For the first time in 18 years of travelling to Taiwan, the Customs people decided that the Green line wasn’t the right one for me last night and wanted to inspect my hand baggage.
While waiting for my bags to arrive, two officers and a Labrador did a trip around the waiting crowd. The dog took a liking to me, but they said nothing. Obviously I was watched after that, for when passing through the Green line I was directed, courteously, to one side, where 4 of them decided to have a look at my hand luggage (which I had been holding when the dog visited).
The dogs nose was correct, in that as a result of having an Abscessed Tooth extracted last Saturday (at a cost bordering on extortion, given that it was Easter Saturday, but I could not wait another 3 days), I had a (Prescribed) supply of Amoxycillin and Comfaro Forte (contains paracetamol and codeine), both part used in the Pharmacy packaging in the bag. The first was for the Infection, the latter for Pain relief. After looking up the names on the Internet (and asking me to open my mouth so they could see the gaping hole), they decided that I was not the type of person that they were interested in and profusely apologised and sent me on my way.
The moral of the story is of course that if you travel with Prescription Medicine, keep it in its supplied packaging and with any relevant documentation. If these had been loose tablets, who knows what might have happened.
My goodness, what kind of doctors are you visiting? I’ve been here more than a decade, and during that time I have seen many types of doctors, but I have never not had a “prescription sheet” attached to the medicine…
I’ve had both, some doctors just toss out the pills in little baggies with no writing (maybe these don’t require a prescription), some doctors put them in a baggie with the prescription written on the outside.
For antibiotics, I’ve walked into a few pharmacies and just asked for what I wanted and they give me no question. Only once, the pharmacist asked me why I wanted a certain antibiotic, and I told them my friend is a doctor and recommended this antibiotic. They gave it too me.
The dog picked up the codeine, which is a very mild opiate. I doubt it would have bicked up the antibiotics. I have travelled here with codeine based pills before, which is OTC in Denmark, however it seems that I have been lucky.
Wonder what they would do if I just had them in a ziploc bag - arrest me for 20 headache pills? (Which is what it is).
Ibobrufen works better, 600mg at a time, and that the doggies will not pick up.