Yes, I rode bike from haikou to Sanya.
With good marketing, any cow or elephant manure place can attract tourists like flies. As we say in Spanish, grow famous, then go to sleep in peace.
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The Maokong Gondola was already mentioned though you can go around the tax with a yoyo card, oddly enough. However, if you’re not a Taiwanese citizen, you pay over 100% more for entrance into the National Palace Museum. When I asked why, I was told it was something related to locals’ taxes and…rules and stuff.
Of course, the alternative to the gondola are taxi drivers at the top of the hill who won’t turn on their meters and the alternative to NPM doesn’t exist in Taiwan. Tour groups deciding if they want to stay in KHH or drive a bit in either direction to pocket a few extra dollars are going to have an easy decision.
Buy a coupla vases, a leak and a scroll. Stick’em on ya mantlepiece.
Sorted.
What appears stupid, is actually unknowingly brilliant. Attract tourists with subsidies (free money) for things like tranportation costs, hotels, discounts, refunds, etc. and then tax it back from them.
…Except residents also pay tax. Anyway I know the museum one , fairly bullshutty rule.
They didn’t this kind of stuff until a few years ago when foreign tourist numbers started going up.
I haven’t visited since they told me this, outside of special exhibitions in the side halls.
I haven’t been there in years but mainly because of Chinese tourists…Some foreign gners have written letters.to them about residents being different but they don’t care. Anybody on a working ARC is paying tax of course.
Now tourists have to illegally work in Kaohsiung in order to afford paying the new tax…feelsbadman.
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That story is just too funny. Brothel supposed to be a secret but everybody knows about it.
That reads like a paid ad by the brothel.
Ok, just for the record. There were over 10 million tourists to Taiwan last year. Of these, the ones from SEA countries, had the most significant increase at over 200 thousand more or less per month. This means that they are catching up with Chinese visitors quickly in terms of numbers.
So it is easily seen why a negative campaign against SEA tourists is surging. It is not as if Chinese tourists have not absconded or worked illegally or that no fuss has been done about it. It is just that SEA tourists are a threat to status quo where there is a captive market of Chinese tourists shopping in China owned stores and staying in China owned hotels, hence assuring profits go back to China. If SEA numbers keep growing, then profits might stay in Taiwan and common Taiwanese could benefit from these businesses. And as per the powers that be, we can’t have that.
I think 152 on one go is a bit much …
I guess a lot of money was flying around for that one.