I came into KHH from KIX tonight. Customs really screwed me over!
I’ve never even seen customs at KHH even giving anybody the once over but now they have xray machines set up and were xraying everybody. There was a huge plane load from the Phillippines that jammed up immigration like I’ve never seen it and incredible line to go thru the green line at customs including the xray machine.
Anyway they picked me out for having some sandwiches. Any meat:? Uh, sure, I picked up a roast pork sandwich at KIX airport. OK, that’ll cost you 10,000 yuan. I freaking kid you not. I could not believe it; the officer talked about pig disease in MLC which I had heard about, never would have thought that a few slices of cooked pork in a sandwich would have cause me to get flagged for a major smuggling crime, but there you are.
DON’T TRY to bring in ANY MEAT or your risk a 10,000 yuan fine. Sadly, this is not a joke!!!
I don’t know why this is such a big surprise. It has been all over the news for the last year. There are signs everywhere at the airports. There’s a video on the airplane they show on all incoming flights to Taiwan that says bring absolutely no pork products in or you will be fined.
Consider yourself lucky I’ve seen people on the news being fined $100,000 nt dollars.
This is serious. A swine flue epidemic would be really problematic for Taiwan. Don’t bring meat. They didn’t screw you over. You broke a reasonable law to protect Taiwan. It’s one of the things we can do since China decided to not share information with their issue.
Except on Chinese carriers, any flights from China to Taiwan I taken on Chinese airlines never mentioned it, Taiwanese carriers bombard you with it for most of the flight. Lucky to get away with only NT$10,000!
The airline didn’t show any video, didn’t even pass out any customs forms, certainly didn’t pass out any info about a quaranteen.
I saw a sign at the airport but nothing jumped out at me about meat products. I expect that ag products are strictly quaranteened, I would never have guessed that cooked pork was prohibited. Maybe I missed some fine print.
Maybe it’s been in the news in Taiwan, but I’ve been in Japan.
It’s also an issue in japan. They’ve cracking down on pork products from China after their first case of tainted meat with the virus showed up earlier this year.
I have no problem obeying any laws that I am aware of. I didn’t come from MLC I came from Japan and again, maybe I missed the sign but I’m traveling, tired, not expecting this. If I had any idea I wouldn’t have thought twice about throwing away the sandwich, would never have bought it in Japan.
I’m certainly due reasonable notice before being subjected to a large fine. If Taiwan carriers are making a big deal out of informing passengers and that means the Taiwan customs expects that all carriers are complying they are wrong. Ultimately maybe you can say Scoot screwed me, but it’s certainly also on Taiwan customs to make sure that I get notified before they charge a large fine.
Whenever you see x-ray machines before immigration that should be a clue something’s going to happen go back and read the signs.
I feel for you bro but consider yourself very lucky like I said I see people on the news all the time getting 100000 150000 one woman got a $200,000 nt fine.
Thanks, for pointing out that it could get a lot worse.
Hey it’s a done deal so wtf, my only reason for posting here is thinking that I just might be able to save somebody some pain.
Apparently there are some here whose idea of community is to assert norms and mock anybody who experiences anything different. Whatevs. I prefer a basic attitude of trying to be helpful rather than to prove that I know more than any particular member of the community. Everybody is welcome to their own motivation of course, LOL.
It’s very easy to follow if you know about it. I had not heard enough to know that it was contageous in processed meat products. I sure sounds like Scoot totally sucks WRT to propagating this important info. I had mostly flown Peach before, just started using Scoot. They fly to MLC too, I have to wonder if maybe Singapore doesn’t have any quaranteen. I did notice a passenger looking at a printed notice about entering Japan. IMO Scoot was seriously negligent. Not that it matters, I’ve been done there, paid the price, so I felt like it would be a good idea to broadcast about my experience.
Yeah, now that you mention it, maybe the pork thing is the whole reason for the xray machines. It’s hard to imagine what is going on when you haven’t been watching TV and all of a sudden the normal routine has completely changed. I read the paper in Japan most days and did see a mention about it wrt pork prices rising, but nothing about serious airport and customs stuff. I’m guessing that Taiwan may have gotten much more serious about this than Japan. Customs in Japan didn’t care about people coming from Taiwan when I went there in May - at least they didn’t check my bag or ask any questions or have any obvious signs about it. Or else this just got super serious in the last few weeks; again I was reading the Japan Times every day and didn’t see any coverage except for the one mention with focus on what it was likely to do to pork prices.