Days 1-3: Boston to Taipei

Jan 30 - Feb 1

After a few hours sleep, I had a fairly rip-the-bandaid-off-quickly 6am goodbye to Jess, Jon, Karen, and Henry, and then I was abruptly on my way to the airport. I've been telling people that these last two weeks have been a crunch because of three things happening all at once: 1. tying up loose ends after ten years living in Boston, 2. moving out of our apartment, getting rid of as much as possible and putting everything else in boxes, and 3. preparing for five months of travel. Bleary-eyed, sitting in the back of the cab, nothing was sinking in yet. I was just on my way to the airport.

To get to Taipei from Boston, it's about the same distance whether you go east or west. I happened to be stopping in San Francisco. As my flight landed, I thought that I'd be making this same Boston to SF flight about five and a half months later when Jess and I move out there. But what a lot of stuff was going to happen between now and then.

I was already feeling a little crummy from my six-hour first flight, and wasn't excited about the upcoming 14-hour one from SFO to Taipei. I was a little concerned that my airplane neighbor was an extremely talkative southern baptist preacher. The plane was having electrical problems, so my neighbor and I had a quality two hours sitting on the runway to get to know each other. Don't get me wrong: I have nothing against devout religious people, and they're usually much better and aware people than most. But this guy told me really long story after story, followed by a longer story about this (what seemed to me a pyramid scheme) costco-like business he had started with his evangelical buddy two week ago and which was already doing incredibly well, so he said.

And then I had my first bit of good luck: the flight was cancelled. United put everyone up in hotels and provided meal vouchers. I couldn't have been happier because I was in no rush to get to Taipei and I could use a break, a shower, and a good night's sleep before the marathon flight.

When I got back on the plane the next morning, I had my second bit of good luck: the preacher guy had gotten himself re-seated next to his wife, across the isle, and I had an empty seat and then the isle next to me. Having that extra space was an incredible boon for my comfort during the flight.

Chiang Kai-shek International Airport was nothing special other than its name. Even though my flight itinerary had this name printed, the terminal announced "Taoyuan International Airport" instead. This is an example of a nation-wide movement to remove Chiang's name and image from public spaces. Over his 20+ years in power in Taiwan, he was an able state governor who laid the groundwork for Taiwan's future economic success, but he was also responsible for the imprisionment, tourture, and murder of over 100,000 Taiwanese people.

I followed the directions from the hostel to get on the "lai lai" (east) bus line into Taipei city, and then had a bit of a hard time figuring out when to get off. The city began with slummy, run-down outskirts and turned into a mix bewteen Bogota (a big city in a developing country) and Manhattan (wide streets, lots of cars, brightly-lit stores, and bustle).

After getting off the bus, I had a hard time finding the tiny lane at the end of which my "Taipei Hostel" was. I paid my 300 NT (less than $10) and was shown to my dorm room bed. It was meager but clean, not including the bathroom that was damp and smelled strongly of mold. I'm pretty tolerant of such things, but it was revolting. It was then that I realized the whole hostel, and Taipei itself was humid and damp. Not hot humid, but pretty cold and damp, due mostly to the heavy mist that envelopes the city and looks disturbingly like smog. There were also many people, and all scooter-drivers, wearing filter masks. I learned later that Taiwanese wear masks when they feel themselves getting a cold, attempting to not spread the cold to others. But the scooter drivers wear them for resperatory purposes, not so much due to smog, but I think just because there are a lot of vehicles on the road in close proximity.

It was now Friday evening, after leaving Jon and Karen's place on Wednesday morning, flying for 20 hours, a long layover, losing a day when crossing the international date line, and navigating to the hostel. I hit the sack hard at about 9pm, Taiwan time.