Arrival in Taipei (12/20/12)

Hey oh y’all,

We finally arrived in Taipei! Yay! After much last-minute rearrangements and timely help from my hosts and friends (especially Peter for all of his help with lodging and transportation), I have made it!

However, it was not without another bit of added stress for me actually getting in the country. This morning I received a valuable lesson on punctuality and customer service: I was supposed to arrive at the airport around 8:00am so that meant leaving the hotel on a shuttle that was scheduled to leave at 7:30am. I woke up at 6:30, ate breakfast, then went back to sleep, thinking that since I was already ready I could wake up around 7:25 and just head down. So then at 7:20, I get a call from the front desk, “Sir, you were scheduled for the 7:30am bus?” “…Yes?...” “It’s here and about to leave.”

…wait…what? Yup. As it turns out everybody else on the 7:30 shuttle had gotten the memo that 7:30 meant 7:15. Thankfully, the hotel had held up the bus and had called me to make sure I made the shuttle and thus made my flight (I don’t think missing the second connecting flight to Taiwan would have been good).

Anyways, long story short: I’m here thanks to a lot of luck and help from a lot of people.

With that, let me make an addendum to my prior post about my bad luck with flights: I’m still not sure what to make of my luck, but I’m going to go with “overall good.” While the unplanned stop in Japan has significantly cut my time here in Taiwan, there is something good. I have been told that today is the first day in a while that has great weather. Apparently last week up until yesterday has been cold and/or wet. But as I look today, the weather is great! It’s as if Taiwan is saying, “Welcome boy who has never witnessed non-sunny weather. We have made accommodations for you. Enjoy your stay.” To this I say thank you Taiwan!

So today officially starts my exploration of Asia!

Today also starts my exploration of Asia public transportation. And I have to say, wow! Taipei has great public transportation. One cool aspect is their paycard system, called icash. You can load up money and you can use the card for the metro rail, bus, and rental bikes (called YouBike), as well as purchases at numerous stores, including the ever-convenient-24-hour-on-every-street-corner-7-11 (seriously…the stores are so common that I could probably buy a can of soda from one store and throw it and hit the door of the next store). These icash cards are so common and handy that stores sell customized cards and stickers for cards. They even have Pokémon cards (seen here)!

I promise to wait in line in honor of the man in the red cap! 

Now if it was a jumbo Tigger decoration, then we'd be talking.

And another few musings: the streets are packed tightly and efficiently. The same goes for the stores. I think they fit a whole department store in the size of a small American coffee shop.

Also, some people have interesting phone decorations (seen below)…I’m not too sure what to make of these. I’m all for having a cool phone decoration, but if it makes it impossible to hold or put in your pocket, then I will question it. Oh well.

It was also great to see so many of my friends here. I do have to say that it is really nice to have people to talk to and to show you around. So far it has been so much fun hanging out with my friends out here. I look forward to more great times here!

-DC