If it weren’t in July (already have obligations) I’d be willing to help with interpreting and so forth on the ground. I usually end up in Taiwan once or twice a year anyway for a couple of weeks.
I am not sure why the GoFundMe URL link is not pinned somewhere on this forum?
I noticed it is displayed as an “advertising” but it’s not always there, and all people using Adblock won’t see it.
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Is this a b&b or a hotel?
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Looks like it’s 7 floors tall.
Could be one of the tallest structures on the island.
What is the significance of 16 ?
I see a red house 16 in Taipei
those twitter accounts with the “#” symbol?
Red House 16 Gonfang (16工房) is a group of boutiques in the back of the Ximen Red House (西門紅樓), which is a historical landmark in Ximending. The space was divided into 16 workshops thus the name. I don’t think it has any connection with the building in Greenisland. Perhaps 16 means that this building has 16 rooms?
I understand from a previous post that Dave wanted to build a Bed and Breakfast in Greenisland, but the wife’s family allegedly took the idea and built a hotel… But how is it relevant to Dave’s disappearance?
Yeah Taiwan planning laws eh!
Relevant that I know he was not lying about the situation with the b&b story or the hotel.
Relevant that I have said this family has money and well off and have connections with high up people.
Relevant that “the potential” is there for them to have had Dave removed from Taiwan.
The more I learn about the entire situation Dave was in the better I might be able to understand it and bring any sort of clues to his disappearance forward.
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Everything is relevant when in the dark.
16 is included in the address if you look at Google Maps. Many shops, restaurants, hotels, will use the street number as part of their name.
That new building could be anything from a hotel to simple B&B including or not including breakfast or anything in between and could change depending on season. Taiwan style is wide open.
It may be related to their conflicts and separation, but I don’t think there was much need they removed Dave from taiwan for the hotel. I guess they do the hotel business with their money under their name and I doubt they put Dave’s name on any documents even if their hotel plan originally came from Dave’s idea of b&b. Dave must have not been a legal threat in that situation. Anything can be a potential, though.
Is this from the wife’s Facebook page? If yes, you should print screen and save everything for a possible court case etc.
Although it looks big enough to be a hotel, it could probably be counted as a minsu (B&B/homestay) under the applicable regulations.
The regulations governing minsu/B&B/homestays are much less stringent than those governing hotels, so owners will want to have their accommodation classified as the former rather than the latter if they can get away with it. Hence why, when Sandy was asked on FB about the progress of her “hotel” (旅館), her reply pointedly referred to it as a “minsu” (民宿), not a hotel.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, minsu/B&B/homestays on offshore islands such as Green Island are permitted to have up to 12 guest rooms and 400 square meters (121 ping) of floor space. Those that are not located on offshore islands or in tourist areas are limited to significantly smaller size.
This building looks to have three and a half floors of living space, and an extra bit on top for water tank, machinery, or whatever. That is a fairly standard size for detached, semi-detached or row-house residential buildings in Taiwan. It could almost certainly come within the parameters for recognition as a minsu/B&B/homestay.
It looks quite similar in size to my house – perhaps a bit wider, but similar in depth and height, while likely without the two underground floors that mine has. Mine has a floor area of 120 ping (400 m2), just at the limit for a minsu/B&B/homestay on Green Island, so I’m pretty sure that Sandy’s place would have no greater floor area and thus qualify as a minsu/B&B.
This could well be the source of dispute between her family and Dave. When the plans were drawn up by the family, with the aim of making it as big as possible while still qualifying as a minsu/B&B, it would probably have looked to Dave’s eyes more like a hotel than what he had in mind as a minsu/B&B, hence his unhappiness with it.
It’s easy to imagine how their difference of views on this could have blown up into a heated dispute. Since the family presumably had enough money to make it as big as they wanted, they would have been keen to maximize its potential earning power by building it to the maximum permissible size. Dave’s insistence on wanting something significantly smaller would have been a major thorn in their sides, and made him a most unwelcome partner whom they’d want to push out of the picture as quickly as possible and by whatever means they could utilize.
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my guess is they pushed Dave out of the picture just by ignoring him, which made him frustrated.
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I got to drive from Yilan to Hualien today, and stopped off at Qingshui.
The area - it’s popular. It was 3.30 Friday, with 7 coach parties & 15-20 cars in the lot.
The ‘closed’ road is still easily accessible by scooter, but not by car.
As tango42 said, access was possible by car a couple of years back.
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About 100m beyond where the scooter was found (the lookout tower and large stone), and heading south, the road is blocked off by a wooden fence. Very easy to squeeze under it though. Beyond this is the entrance to the old tunnel.
I wonder if this whole area was checked. If Dave went past the fence, no tourist would come across him.
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The old tunnel can also be seen on this pic, taken from further north up the road (red star on map). Orange arrow is where the scooter was found.
The tide was half-way out, but anything falling from that spot would be washed away fairly quickly. Below and to the right of the tower it slopes away, but the cliff is much steeper just below where the scooter was.
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To my knowledge nobody has checked that site for clues or a body.
I was “told” the police checked the cliff area and found nothing, I am obviously not convinced on this matter.
I always wondered if a body could still be there if one went over the cliff but with your pictures of the tide markings I believe if there was one it would be gone by now.
Thank you for taking the time to take those photos and post them with scooter location.
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So many questions I have that will probably never get answered now.
Dave was a smoker and if Dave was at that location for some time texting his wife or contemplating suicide was there a bunch of cigarette butts on the ground by the scooter?
Somebody mentioned maybe he was having a few beers at that location, were any beer bottles/cans found in the vicinity?
His wife said his passport was gone and the money was still there in the safety deposit box, In one of my brothers texts he mentions he is running out of money…so which way is it?
Person covering my brothers case has been removed because they have met my brother in the past in Taiwan.
Yeah, anything on the beach would surely been taken by the tide. Also when there’s a typhoon, the waves gets real big. But if you wanted to, getting down to the beach may be possible - there’s a rough track that starts on the closed road section and goes down to the railroad. To the left just before the tracks, there’s a path leading under the bridge. I didn’t go further, but it’s probably a rough scramble over rocks and water.
Last pic - I also stopped at Chongde, about 1.5km south. But even though it wasn’t far off low-tide, there didn’t seem any way along the coast past that Shimizu reef section. You can see the southern end of the tunnel section here.
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