arriving in Taipei
Since we came to Taipei later than I thought that we would, our plans had changed a little bit. I thought that I would have had to leave the English Fun Fair right after it finished, then getting to Narita by night and then catching the air flight to Taipei and arriving that night. But since the plan changed, I had to get up at 4:30am to catch my plane at 11:05am. That’s a bit long to get ready to go on the airplane I think. I wanted to leave yesterday, but then I’m glad that I didn’t, although that would have been more enjoyable. It was a long wait at the airport to get into the gates and even board the airplane. I thought that it was extremely weird that the airport was so busy since I’ve never seen it busy at all. From what I heard, the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin was coming to Japan the same day we were leaving to Taiwan.
The flight wasn’t bad at all. It was a short little hop over the bottom part of Japan and we were soon in Taipei. It did go by really quick and it wasn’t even long enough for us to have a movie to watch while we were flying. It wasn’t a high class plane even though we were flying Air Nippon, which is the sub-ANA flying company. The food was alright, nothing special which is also usual for air flights. But not having the movie on an international flight did bother me. I mean we didn’t have much entertainment to keep us busy for 3 hours. I would have liked something other than what they were showing on the screen. I’m spoiled with the JAL and Singapore Airline flights that I’ve had.
We arrived at the airport in Taipei and it was incredible. That airport is really new looking and extremely clean. I was impressed with the customs and the fact that we got through really quickly. I guess there weren’t that many flights going into Taipei at that time, even though it was in the afternoon. It seemed like we were the only flight that came in at that time since we got through immigration and baggage claim in a total of 10 minutes. I got picked up by Amy and her father; they took us to an amazing place in Taoyuan. They have a stellar looking apartment, or shall I say the Japanese word Mansion. It was very nice and something that was just awesome. They had a huge TV and all the other good stuff. We kinda got hooked into it while we were supposed to be planning our trip to the Southern part of Taiwan and the rest of the week in Taipei. We didn’t get much planning done, but everyone got involved with our planning and helping us to decide what we should do. Amy’s sister works for a hotel and she called around to get us some information for tours around Taiwan. I think that she was really pushing for us to take up one of her offers. They did sound good and something that I’m pretty sure that if we did take, would have made everything else easier for us. But EK didn’t want to take them up on it. I would have liked to since I know that we wouldn’t be able to do all of that on our own, but EK thought otherwise.
We chilled at her apartment for a little bit. I was working on fixing her computer so that her webcam would work with video, but I didn’t get enough time to figure it out before we had to leave for dinner. We talked about something happening in San Diego and her life there, but we kept on getting interrupted by EK. It was starting to get annoying and this was at the beginning of the trip.
Lee couldn’t go pick us up at the airport because he was taking a class that he needed to be at. So he came later to pick us up because we were going to stay at his house in Taipei. He came to around 6pm and we all went to eat dinner with each other. We went to a restaurant near Amy’s house. It was something like a Jasmine on Convoy, but nothing as flashy. The food was excellent. I absolutely loved it. It was very tasty and I really did miss Chinese food because of it. I forgot how real Chinese food tastes. That’s horrible that I’ve gotten used to the taste in Japan that I forgot all of the other tastes. I think that the best dish of the evening was lamb. I love to eat it, it was really damn good. It was nice soft and tender and juicy too.
After dinner, it started raining for a little bit. We got a picture with Amy, her sister and EK and me in front of the restaurant before we jumped into the car to go to Lee’s house. He has a nice place on the 16th and 17th floor of the building that his family built. It was really cool and had one hell of a first impression on us. I’m convinced that all international students must be rich because it was such a nice place and it was no wonder that he could study abroad. We decided to call it a night pretty early and we got the tour of the mansion. I quickly grabbed the master bedroom since Lee wasn’t using it. It had a stunning view since most of the room was window. Not much privacy if you ask me, but since you’re so high, it’s not really much of a problem; although I did have the feeling of falling down because of the height. EK got the room that Lee’s girlfriend from Japan stayed in when she’s in town.
