I dedicate this post to bob:
Hen jiou, hen jiou yi-chen my future wife and I were went to Guam. Me because me ahem…“study visa” needed renewing…ahem…and the wife to be because she’d never been.
So I went to the police station in Taichung for some reason or another, get an exit stamp or some damn thing from the time Taiwan forgot. They inform me that I have overstayed my visa for 30 days.
Huh? Beg pardon.
Seems when I changed my landing visa for a visitor’s visa I didn’t go to the police station and get them to ok it.
Ooops. No big deal, says the cop. Just write it out and sign the paper. Snow big deal. So i do, and then when I sign it he says, “You cannot enter Taiwan for one year.”
Jdshithispants
“What?”
“You need to get a visa BEFORE you come back in. No landing visa will be issued to you.”
Oh for sweet christ’s sake.
So, off to Guam for 5 days. It’s a island. It’s a rock really. A tiny teeny spec in the night ocean.
We rent a car and drive around for a day. We stop. We park. We swim. We drive. No trouble at all.
The next day, we drive to a park, full of people, next to the beach. We go into the bathrooms to change. Inside for MAYBE two minutes. Come out and while walking back to the car I notice what seems to be a broken 7-up bottle in the back seat.
I didn’t drink any 7-up.
Driver’s side window is smashed. My backpack is gone. My backpack is brand friggin new. My Stonehenge tee-shirt that I really like is inside.
Oh and my wife to be’s passport and like 700USG is in there too. :s
I reach to the floor, and grab a twisted paper bag that looks like garbage. I put 1000USD in there. My er, friend used to toss his dope to the car floor in times of duress. People don’t seem to look in trash for cash…or grass for that matter.
I hold said bag high and scream, “You missed this FUCKERS!”
WIfe to be is speechless.
I walk down the park road a bit. There’s a family there having a BBQ. I ask them if they saw anyone near our car. They did. A black pickup.
I head back to the park entrance with the WTB and we luckily flag down a policelike looking vehicle. He snot a cop, but close enough. I tell him about the black truck. A black truck then approaches to the entrance/exit. I say, “THAT’S a black truck.”
Said Potato Head nottacop watches them go and says, “WHO the hell are they?”
He calls a real cop who comes in and takes our statement. He questions the family and kids. Yep, the black truck stopped by the car and broke the window. The kids fess up to seeing it.
ANyway, the cop tells me they’ll get on it and to go back to our hotel.
We go back. No insurance for theft on the car. I need to pay 250USD to fix the car. :fume:
The hotel somebody tells me that there’s no way they’ll get anything done in time as it takes 5 full work days just to pass the incident report to the detectives. :fume:
Word comes in from the Taiwan office. They have the WTB’s passport. Found it on the side of the road.
I write a LOOONG letter to the tourism board, naming the cops by name, the one that responded to our call was the chief of police’s son. Yay. I tell them that our car was targeted by the crooks because the damn license plates were marked RENTAL. I tell them that the car rental people told me that there was a crime wave going on. There was no mention of this in any brochure or be-safe campaign, et c.
I flame them to being so obtuse by taking 5 working days to pass on incident reports to detective literally one floor above them, when the average vacation in Guam was only 5 days. I said I had hope that my letter would help as most of the letters were written in Japanese and most probably ignored by locals who couldn’t read Japanese.
I curse the place when I leave, saying I will try my best to turn away anyone who asks me about Guam. I keep that promise.
Guam is later hit by two tragedies. One being a Korean airliner that tried to do an impression of a mole. And a super typhoon that leveled nearly every tree on the island.
There’s more to it bob, but not much. I swear more when I tell it in person.