One of the most difficult decisions I knew I had to make before moving Taiwan was what to do with my pets.

With a heavy heart I decided to give my goldfish to the pet store I frequented in the hope they’d find a new home in someone elses aquarium. I don’t know if that eventuated but I’d like to think I gave them as good a chance as any at being rehomed.

My cat Cloud was a much more delicate matter. I’d picked him out as a kitten five years prior and for his entire life I’d been all he’d known. People had come and gone but I was his constant. Both of us knew eachother’s entire behavioural spectrum and both of us had been through whatever the last five years had thrown at us together.

Giving him up was simply not an option.

The possibility of bringing him with me was always there but moving to a strange new country I decided against initially bringing Cloud over because the reality was that I didn’t know entirely what life would be like here, or where I’d initially wind up.

The last thing I wanted was to have to face uncertainty whilst trying to lug a cat around a country I myself was learning to navigate.

In the end I gave myself a six month timetable to settle down into a routine and create a stable enough environment to introduce Cloud into. In the meantime he was to temporarily stay at my mum’s, where the two cats there would hopefully stave off any anxiety he had about me leaving.

At least that was the plan. Two days after I left Australia, Cloud went missing.

What’s worse is that I only found out on Christmas eve. Wholly distracted by the experiences of life in a new country over the first few weeks of being here I hadn’t thought to ask about Cloud since I’d left.

And when I did… that’s when I found out he’d gone missing. My mother had sought to keep this from me for the time being as she figured I’d probably have enough on my plate without worrying about Cloud having gone missing.

That in itself was fair enough, but the weeks turned into months and gradually I came to accept that Cloud was gone.

Having moved on with my life and made peace with Cloud’s disappearance… it was roughly ten months later that I got a phonecall informing me he’d been found.

A woman who had been caring for Cloud had brought him into a vet and upon scanning his microchip, contacted my mother wondering why her name was on the chip of this lady’s cat.

Long story short, I then had to make the call on whether we left Cloud in the care of this woman or, although delayed, fell back on my original plan to eventually bring him to Taiwan.

Somewhat feeling like I’d already let him down, mixed with some of my own selfishness at the thought of other people looking after him, I decided to stick to my original plan and have him brought here.

For anyone else wondering what the rough process is or the costs involved with bringing a pet to Taiwan, having gone through the experience myself, today I thought I’d share my experience.

First and foremost the process of importing a pet into Taiwan can be broken down into four components:

• preparing your pet for travel
• arranging travel for your pet
• collecting your pet at the airport
• post-arrival checkups




Preparing your pet for travel to Taiwan

Depending on where you’re bringing your pet from, I’d strongly suggest directly contacting Taiwan’s Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine.

Although they have a website in English, it might be best to get someone to contact them in Chinese rather than rely on whoever you get on the line to give you accurate information in English.

Despite contacting the Bureau in Chinese initially, we still got two different answers in contrast to the information on the Bureau’s website when we contacted them on two different occasions for clarification on various things.

Coming from Australia, the main things I had to worry about were getting Rabies and Hendra vaccinations done.

Even though Taiwan and Australia are both officially rabies-free countries, vaccination was still required.

Hendra virus testing was a pain in the arse in that your cat gets the shot, and then has to be tested twice with a duration of at least 21 days between both testings. Oh and during this time the cat has to be quarantined between Hendra tests, although we were able to do this quarantining at my mum’s house.

Naturally all of this has to be signed off on with a vet certificate and general check by an accredited vet for the export of animals (which in Australia is a vet certified by Australian Quarantine and Inspection Services (AQIS)).

I’m not entirely sure if the cat needs to be neutered too, but Cloud was already neutered so it wasn’t a problem. I do note that all the official documentation regarding his health and shots mentions the fact he is neutered.

Finally I believe a microchip is required too. This is so that the cat can be tracked when it leaves and again when it arrives. Also it is used to identify the cat during post-arrival check ups.




Arranging travel for your pet

Once you have all the health stuff sorted and receive your certifications you can then apply for an import permit from the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine (BAPHIQ).

I’m not entirely sure what the process is for this but I believe my vet in Australia got in touch with BAPHIQ and after providing the relevant documentation obtained a permit.

The permit we were given was valid for two weeks and it was up to us to organise transport during this period.

We went with EVA Cargo and although the booking side of things was once again handled by my vet, on my end I had no problems dealing with EVA.

Transport wise your pet will need to be put into an airline approved crate, which for us this blue and white crate (seen here being used by us at one of Taipei’s MRT stations):

Despite my vet writing ‘Please water me!’ on the crate, when Cloud arrived the water bowl attached to the crate door was dry. Thankfully Australia isn’t too far but if your pet is coming from a great distance I’m not too sure what the rules and regulations are on water and/or food.

All documentation must be secured to the crate too, my vet did this with strong packing tape and a plastic folder. There’s a lot of it so make sure you’ve included everything and it’s secure.

I also believe a copy is handed to the airline when you drop off your pet at the airport.




Collecting your pet at the airport

We opted to pick up Cloud from Taoyuan International Airport. Although BAPHIQ have offices in Keelung, Hsinchu, Taichung and Kaohsiung – we figured it’d be easier to just go and get Cloud ourselves straight from the airport and avoid any additional quarantine/transport fees.

I also believe if you opt to pick up your pet from one of BAPHIQ’s offices you yourself are responsible for feeding it, meaning you have to do so on BAPHIQ’s (if the office is closed they won’t let you in).

Coming from Australia Cloud didn’t need to be quarantined upon arrival so picking him up was pretty straight forward (although admittedly I was nervous about the paperwork). Armed with copies of everything the vet had faxed me beforehand, we rocked up to Taoyuan airport.

The cargo area is separate from the passenger terminals and for EVA it wound up being off to the side of this large green building:

The above photo is looking at the green cargo building from the front. To get to the EVA cargo area head to the right side of the building:

and once you turn the corner of the main building you should see the EVA Cargo area:

As you head towards it with any luck the plane carrying your pet will have already landed:

The guys at the EVA cargo depo don’t speak any English but even with Chinese there was a bit of initial confusion as to what happened next. We showed them our documentation (mainly the permit) and they redirected us up to EVA’s cargo office (which is physically located in the big green building just a short walk away).

The cargo office initially sent us back down again telling us to collect something from the cargo workers. They sent us back up again and we waited whilst the cargo office worker called them up.

I’m still not sure what the problem was (I think it was that the cat hadn’t been processed yet) but we had to wait upstairs in the office till some paperwork was faxed up from the cargo workers.

When that was done we were handed some more paperwork which we then had to take down to the cargo workers and show them.

Happy with whatever was on the paperwork the cargo workers told us to wait and after about twenty minutes I caught my first glimpse of Cloud’s blue and white crate.

This was pretty emotional for me as it’d been now over a year since I saw him last, not withstanding the fact that I’d thought he’d been dead for ten months.

My glimpse of Cloud’s crate (and hearing a few meows) was only brisk though as he was hauled off for a vet check by one of the quarantine staff. Another one of the staff (customs?) took us away up to the customs office where we spend the next hour and a half or so signing all sorts of paperwork and running around different sub-departments within customs.

Again, English was pretty lacking here and I really had no idea what all the different forms I was signing were for. At times the customs office felt like the set of a 70s sitcom…

The final process was pretty much  be led by some guy to this office, sign some papers, wait, go to the cashier, pay some money, get led to some other place, sign more papers, wait, go back to the cashier, pay more money, go somewhere else, get more papers, go back to the cashier, etc. for a good nearly two hours.

The thought that we were just paying a whole bunch of bribes to different departments did cross my mind but we did get receipts for everything so I suppose it was all official.

All up I think the Taoyuan Airports Customs office charges wound up being close to $3000 TWD ($100 USD).

Finally, once all the paper work was done the guy who’d been leading us around picked up a microchip scanner and went off somewhere. About twenty minutes later he returned and we were led down back to the EVA cargo area.

Five or so minutes later one of the cargo staff walked up carrying Cloud’s crate, handed it to me and we were free to go.

After fifteen months of being separated I opened Cloud’s cage and gave him a big hug. I’m not usually an emotional person but that was one of the happiest moments of my life here in Taiwan.

Riding my scooter home with a big smile on my face… despite the massive hit to my wallet importing Cloud to Taiwan had made,

waking up the next morning to the sight of Cloud sitting on the couch reassured me that it had definitely been worthwhile.




Post arrival checkups

As Cloud began to settle into his life in Taiwan, the only thing left as far as the authorities were concerned were two scheduled visits by someone from BAPHIQ to check up on Cloud.

These visits were scheduled roughly a month after Cloud’s arrival date with a few months between the two visits. There was no charge to myself for the visits.

The first visit I believe all the guy really did was check Cloud’s microchip and tick off some boxes on the paperwork he’d brought along.

The second woman who visited actually gave Cloud a quick look over and again after confirming his microchip number was satisfied.

Since then it’s been smooth sailing and we haven’t had any problems.




The total cost of importing a pet into Taiwan

All in all the vaccinations set me back just under $700 (with Hendra being the most costly), the flight to Taiwan was about $1000 and the customs fees at Taoyuan were roughly $100.

Once I’d paid the vet’s fees I think we came to a grand total of just under $60,000 TWD ($2000 USD).

Not exactly chump change for a domestic short hair cat of nondescript pedigree, but being attached to the animals we keep sometimes leads to irrational behaviour.

Although I’m somewhat loathe to admit it, having had Cloud since a baby I’d have easily spent double that to keep him by my side.

So there you have it, that’s the story of how I imported my cat into Taiwan. Although I can’t specifically comment on the different import/quarantine requirements for countries other than Australia with any degree of authority, if you yourself are looking at bringing in a cat or dog, feel free to leave a comment below if there’s something you need more clarification on.

To be honest I found the whole process quite daunting and know how you feel. Thankfully my vet was happy to handle most of the paperwork from within Australia and all I had to do was front up the money to get it done.

Regarding getting a professional service to handle the whole affair, we found most places were charging in excess of $2000 AUD and even then, once the pet left Australia we ourselves were going to be entirely responsible for collecting it.

Ultimately this meant there wasn’t much of an advantage in going for a professional pet transport service as we’d have to handle everything once Cloud arrived anyway.

Definitely shop around and get some quotes though, personally however if you can find a good vet who’s willing to handle things this should work out cheaper for you in the long run and having gone through the process myself I’d happily recommend it.


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1. Travelling with pets on Taiwan’s public transport