Taiwan - Day 0 (Travel Day)

If you look closely at the 24th window from the left, you can see me unsuccessfully trying to fall asleep

Wednesday, December 28 - Thursday, December 29

The most intense travel day(s) of my life begun Wednesday morning when my alarm woke me up at 5 am.  It would take me another 30 hours from that moment before I reached my final lodging destination in Taipei, of which over 20 was spent on airplanes and another 7 in airports.

I think it's worth first mentioning the reason and timing of this trip.  Stephanie (a Taiwanese native, current UCLA Anderson 2nd year student, and my girlfriend of six months) had family from various parts of the world coming together to celebrate her Dad's 70th birthday party in Taipei.  Her parents don't speak much English, but her two sisters and their significant others are all fluent.  For this reason, Stephanie reasoned that if there was ever a time for me visit Taiwan, this would be the best time to do it.  I would have more people who I could interact with and a slightly younger crowd to do sightseeing and other activities with.  I knew it was very important to her that I visit her homeland and meet her family, so after sorting out my other logistics for winter break, I booked my tickets.  I love international travel and exploring other cultures anyway, and this situation provided a unique opportunity to make my first trip to Asia and explore the area and culture with an entire family of natives.  I knew it would definitely be a much different experience than grabbing a Frommer's Travel Guide, hitting the top 5 tourist attractions, 1 authentic meal, and then calling it a trip.  Plus, aside from my airfare, most of my expenses for the trip were being graciously covered, so who am I to say no to that?  I had prepped myself for the language barrier with a few hours of Rosetta Stone lessons, a few Learning Mandarin mp3s, and a Google Translate app.  Which means at this moment, I can say "hello," "goodbye," "may I please have a beer" and, probably most importantly, "the boy has a pencil." Anyways, back to my day of travel...

My first flight (Miami to Detroit) was relatively painless since the seat next to me was empty and I was able to lounge out a bit.  Nothing else worth reporting here.  The second flight (Detroit to Tokyo) was a little more intense, weighing in at almost 13 hours.  There was considerably less leg room and my overhead light didn't work which limited reading opportunities.  The girl next to me was nice enough to offer to switch seats with me so that I could use her light and read, but I recognized this as a dirty trick for her to get out of the middle seat.  No amount of intellectual curiosity from whatever new investment book was in my bag could get me to sit for half a day in a middle seat on a plane, so I politely declined.  At a later point when we both had to get up from our seats to let our window passenger companion to the bathroom, Middle Seat again offered to switch seats with me, this time moving her bag to my seat, saying she insisted.  I declined again, although slightly less politely this time.  Aisle seat or not, unfortunately I was unable to get any sleep on the flight.  The only movie I watched was Just Go With It which would have been a terrible waste of time if not for the fact that my goal was to waste as much time as possible.

Very important sign in the Tokyo Airport bathroom

I arrived in Tokyo sore and tired with a 3 hour layover.  I decided the only way to salvage this day was a trip to the Delta Sky Club.  As a Delta credit card holder, I was able to get a discounted one-day pass for $25, which was worth every penny.  After enjoying the free Wifi, sushi, other assorted snacks, and more than a few whiskey and cokes, it was easy to declare this the highlight of my day.  I started to update this blog entry while in the lounge but ended up going back and reading some of my old road trip blog entries.  I enjoyed reminiscing on my old adventures and it made me remember why I started the blog in the first place.  My Taiwan trip might not be quite as exciting as that, but it made me want to keep better records of my vacations in the future.  We'll see if I can stick to that on this trip.

Flight #3 (Tokyo to Taipei) was a relatively quick 5+ hour flight.  I think I got a tiny bit of uncomfortable sleep on this one, but my mind was too fried for me to remember anything interesting happening on this flight either.  Finally on Thursday night at 10:45 pm Taiwan time (9:45 am Thursday in biological clock time) I arrived in the Taipei airport.  Disembarkation and customs was quick and painless, and I was easily able to meet up with Stephanie and her dad.  I threw in a quick "ni hao" as a greeting to win him over right off the bat.  It was another hour drive to where they lived in Taipei.  As their home was already packed with other out of towners, they put me up in a hotel down the block from their apartment.  It was labeled as a hostel, but seemed fairly nice for that.  I made it to the hotel around midnight and after unpacking, off to bed for me.