Deported: a passport problem
The story is almost like a mileage run gone wrong…..
Last Tuesday night, I was sleeping when I was woken up by the ringing of my cell phone at 1230am. It was a German friend living in Taipei and I could tell there was a real problem from her voice. She explained to me that her friend was flying in from FRA on TG and she was stuck at the TPE airport. This was her friend’s first trip to Asia. I believe she is 24 years old.
Apparently the first portion of her trip was fine. In BKK, she boarded TG630 to TPE via HKG. Upon arrival in TPE at around 2200, she headed to the immigration queue. Then the situation started to go downhill. She was holding a German passport which normally allows visa-free entry for 30 days into Taiwan. I have entered numerous times visa-free without a problem. I believe you need to have an onward ticket, but I have never been asked about this. The only other major requirement is that you have 6-months of validity left on your passport. Taiwanese immigration is quite strict about this.
So, she reached the immigration counter and the officer discovered that she had less than 6 months left on her passport. I guess TG never checked this. So, the woman was escorted to a holding cell in the back of CKS Airport. She managed to call my friend and explain her situation and then I got the call. I suggested getting a visa-on-arrival at the airport. It lets you enter with less than 6 months left on your passport, but you have to pay something like 100 USD (at least for American passport holders). Or, she could fly to HKG the next morning on TG (as she was forced to do) and get her passport extended in HK. After that she could buy a return ticket to TPE from HKG for about 250 USD all in. I’m still not sure if visa-on-arrival is available to German passport holders; almost all Taiwanese government websites are blocked here in China.
After spending the night in a holding cell with some “drug smugglers” as she said, the woman just headed back to FRA. Being her first trip to Asia and lacking much previous personal travel experience, she just didn’t want to take care of her passport issues in HK and come back to TPE for her 2-week vacation.
I feel bad for this woman, but she didn’t do her homework before her trip and check the visa situation. I am also a bit surprised that TG boarded her. Will they be fined for this? It is too bad her one night in Asia was in a Taiwanese holding cell. I hope she at least got the miles. Has anyone had a similar experience by not meeting the entry requirements of a given country and been promptly deported/locked up?