Apparently we don't like foreigners... Lol...

[Grant H.]

Hanging out in the hotel in Taiwan, and can only browse the board if I VPN to my house. (Corp VPN doesn't like gun stuff).



Thankfully my OpenVPN on a Raspberry Pi is fast and easy.

I'm only 22 hours into my 15 day mandatory quarantine, and I am already annoyed... Can't leave the hotel room, can't hang out with co-workers, etc. All because of the "scary" virus...

Thank goodness for delivery options. The provided food in the hotel is abysmal.

[MrPrena]

你好吗？


(Nǐ hǎo ma?)

[GilpinGuy]

Damn man! Like traveling to NY.

Keep posting on here about your experience. We'll keep you entertained I'm sure.

[Grant H.]

你好吗？


(Nǐ hǎo ma?)

Lol. Thankfully Taipei is rife with folks that speak "english", because my mandardin blows...

Google Translate helps too.

Damn man! Like traveling to NY.

Keep posting on here about your experience. We'll keep you entertained I'm sure.

Traveling with the scary virus thingy that's going on is annoying.

Mandatory test in CO, no more than 72 hours before departure. United is too dumb to know how that works, so they have a 72 hour requirement set off your departure, and a 72 hour requirement set off your arrival. Took 45 minutes at DIA to get them to understand that the Taiwan .gov page was explicitly clear on this.

DIA was noticeably empty, more so than in August when I went to AK. Mandatory mask in airport and on flights, unless you are eating/drinking. Because the virus knows when you are doing that, and doesn't cause a problem then...

LAX was a ghost town. United Polaris lounge had a grand total of 8 people in it (our crew is 3). Grand total of ~40 people on the 13.5 hour flight to Incheon South Korea.

Incheon was also empty. Literally 12 people from Incheon to Taipei. On a 777-200...

United flights are hit or miss. We used to have easy flights to Taiwan. Den-SFO-TPE. Couldn't be booked for this trip. Had to use Asiana and bounce through SK.

Only certain hotels are allowed for "quarantine" in TPE. Booking them had to be done 2 months in advance to actually get a room. Once our two weeks is up, we will move to our regular hotel, closer to the job site.

The hotel provided food in quarantine sucks. Lunch was a shitty chicken sandwich (called a "burker, wif chicken" by the menu lady on the phone) and some cold, soggy fries. There are no microwaves in the quarantine hotels (our sister companies have had folks at the other options and we picked the best that they could recommend), so we all bought and brought plug in food warmers (canvas foil lined bag with a heater plate in the bottom).

We had to have a local TPE number for .gov health checks, and we have to report our temps 2x daily to the hotel staff. So we all bought burner phones when we landed. Yet another hassle.

The good news is, once we get out of quarantine, we get to largely move about the country without issue. So, all of our usual preferred and awesome food options will be available, and we can use Uber/Train/etc public transportation.

Now we just sit on our asses and wait to see if the TW import licenses for our project gear/parts gets approved on time, so we can still come home in time for Thanksgiving. Looking at minimum 4 weeks here due to this mandatory quarantine BS.

[ray1970]

I?m curious who exactly enforces your quarantine? In other words if you just up and decided you wanted to leave the hotel and go somewhere for the day what?s in place to stop you and what would be the consequences for your actions?

[fitz19d]

Given that it's still basically china I wouldn't fuck around and find out. It's better than mainland but it's still not a free country.

Thread makes me miss my few weeks there before.

[ray1970]

Given that it's still basically china I wouldn't fuck around and find out. It's better than mainland but it's still not a free country.

Don?t get me wrong. I wasn?t suggesting any sort of act of defiance. I was legitimately curious about how these quarantines for outsiders are actually enforced.

I changed my 2020 vacation plans due to the Covid stuff because of quarantine restrictions for travelers at the time of our trip. My wife was asking me theoretical questions about what if we stuck to our original plans and didn?t follow the fourteen day quarantine rules once we arrived.

Obviously countries like China probably play by their own rules but in more freedom friendly places I am curious who monitors your whereabouts and what the possible penalties are for violating a rule and not really breaking any laws.

I?m a curious creature I guess.

[Great-Kazoo]

Don?t get me wrong. I wasn?t suggesting any sort of act of defiance. I was legitimately curious about how these quarantines for outsiders are actually enforced.

I changed my 2020 vacation plans due to the Covid stuff because of quarantine restrictions for travelers at the time of our trip. My wife was asking me theoretical questions about what if we stuck to our original plans and didn?t follow the fourteen day quarantine rules once we arrived.

Obviously countries like China probably play by their own rules but in more freedom friendly places I am curious who monitors your whereabouts and what the possible penalties are for violating a rule and not really breaking any laws.

I?m a curious creature I guess.

few ways
1: being monitored by their health dept. Throw in any of the hotel staff. Who may or may not receive a reward, for ratting you out.

2: and the most frequent is. Morons posting pictures of them on the web. One tourist in Hawaii was arrested for violating the quarantine, after posting pics of him wandering around the beach.

[Not_A_Llama]

Given that it's still basically china I wouldn't fuck around and find out. It's better than mainland but it's still not a free country.

Thread makes me miss my few weeks there before.

Taiwan is a long way from “basically China”. China has *zero* sway there. It’s among the freest countries you can find, particularly in East Asia. Been to both?

[MrPrena]

Taiwan is a long way from ?basically China?. China has *zero* sway there. It?s among the freest countries you can find, particularly in East Asia. Been to both?

Yup PRC (China) and ROC (Taiwan) to me is a different country and should be a different country.
I've learned world geography as a different country too.