Wednesday March 8th – Thursday, March 9th
My flight took off from Los Angeles at 10am Wednesday and arrived in Taipei, Taiwan at 5pm on Thursday, over 15 hours later. It’s a heck of a time change.
I can recall around hour 6 thinking “well this has been a long while, luckily we’re <calculating> not yet half way there…” The above photo is further along, I think flying over Japan. Fascinating to see islands with densely populated coasts and massive inland mountains that appear very steep and mostly uninhabited.
Eventually we arrived and all shuffled off the plane, happy to be standing and walking. I was photographed and fingerprinted like everyone through customs, and then into the Taipei airport.
Christy was coming to pick me up but her conference schedule gave me a little time to kill. I spent it negotiating with various ATMs until I found one that would dispense cash for me. Then it was off to a SIM card dealer. After much back and forth; she spoke a little English and I speak zero mandarin but can point and gesture, I was once more connected (haltingly) to the interwebs! Taipei: mastered! Now all I had to do was wait until Christy showed up and to navigate us to the hotel she’d booked and all the sights she’d figured out and use the public transit she’d sussed out… Easy!
A few minutes later Christy appeared! My wife, she’s real! We hadn’t seen each other since August and it was delightful to see my favorite human again. Then we were on a train and headed off to start our adventure!