Follow Me Around the World

Taipei, Taiwan

Well once again I had to wake up before 5am to catch my bus to the airport in Seoul.  The airport bus takes about 60-90 minutes depending on traffic and since I didn’t know when the bus was actually coming that early in the morning, I decided to go out there at like 530AM.  I followed the directions that were given to me by the guy in the hostel, and remembered them all until I got past the Burger King.  I wasn’t sure if it was in the middle of the street or on the curb.  I scoped out who was around and decided to ask the youngest person I could find (usually the younger they are, the greater chance they know SOME English.  I went up to her and just said “airport, airport?”  She said I was in the right spot, sweet!

I arrived at the airport after about 70 minutes (less traffic so early in the morning).  I had about 2.2 hours before my flight left, so I went to check in like usual to try and get my aisle seat.  There was no one on line to check in for Cathay, so I just went right up and got that aisle seat!  Now generally my rule is when flying I eat fast food at the airport.  It’s a terrible rule, but it just always seems to happen….
 
After scarfing down my Burger King I walked around the various duty free shops. Every single airport has the same high quality, extremely expensive stores; gucci, mont blanc, prada etc., and let me tell you duty free does not mean cheap! It is such a scam. But nonetheless I had to pick up a gift for Mrs. Chiang for letting me stay at her apartment while I was in Taipei. I picked out the universal thank you in a nice box set of Godiva chocolates. Not too pricey but I thought it was a nice gesture at the very least.

The flight was short, 2 hours only from Seoul, Korea to Taipei, Taiwan. I was supposed to be getting picked up by a limo service when I arrived, which was exciting considering I knew it would be hard to find Mrs. Chiang’s apartment (she and Liz both expressed their concern about finding it).

When I arrived I swiftly went through customs, got my passport stamped yet again, and this time they stapled the departure card in to my passport. I hate when immigration does things like that. I mean unless it is a visa that they are going to paste on, making marks such as a staple bothers me because you never know who will be concerned with what, in whatever country.

So I finally got my bag, and as I picked it off the carousel I said a little prayer as I always do when my bag safely arrives the city I am arriving in. G-d forbid they lose my pack, I would be in deep crap. I think I told Liz and Mrs. Chiang the wrong arrival time. For some reason I thought it was at 1155AM but it was 1105AM, so I think that is why the limo service was not there when I arrived. There were like 15 different signs up on the window, and people holding up signs with names, but after looking for several minutes, I did not find my name, so I sat down and waited to see if new limo drivers had arrived. After like ten minutes I saw some dude with a yellow sign and walked over to him and saw my name “Joshua Epstein,” on the white board. It was really cool! I was tempted to take a picture of it, but thought I’d just play it cool, let him take my bags to the mercedes and we would just be on our way.

That’s right, it was a pimp Mercedes S 320. I was ballin in the backseat, the driver handed me a bottle of water, put on the a/c, I took a couple slugs from the bottle and passed out on the very comfortable leather seats in the back. I knew it was going to be about a 40 minute drive to the apartment, perfect time to catch up on some shut eye.

We finally arrived at the apartment, and Liz’s mom was waiting for me. She greeted me with a big smile and a nice hello. I was shown to my room, which was nice, better than the hostels I had been staying at for sure! I plopped my stuff down, and immediately went for a shower. I hadn’t showered in a few days (right now I’m doing one every two days, not bad for the people who know me!). It felt good to be in a nice clean shower, with hot water, with a place to put your soap and with an actual drain. After the showers in Korea and Singapore where the water would just run off to the right of the communal shower, or undearneath the water heater in Korea, this was extremely refreshing. You know the feeling you get when you take a shower and still feel dirty? I have been getting that feeling constantly, but after this shower I was ready to go and ready to hit the streets of Taipei. Mrs. Chiang seemed to have a lot planned for the first day, places to see, things to do, which was nice considering I really hadn’t done much reading about Taipei. I wasn’t expecting a whole lot to be honest, which is good sometimes as your expectations are not so high.

I told her that I was first interested in going to the embassy or consulate’s office because I needed to add more pages to my passport due to the fact that I needed to get three visas and would be entering and re-entering many countries still on my trip. She handed me a map, put an “X” at the apartment and showed me how we would walk to the American Institute in Taiwan. I really wasn’t paying attention at first, I mean everything looked the same, and I really needed to spend some time to get acclimated to the new city and country I was in. Well we eventually got to the institute, Mrs. Chiang spoke Chinese to the guard and I was let in right away. After checking in all my stuff and all of her stuff, we proceeded to the second floor, where I would try and get more pages added. I approached the right window and asked for more pages, the lady on the other side of the window responded with “what time is your appointment?” I responded “I am just looking to add more pages to my passport?” She responded back “well you need an appointment,” I was like “it’s at 1:45.” She was like “There are no appointments at 1:45,” then Mrs. Chiang chimed in and spoke to her in chinese “the lady then said “you should have just said you didn’t have one, you just told me you had one at 1:45.” Then she asked me for my itinerary or proof of onward tickets to my next destintation, which of course I didn’t have. So I was shit out of luck on attempt one to get more pages added. I mean I still had several countries left, but figured that since it was so close and seemed pretty easy to do, while abroad, that I would give it another shot the next day.

After leaving the embassy, institute or whatever, Mrs. Chiang said it was time to experience the food and culture of Taipei. I said bring it on, and we were off to explore the streets of Taipei. We first stopped at this really small, but cool noodle place, where Mrs. Chiang ordered us authentic chinese cuisine, noodles, beef and other things all mixed together in a soup bowl. It was real good, but can anyone say MSG? Man oh man, these countries love their MSG and salt. I mean as soon as the food touches your lips your fingers swell up like an eight month pregnant woman. For real, I need to learn how to say “no msg!”

Regardless, the food was good. We left the noodle place and just walked a lot through the streets of Taipei, Mrs. Chiang was constantly buying us local foods, pastries, drinks like pearl tea or bubble tea, not really sure, but it was really thick, and was not liquidy at all. More of a second or third lunch/dessert.

We then returned back to the apartment to recharge the batteries, I was a little tired, as I had gotten up at 445am that same day to get to the airport. After relaxing, and planning our attack for the rest of the day, Mrs. Chiang mentioned a really cool technology building, similar to Sim Lim Tower in Singapore, I said that I was extremely interested in going there, as I love technology and cool gadgets. I was still on a quest to buy a new small mp3 player or something to that effect.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 9th, 2007 at 11:50 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.