It was late January, while I was in Taiwan, when people here were starting to get worried about the coronavirus. I was in my last week there before heading off to Japan for just over a month. The plan was to head back to Taiwan afterwards to spend more time with my (now ex) girlfriend before going back to England to see friends/family for the first time since October 2018, then do a trip around Europe.
The trip to Japan was nearing and my girlfriend wasn’t happy. “Do you have to go now?” she asked on multiple occasions. At that point, the coronavirus hadn’t spread that much and I was one of the many people who wasn’t overly concerned about it. For the Taiwanese it was different, they had a nasty experience with the SARS outbreak back in 2003 and remembered it well. Unperturbed, I went off to Japan – there were things I had already booked/paid for, the timing of the trip was planned to coincide with certain festivals and, as mentioned already, I wasn’t that worried about coronavirus at the time.
February in Japan
My trip to Japan went mostly to plan. In fact, there were even benefits to the situation. I don’t think tourism had been affected too much in early February when I arrived in Japan with one key exception – the dreaded Chinese tour buses were nowhere to be seen. As anyone that has travelled much in Asia knows, huge numbers of these perennially overexcited groups get everywhere and some attractions are practically unvisitable at peak hours due to the masses of tour groups that descend on them. I was at the popular Sapporo Snow Festival, which drew 2.74m visitors in 2019 and it didn’t feel too busy at any time for the whole week that I stayed in Sapporo. It was still busy, but it never felt overcrowded (in comparison, the festival drew 2.02m this year).
Hostels around Japan were also noticeably quieter than usual. This isn’t necessarily a good thing – I have many great memories from meeting people in hostels and doing things together. However, there were a few hostel dorm rooms I stayed in which were effectively private rooms as nobody else was in them and, given how much of my life I spend sleeping in hostel dorms, private rooms are always welcome!
While the number of coronavirus cases was slowly increasing, I was travelling around Japan with only mild concerns and having a second excellent experience in my favourite country in the world.
Early March in Japan
The situation started to change towards the end of my time in Japan. First, I received an email from Peach Aviation advising that my flight to Taiwan had been cancelled due to the coronavirus, along with all their other flights on the route for several weeks. I was able to get a similarly priced flight with Scoot on the same route and day so this wasn’t much of an issue but… I ended up not taking the flight anyway. I was supposed to go back to Hokkaido for three days of snowboarding before flying to Taiwan. A couple of days before I was due to go, the governor of Hokkaido declared a state of emergency covering the whole island. In theory, this didn’t actually impact any of my plans – I could still travel there, my new flight wasn’t cancelled and the ski resort was still operating. However, I was worried that the next step the governor could take would be to quarantine the island, with me stuck there as a consequence. As much as I enjoy Hokkaido, I wouldn’t want to be trapped there in a lockdown with high daily costs. I was in Tokyo at this point and because of these worries, decided to scrap my plans and use the last day of my Japan Rail pass to take a shinkansen (bullet train) to Osaka instead of Hokkaido. I enjoyed staying in Osaka during my first trip to Japan and I could get a cheap flight from there to Taipei so it was a good alternative. A couple of things I wanted to do in Osaka were closed due to the coronavirus but things were otherwise normal and I had an enjoyable few days there.
Now, it was time to fly back to Taiwan. The plane was much quieter than usual – it was hardly empty but me and many other passengers each had a row for themselves. After the short flight to Taipei, I went through the normal arrivals process in what was by far the quietest that I had ever seen an international airport be in the middle of the day. During previous visits, there would be a 15-30 minute wait to get through immigration. This time, there was no queue whatsoever and I went straight up to one of the immigration desks to go through. After picking up baggage I went through to meet my girlfriend and leave the airport. Before leaving I noticed an arrivals screen which showed, with one exception, a whole page of cancelled flights. Lucky me.
March in Taiwan
Within a few days of being back in Taiwan, it became apparent that the coronavirus situation was very serious and staying here as long as possible was going to be my best option. The Taiwanese government and people, with their early response and cautious attitude, had done a great job against the virus. Despite being close to China both geographically and in terms of trade, Taiwan had less than 50 cases in total at this point. Meanwhile, the UK and many other European countries were reporting hundreds, if not thousands, of new cases per day.
My plan of going home then doing a trip around Europe definitely wasn’t happening. Reading the news from England each day made me groan – festivals like Cheltenham with 60,000 visitors per day were still going ahead, nothing was closed and Boris Johnson was living up to his Trump-lite image with a series of idiotic remarks in press conferences. The government produced a list of countries that it recommended not travelling to, which was basically ‘countries near China’, plus Iran and Italy, and advised people to come home. Apart from Italy, the travel list made no mention of any European countries despite the surging number of cases around the continent. The list seemed to be based on xenophobia rather than science or the numbers and it was being communicated to everyone around the UK. Needless to say, I ignored the advice and stayed in Taiwan.
I was in Taiwan on the standard 90 days visa free that British citizens get on arrival. I had the option of extending this by a further 90 days and, once I made the decision to stay in Taiwan as long as possible, went straight to the visa office to ask some questions that I couldn’t find answers for online (it was impossible to get through by phone). With the Taiwanese borders due to close in a couple of days’ time, the visa office was packed as expected with people trying to extend visas. I took a ticket and the long wait began. Just as it was nearing my number, a lady walked around with a sign saying visas not would be extended. This caused panic amongst the people waiting and I felt that “oh fuck” feeling. Had I gone just a day or two earlier, I could have avoided this. Once the small crowd that immediately surrounded the woman had gone, I went and asked if this applied to British citizens. This wasn’t out of arrogance, for some reason the 90 day extension I referred to earlier is only available to British and Canadian citizens – it isn’t available to citizens of any of the other countries that get the same 90 days on arrival. Luckily, she said I could still get the 90 day extension, big relief! It finally got to my number in the queue so I went and asked my questions. One question couldn’t be answered there – the visa extension I was looking for was a tourist visa but I was going to be working remotely in the country for six months, I wasn’t sure if this would be okay. As a general rule, it’s fine to do some remote work while visiting another country for the purpose of tourism, but I wasn’t sure if spending six months here on a tourist visa was going to create an issue. Anyway, I was told to call the foreign labour office who confirmed to me that it was fine to work remotely here for any period of time as long as the work was not related to Taiwan, which mine isn’t so everything was good. I went back to the visa office early the next day with my visa application and was told to come back the following week to pick up my passport and find out if the extension was granted. Cue several days of nerves – there was no reason for my application to be rejected but I couldn’t help but feel nervous. Once the day came, I went back to the now much quieter visa office, waited a short period of time then found out, to my relief, that the extension had been granted and I could stay until early September.
Now
The fact that I went back to Taiwan in early March when things were starting to go crazy around the world was very fortunate. To date, Taiwan has only had 440 cases (6 deaths) of coronavirus and no lockdown. They really have done a fantastic job here against the virus. Having been travelling since October 2018, I think I’d have soon gone crazy if I went back to England and straight into a lockdown with no currently known end date. As things stand I can’t leave Taiwan (well I can, but it would be stupid to) so my travels are more limited than they have been, but I can still travel around the country. Almost everything is open here and it’s pretty much business as usual, albeit with facemasks, hand sanitisers and temperature checks everywhere.
As I’ve got several months here, I really want to explore a lot of different places around the country and many off the beaten path locations. It also means I can work on other things I’ve been neglecting, like my health and this blog, which I launched late in February and have barely touched since. There’s a bunch of things about my travels and remote working to date that I want to write about but I haven’t found time yet. Now I can get on with it and I’ll try and get at least one post out a week.
I’ve rented a flat in Taipei up to September – it’s basic (just a room and a bathroom) but the location is perfect, there’s a decent amount of space in the room and it seems like it’s been recently refurbished. The price is great too – just 11,000 TWD (less than £300) a month including WiFi and water. Working from the flat for long periods isn’t ideal, but there are plenty of coffee shops and coworking spaces around Taipei that I plan to try over the next few months. I won’t stay in Taipei all the time but it makes for a good base to explore the country.
I’ve signed up to a nearby gym as well, I have made occasional visits to gyms while travelling around Asia but they were rare and I want to get into better shape – I want to get stronger and get rid of the belly that’s been slowly expanding! The first few sessions back at the gym have been frustrating – my level is nowhere near what it was a few years ago and I can feel pains for days after. Still, there’s no excuse now for me not to visit regularly and I’ll make progress with frequent workouts.
I’d also like to learn some Mandarin – I took a two week intensive basic course recently which was very helpful to get started. I don’t want to do another course as they’re expensive, but it gave me a good start and I have a lot of course materials still to work through. Being in the country for a while will allow me to get daily practice and hopefully I’ll build up my vocabulary over time. I don’t expect to get beyond a basic level of Mandarin but I think it will be a good skill to have and it would certainly help with a big trip around China, which is something I’d like to do at some point in the future.
This is all without even mentioning that being in Taiwan means I can spend more time with my girlfriend rather than having a long distance relationship (update: that didn’t work out, but spending more time together helped us realise that).
As it has for everyone, the coronavirus has changed my travel plans massively but I feel really lucky that I can stay in lockdown-free Taiwan for the next few months years and enjoy life here.
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