A New Adventure (Part II, the anti-climax)

Well today I got up at 5:30AM to take my adventure to China. I bought a $60 one way ticket to Jinmen/Kinmen island (an island controlled by Taiwan but within sight of Mainland China and one of the few places you can travel direct from Taiwanese territory to China) and got in at 8:00AM (by the way Taiwanese domestic flights necessitate you getting to the airport a whole 30min early) then hauled ass in a taxi to get to the ferry terminal for the 8:30AM ferry to Xiamen, China to get that visa extension (see the picture above).

Side note: I have included some pictures of Jinmen since it was really pretty and not as built up as Taiwan. That's mainly due to the fact htat China shelled the hell out of the island for years so not many people wanted to live there. The downside is most pictures are from an old-style village and don't show the rest of the island.

I got to the terminal in time and was juggling a phone call from my boss, since his father-in-law owns the ferry company so I had to go talk to some lady about the ticket. So I find the lady, Xiao Lan, and she says that the 8:30AM is cancelled since due to the very high winds and waves from a typhoon south of Taiwan and I would just have to wait for the next one. Then she calls me back to say all of the ferries are cancelled. Oh. Shit. I am at the end of my visa limit and if I don’t make it to China today I get a fine and a fucking record that may not allow me back into Taiwan.

Then for some reason I calmed down, I had stressed out a lot yesterday so I decided to go with the flow, which was the only thing I could do. My boss had his wife and her brother come to pick see me at the terminal to see what could be done. Now remember, I was there since I could not get a visa extension in Taipei, even for a multiple entry extendable visa.

Well we go up and talk to the immigration people to make sure that when I catch the ferry out the next day after the wind passes and that I don’t get fucked for being stuck there when everything was cancelled (basically to get a pass that says it’s ok I’m there for 61 days). However, within 15 minutes, a booked ferry order, and a form filled out the immigration people handed me a visa extension (the very one that Taipei could not handle)!

Apparently this is the little secret of Taiwanese immigration. As long as you show that you are planning to leave at a port of exit (seriously, wtf Taipei is the largest port of exit in Taiwan) and book a ticket out you can get an extension. That meant no more trip to China, which is good since that means I don’t have to waste my visa on a trip of only a few hours and now I can use it for a real trip.

Then I went out with my boss’s wife and her brother for some rice soup (it was only 10AM or so) and managed to spill some of this (good) shit on my hand and burned the hell out of myself. I’m ok now but I felt like an idiot. Then an hour later I had another meal at my boss’s in-law’s place, it was Chinese food made by a Filipino maid. That was the second time today I had talked to a person who never spoke with a white person who could speak Chinese (the first being the immigration lady). I then had a little time to tour the island before I jumped on a flight to Taipei.

And of course when I got into Taipei my boss had me go back into the office, which figured since as soon as something good happened today then something bad would follow.