case. Cooperation should go both ways otherwise the state is crushing people without any warning. It seems to be clear that this is an issue with Customs not doing the full job down in Kaohsuing that they do in Taipei judging from the comments from other posters. Also probably Singapore based airline doing a shit job because Taiwan is only a refueling stop for them between Osaka and Singapore and they don’t give a crap either for passengers sake or for respecting Taiwan’s customs requirement to help with their campaign.
Couldn’t let it go to waste. I used to bring stuff in because they sell crappy bacon here with some strange rubber like cure. Now, I make my own. I would kill for a brisket for corned beef/pastrami or a good ham. Costco has added a decent proscuitto and Australian ham, but they got rid of the real bacon. I think it is all politics from all the countries involved as to why these things are not available here.
Thanks! And trust me I’m thinking about complaining for certain. Actually the ‘why doesn’t Singapore airline help like the Taiwan carriers do’ might be a great angle as would be writing Taiwan Times. Thanks a lot, really great communication here to get all these details that seem to point to a very legit Kaohusing specific complaint.
I’m too tired to do that today, but I tend to get tenacious about stuff like this as I think you can tell. But I do have one small concern in that I don’t have a real visa or residence card for Taiwan. I have 93 year old Japanese MIL I visit frequently but want to avoid being Japan resident for tax purposes (they have some strange regulations and I have special circumstances with investments in the US), so it works great for me that I can stay in Taiwan so far as long as I want with the only condition that I leave and come back every 90 days and don’t work here. I would definitely not want to get noticed and have any blowback or get restricted going forward over pushing on this either thru directly contacting customs or because of contacting the newspaper. Any thoughts on whether there is any chance of causing myself yet more trouble by not just licking my wounds and dropping the issue?
Ok. Relative newbie question but still… OP says Yuan, everyone is talking in NTD, are we accepting that Yuan can be used to refer to currency here or has everyone done some maths before they comment (or are they pegged level and somehow I haven’t realised that yet).
It was an expensive lesson but could have been far worse if that sandwich was carried from China!
I do sympathize with the position the OP found themselves in however and can fully understand how it happened.
The last flight I took back to Taiwan from China was in April and into Taoyuan on a Chinese carrier. There was no announcement on the aircraft as I purposely paid attention due to the previous flight I took on a Chinese carrier also having no announcement.
After disembarking I needed to go through the new x-ray check before immigration however if you were not familiar with the background behind the check it wouldn’t stand out as unusual as there were no obvious signs giving a reason for the check, or in fact, what was being checked for. If you didn’t have to do the check and received the “pass” placard you likely would have more information. Most times there are so many people backed up in that area that you won’t be able to see signs anyway.
There definitely were no sniffer dogs that day and there were no special announcements. There was some signage however it didn’t particularly stand out. I flight I took in December 2018 into Sungshan from China on a Taiwanese carrier and it had multiple announcements on the aircraft, had multiple large standalone signs before and after immigration and had a constant broadcast and video playing over the luggage retrieval in addition to the sniffer dogs.
The reason I payed special attention on the last trip is that I was carrying some products which were meat based or may have contained some amount of meat in powdered form and wasn’t sure if they were allowed or not. I went to the red channel and with some difficulty, due to the customs officers trying to shoo me over to the green channel without waiting to hear what I had to say, explained that I had some products I wasn’t sure about. They stated that they couldn’t advise me and I had to go all the way back to the quarantine desk just before baggage claim. The lady there took a quick look and gave the all clear, go back and they take my word that she said everything was OK…
Interestingly on the customs website it appears that seafood is not allowed to be taken into Taiwan. I showed the quarantine lady a picture of a product I wanted to bring back next time to check if it was OK and got the response that “all seafood is fine as long as it is cooked.”! Don’t take my or her word for it though, check yourself if you intend to bring seafood.
