TAIWAN - Day Two: LDS Temple & Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial

Day two started early - like 4am early.  Dang jet lag. (This happened to both Lance and I the rest of the trip. Why in the world was it 4am?  That's 4pm Indiana time, which is when I generally want to take a nap!)

After another interesting/unknown breakfast, we parted ways.  Lance off to Computex and me off to my day of temples and memorials.

Before I headed out of the room I decided to take this quick shot of our electric tea kettle.  Fun fact: you can't drink the water in Taiwan.  (Apparently the water system is a bit dated, so the water is silty and full of stuff you just don't want in you.)  In fact, no one does, not even residents, unless it's been boiled first.  So we always had a fresh pot of water cooling in our room so we could brush our teeth and stuff, and the hotel gave us new bottles of water each day.  This made showering so fun, because I was still suffering from my cold and couldn't breath through my nose, but I couldn't really open my mouth because I was afraid of accidentally drinking the water!

At this point I also remembered that I hadn't taken any of my traditional feet shots. (Problem solved.  And then quickly forgotten.  Guess it just wasn't my thing this trip.)

My first stop of the day was a visit to the LDS Taiwan temple, which was only a few stops away on the MRT. (I *heart* the MRT.) ((This is not weird at all.))  As I left the station I ran into a couple of sister missionaries.  They were surprised to see me and you could tell they were excited to speak with someone in English!  They were very friendly and very chatty, but they were on their way to a district meeting and had to get going.

This temple is interesting because it's on this little plot of land in the middle of, well, pretty typical Taipei.  (Most LDS temples in the States are on big plots of land in nice areas, surrounded by pretty gardens and such.)  It's also interesting because it looks a whole heckuva lot like the Chicago temple we usually go to.

A borrowed picture of the Taiwan temple.

A borrowed picture of the Chicago temple.

I went inside fully expecting to have to do a session in Mandarin (with an English translation headset), but found out that they were randomly having an English session because some group from Singapore was there.  Do a lot of people in Singapore only speak English?  I didn't ask, because most of the temple workers did not speak English.  So getting my clothes the right size was pretty fun.

As I sat in the temple it dawned on me that although I was 7,000 miles away from Indiana, I felt totally peaceful and at home in the temple.  Everyone was so nice and helpful and it didn't matter at all that we didn't speak the same language. It was a lovely session.

I tried to get a few good shots when I was back outside, but by this point it was stormy and the grounds really are so small that it's hard to take good pictures.

The visitor's center is right next to it.  I didn't feel the need to go in. (Hey, I was on a schedule, and I've been inside of LOTS of temple visitor's centers!)

A pretty tree in the back.

Not a speck of English on the building.

Here's the view from the corner across the street.  I'm diggin' the blue roof.  There was some guy in what looked like a guard shack on that same corner, but I could never figure out what he was guarding.  He gave me a funny look.

I was in a nice skirt and shirt, but I didn't bother going back to the hotel to change because I had noticed lots of women in Taipei wearing really nice dresses and clothes just around town or at tourist spots.  In fact, I even changed out of my sandals and put on my comfy Skechers - also something I had seen a lot of.  When in Rome, right?

My next stop was the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial.  So from what I gather, Chiang Kai-shek was a leader of the Republic of China for a long time.  (Like the 1920's to the 1970's.  I dunno.  Go look it up.) He was part of the KMT or nationalist party, which was not the communists, which is probably why they like him so much in Taiwan.  Oh, and I'm pretty sure he ruled as president in Taiwan for a good chunk of time.  I don't think he liked Americans very much.  It's hard to know all of this for sure, because hardly anything at this place was translated into English, so I'm just trying to recall what I read in books before the trip.  Just know that he was a big deal in Taiwan, so much so that they built him this big ol' memorial!

I came out of the MRT station, rounded the corner, and saw this.  Wow!  I know, I'm a broken record, but everything in this plaza was GINORMOUS.  Just look at the size of the people around the buildings for reference.  The building in this picture is the National Theater, which is mirrored on the other side by the National Conference Hall.

The details of the buildings were beautiful.

And grand.

Here's the gate at the entrance.  Again, look at those tiny people in front of it for a size comparison.

The plaza was huge, too.  It was the site for lots of political demonstrations in the 70's and 80's, which paved the way for democracy in Taiwan.  (Even though Taiwan is a Republic of China, it's also a democracy.  Yeah, I don't get all of the political stuff, either. So it's part of China but not.  Depends on who you ask.)

This area is very common for wedding pictures.  Hopefully this bride got all of the pictures she wanted before it started raining!

So the gate is at the front and the theaters are on each side of the plaza and then there is the immense memorial.

I decided to try a few selfies before I hiked it up to the memorial.

 I'm squinty because even though it was overcast the plaza was made of light and bright stonework.

Just to prove I was actually there!  It was all a little surreal.  I mean, I've seen some pretty impressive and big places: Petra in Jordan, Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, St. Paul's Cathedral in London, Westminster Abby in England, Stonehenge in England, a rather large Mayan temple in Cozumel.  This place ranked up there in impressiveness.

From what I could gather from the poorly translated signs, this building is undergoing a good cleaning and renovation, so it's not as fancy as it normally is.  Still looked pretty great to me!

You had to hoof it up 89 steps to get to the top. (He died when he was 89.  The Taiwanese are all about numbers and symbolism and such.  I forgot to mention yesterday that Taipei 101 is 101 because 100 is a lucky number and 01 represents represents the binary system.  And something to do with the New Year and January 1st, or 1-01. Oh, and there are 101 floors in the building.  Cool, right?)

Here's the view from the top.  I still can't believe I was there!

Looking up at the memorial.  I have no idea what that says; there were no translations anywhere. I'm gonna go with something along the lines of "Welcome, Maren".

Inside was this huge statue of Mr. Kai-shek himself.  Kinda reminded me of the Lincoln Monument, but not really. (?)  I don't know... for a land that seems to value democracy so much, this seemed a little "grand leader"-ish to me.  I know, I know, I'm just an ugly American tourist.  But still.  It was impressive and cool and a little weird all at once.  I was also pretty much the only white person I saw the whole time I was there; I don't think this is a big tourist destination.  Which is a shame because it's so cool. And BIG.

Why doesn't America have more BIG things like this?  They kinda do in Washington.  Maybe because we have so much BIG land? Maybe ours are all more natural, like the Grand Canyon or Yosemite or the Mississippi River. I dunno. Now I'm rambling.  Blame the jet lag.

So, according to Wikipedia (because, of course, there were no translations while I was there) the wall has the Chinese characters for Ethics, Democracy, and Science.  On the side walls it says "The purpose of life is to improve the general life of humanity" and "The meaning of life is to create and sustain subsequent lives in the universe". I'm assuming these are attributed to Chiang.

There are two guards in the hall at all times.  They stand really still, and there is a changing of the guard every hour on the hour.

The ceiling of the memorial. I think the star in the middle was the symbol for the national party.

There was a museum in the bottom floors of the memorial, but not really many English translations for much of it, so I got bored pretty easily.  Sad.  Fortunately, I made it back outside in time for the changing of the guard, which was pretty cool.  Very ceremonial, very masculine, kinda noisy because they had taps on the backs of their boots.  Actually, it was also kinda long - a good 20 minutes!  But I didn't feel like I could leave until it was all done.

Just about everyone there took a ton of pictures, all on their phones.  (I was one of the very few with a camera in most of the places I went. I still think it's easier to use my camera and it takes better pictures.  Yes, I'm an old fuddy duddy.)

Okay, so there was this guy standing next to me and he filmed the ENTIRE thing.  I couldn't help but wonder when he was ever going to watch that again.  Or who else would want to watch it.

So of course I decided to do a little video and force you to watch it!  (Don't worry - it's only 19 seconds.)

The guy in the suit is there all day to make sure every piece of the suit is in proper order, and that the tourists don't bother the soldiers.  He was VERY particular about his job.

Finally, the ceremony ended.  It was, once again, super hot and super humid.  I was melting.  And hungry.  And tired.  It was time to find some lunch.

TAIWAN - Day One: Beitou Hot Springs and Shilin Night Market

The blogging of this trip is taking ridiculously long.  But there is so much I want to remember!  I know this is totally like watching somebody's vacation slides - no wait, that is exactly what this is.  But I will try to make it as entertaining as possible!  Okay, I don't expect everyone to read every part of this.  But there may or may not be a quiz the next time we meet.

Okay, so.  After lunch at what was easily the most interesting food court I have ever been in, we decided to head up to the Beitou region.  Beitou (pronounced bay-toe) is in the northwest region of Taipei and is famous for its hot springs.  I was bound and determined to try out a private hot spring bath!  (Not so much into the idea of a public hot spring soak.  For those you must soak in your birthday suit, and while the sexes are separated, I felt no need to make more of a spectacle of myself than I already was just by being lily white, several inches taller than most, and having much lighter hair than most.)  So we rode the MRT up to Beitou and had a look around.  I had planned on dragging Lance to the Beitou Hot Springs Museum first, but it was closed!  So sad!! All this planning I had done in advance and I forgot that most museums in Taiwan are closed on Mondays.  Dang.  I thought I'd make it back up there but I never did.

No matter.  We decided to go to a hot springs resort that I had read about in my guide book and online, which sounded promising.  (The Spring City Resort, in case you're interested.) Unfortunately, my map of Beitou was less than great.  We ended up having to hike up some pretty good hills to get to the resort, and of course it was the furthest resort away from the MRT station!

On the way up we came across this park that was apparently guarded by a pack of feral dogs.  No, for reals.  They were not friendly. It was not a happy dog park.

So we hiked and hiked up the hill in the 90+ degree heat with 90% humidity.  You can imagine how lovely we looked and felt when we FINALLY made it to the resort.  Let's just say I was not really feeling in the mood to take a good long soak in scalding water.

But no matter!  I was in Beitou and I was gonna take a soak if it killed me! Or frizzed out my hair even more, if that was even possible!  (It was.)

You weren't allowed to take pictures of the private bath, so I yanked this one from the interwebs.

Yep, our room looked pretty much like that.  It wasn't dirty or anything; just dark.  We stripped down and first showered off with cold water from a handheld shower head.  Then we got into the odorous hot spring bath.  It didn't smell that bad - sulfurous, yes, but not unbearably so.  It sure did feel good, though!  I swear my cold vanished and my aching muscles melted away and my skin cleared and I was healed of all ills!

No, not really.

But it was a good soak.

After our hour was up we showered and then begrudgingly put our sweat-damp clothes back on.  It was rather gross.

Then we trudged back down the hill to where we started. We weren't quite sure what to do.  So I took some random pictures. (Pretty typical street views in Taipei: shops at street level, apartments all above.)

Then we decided to get something to drink from the local 7-11. Yeah, 7-11's are pretty ubiquitous in Taipei.  One on just about every street, but nary a Slurpee to be had!  Instead, it serves snack foods and drinks (no drink fountains of any sort, though), and instead of scary-looking hot dogs that have been on rollers forever they have scary-looking noodles and dumplings and baked yams that look like they've been there forever.  (Some things are the same throughout the world.)  I noticed that there was a bit of seating and most people who bought something sat down to eat, which I don't think ever happens at 7-11's here in the States!  We're Americans at heart, though, and took our Coke Zero's to go.  (I know, I should have tried something new and different, but my jet-lagged self needed a little pick me up and I just didn't feel like playing a guessing game as to what I would have.)

We sat at a little nearby park, drank our sodas, and decided to see a little nearby market.  It was kinda lame and small.  You could tell it was definitely a local market, because we were VERY out of place!  By this point, though, I was kinda used to the looks.  (Not ever really mean looks, just more of a "Oh!  You're not from around here!" kind of look.)  This is where I smelled my first durian; it was rather unpleasant. I never did get to taste it, but I'm okay with that. (I now understand why local hotels don't allow it inside!)

Eventually we made our way back to the MRT and headed over to the Shilin Night Market, which is probably the most famous night market in Taipei.  It's - you guessed it - HUGE!  And CROWDED!  The Taiwanese go to night markets to eat and shop. They'll eat a little here and a little there from different vendors, snacking at each place.  (Maybe a little like tapas in Spain?)

Most night markets are all outdoors, but Shilin is so big and popular that part of it is inside a building.

Our hot and sweaty selves.  Seriously, we were sweating buckets but none of the locals seemed to even notice the heat.  Several times throughout the trip I wondered if they had evolved to not need sweat glands.

We saw a TON of funny t-shirts, funny only because the makers obviously did not know what they were putting on them.  Such as this IU shirt - go tigers! (???)  Lots of shirts that didn't make any sense or had lots of swear words. I also saw one on this girl that had a weird, drugged out version of Cookie Monster's face across the front, and above that it said "Grand Canyon" in bright letters.  I wish I could have taken more pictures, but 1) it's probably not a good idea to take pictures of people's clothing because you want to laugh at it, and 2) I didn't take many at the stalls because I didn't want to deal with the owners thinking I was going to make a purchase.

As you can see, it got pretty crowded.  (And it only got worse later on!)

We liked this Cow Boss place. We didn't get to see if it reached the "Boss level of delicious" though.

They had entire shops filled with claw games like this. Our kids would have gone nuts.

Just busy busy all around.  Lots of shops; some in English, as you see. But most in Mandarin with slight English translations.  I was disappointed to discover that most of the clothes and shoes were comparable in price to those in the States.  You could buy cheapo t-shirts, but I'm not really in the market for those.  You could buy a lot of cheap crap stuff, but I really don't need more stuff around the house.  I looked for a Father's Day tie for my dad (because how cool would it be to give him a TIE from TAIwan?!?)  But no luck; nothing there looked like anything he would wear.  Plus, they were pretty cheapo.  We did eventually buy the kids some Minion toys which I'm sure were illegally made totally followed US copyright laws.  The sellers didn't speak a word of English, but we figured each other out and they were only too happy to sell four of them to us.

At one point we got kinda lost and turned around on the outskirts of the market, but happily we got to see the infamous Modern Toilet Restaurant. (One of those places I wanted to see, not so much go to.)

One of the gorgeous fruit stands.

Grilled squid anyone?  We actually tried a small piece and it was really good!

A random, colorful shop.

Aha!  Here we see the infamous Stinky Tofu. (I had to steal this image as well because I could never get close enough to a stall selling it.  Nor did I want to.  But it looks EXACTLY like what I saw.)  This dish lives up to it's moniker.  It smells as if some tofu fell into an open sewer and died, and then became zombie tofu and crawled out of the sewer and killed a bunch of sea food and gos and then dragged that back to the sewer and puked it all up.  Seriously, gross stuff.  I like to think I'm an adventurous eater, and I really do like tofu, but no way did I want to try that. (The offender is the squares of stinkiness floating in the large bowl.)  Apparently the locals love it.

We tried this candy covered strawberry kabob instead.  (Another stolen image.  Sorry!  But we ate ours too fast!)  It was pretty delicious.  Bonus that we had a random cherry tomato at the bottom of ours. (You could buy candy covered kabobs of those, too.)  Lance let me eat it.  It wasn't gross; it just wasn't that great, either.  About what you would expect a candy covered tomato to taste like. It cost us less than $1.

We also got in a fairly long line and bought a mystery meal.  (I've found that you can never go wrong when there's a long line of locals waiting for food!) I've done a little research and I'm pretty sure it was a fried scallion pancake with a fried egg in the middle.  They'd put the dough and the egg in this HOT and very ancient oil and fry it right up.  They put it in a plastic bag for us and it was several minutes before it was cool enough to eat.  (And even then it singed our tongues.)

It as So Good.  All crispy and warm and scalliony and fried just yum.  And the runny egg yolk?  Perfection.  Oh man, if I could make those at our annual doughnut party I totally would.  But I just know that I'd never be able to properly recreate it, never be able to do it justice.  Those guys at that little stand sure knew what they were doing!  I think it cost us around $1.

We walked and walked and sweated and finally found something that had come highly recommended to us from someone else who had been to Taiwan: Bao Bing.  Bao Bing is a shaved ice dessert.  But the ice is made of sweetened condensed milk and is shaved so finely that it has the consistency of snow.  Then this is covered with the topping of your choice, such as strawberries, guava, papaya, red beans, some kind of weird jelly-like things... we went with the mango.  And it was perfect.

Sweet mother of mangoes, it was good.  I'm still kicking myself for only getting it that one time while we were there.  I'm very, very tempted to invest in a Hawaiian ice shaving machine just to see if I could recreate it here.  It was that good.  (Okay, so it was still a billion degrees out, so anything cold would probably taste good, right?  Still.  Delicious.)

We sat on a randomly empty storefront step and just people watched.  It was great.  We got watched a lot in return. This seemed fair.  It was the perfect ending to our first day in Taipei.

TAIWAN - Day One: Breakfast and Taipei 101

Thankfully, we mostly slept through the night.  When I got up and looked out the window, this is what I saw.

The big skyscraper in the distance is Taipei 101, which around 2005 was the tallest building in the world.

We got dressed and headed downstairs for breakfast.  The buffet they offered each day was an interesting combination of East and West.  There was always scrambled eggs, toast, fruit, and juice.  But they also often had things like potato salad, pasta dishes, and a salad bar, making me wonder how much research they did on the differences between breakfast and lunch/dinner foods in the West.  I wonder if they wondered why we never ate any of these things?  (I noticed that the Asian people who were staying there often did!)

Lance and I were a bit more adventurous and ate a bit of the Eastern food - with chopsticks, I might add!  My favorites were the steamed milk breads; the white ones with a hint of coconut were the best.  (I didn't take pictures of my breakfast because I just didn't want to be that tourist.  You know?  And hey, sometimes a girl just wants to eat her breakfast, not document it.)  Anywho, I stole borrowed these images from the interwebs.  They looked pretty much like that; all soft and moist and yummy.

I also loved this cucumber salad they had; I ate it every day.  It was a bit spicy, but I was still dealing with my cold so it was perfect for me!

I also liked trying the different fruits, like the yellow watermelon (tastes like red), muskmelons (kinda bland), pineapple (soooo much better than here in Indiana - go figure), and some other mystery fruits.  They often had steamed squash that was pretty good, too. I think they also served a sort of squid jerky that was lightly sweetened; it was excellent with the eggs!

I did learn that I'm not a huge fan of warm soy milk. (Cold for me, please!)  I also stayed away from the hot dog dish they had; it was like cut up hot dogs with some sort of noodles and veggies... no thanks.

They also had triple-decker sandwiches made with regular sandwich bread (crusts off, cut into triangles) with ham (I think), eggs, tomatoes, cucumbers, and mayo.  They were pretty tasty, and one morning I saw a lady eating hers with chopsticks - as in picking it up whole and eating it as if the chopsticks were her fingers.  I was pretty impressed, so I tried it out, too.  I can't say I was quite as graceful, but I got the job done!

That morning we ventured onto the Taipei MRT for the first time.  (That's their subway/train system.)  I am always a little intimidated by unfamiliar public transportation, but quickly realized just how easy and convenient the MRT is!  And so clean and not scary at all!  (The same cannot be said for BART, which I used last summer.)  We put some money onto EasyCards, which had RFID tags in them that you just pressed against a little sensor every time you went into or out of a station. My Easycard became my best friend during the trip and I would have kept it, but at the end you could return it for a full refund on the remaining amount in your account.  Awesome. (Once again I am stealing images from the interwebs.  I just didn't think to take all of these pictures - I was too busy experiencing them.)

It was also super cheap - we're talking around $.16-.25 a ride, depending on where you were going.  And the MRT pretty much took me everywhere I needed to go the entire trip!

So we rode down to the World Trade Center to see if Lance could register early for the conference (he couldn't) and so then we decided to go to the observation deck of Taipei 101.  It was very touristy and kinda pricey for Taiwan (around $16 each) but totally worth it.

I only took one picture of the building while we were there:

I know, lame.  Which is why I also swiped these from the internet! (Note: we never saw fireworks from the tower.  But we watched a video of the fireworks, which was pretty impressive!)

First, we had to take a touristy picture in front of a Taipei 101 backdrop, which they tried to sell to us later on.  This was awesome only because Lance was wearing a green shirt, which meant he blended into the background and looked like a bobbing head.  If I had been wearing green as well I might have considered buying the picture. Next, we got to ride up on the WORLD'S FASTEST ELEVATOR.  I know, you're totally jealous, right?  It was something like 89 floors in 37 seconds.  It felt fast.  And they had these cool lights on the ceiling of the elevator!

We reached the observatory floor and the first three things I noticed were: 1) There were a ton of tour groups, 2) everyone seemed to be taking pictures of everything (I mean everything, even pictures of pictures), and 3) the city.  It. Is. HUGE.

I mean, in my head I knew it was a big city.  Three million people!

But the miles and miles of high rises surrounding the building was just staggering.  It was very impressive.

So impressive we had to take a selfie.  This is about the only good selfie of my whole trip; it's like I'm out of practice.  Or not a teenager who does it all the time.  One of the two.

It looks like the mountains stop the buildings, but not really.  There were lots of places where buildings were wedged up in the valleys and all around.

We had an audio tour to listen to as we walked around the building.  It was selling Taipei pretty hard, which I thought was weird since we were already there.  I wanted to know a lot more about what I was seeing, but it only told us a little.  Worth it, though.

This building is especially interesting because you can see the big damper ball inside. (That's what helps stabilize buildings in typhoons or earthquakes and such.)  It's HUGE.  And glittery because they painted it gold.

I was fond of their description.  Is the wind damper super big, or is the damper for super big winds? Both.

I tried to be like all the other tourists and flash a peace sign while posing next to the "Damper Baby" mascot, but with the awkward stance and bad lighting I just look like a dingus.

We eventually finished the tour, went up on the observation deck (not that impressive - reminded me of when I was 11 and went to the top of the World Trade Center in NY), and then treated ourselves to a Mango Snow treat, which was quite yummy.

We made our way down to the bottom of the building and decided to check out the food court and mall, which is in the basement.  The mall?  HUGE. (Apparently lots of things in Taiwan are huge to me.)  And fancy-schmancy.  Lots of international high-end retailers.  The food court was super interesting; just think of a food court here in the US.  Then triple its size.  And fill it with Chinese food.  Oh sure, there were places that touted to be Italian or Indian or what have you, but it was all a Taiwanese take on these foods. (Read: it all looked good, but not authentic!)  And boy, was it busy!

Lance got some beef and noodle dish, and I got what I think was some sort of duck with rice.  Very tasty.  We also got some big fruit smoothies.  The whole lunch cost about $14 for the both of us, and this is at a more expensive place in Taipei.  Awesome.

There were a few American places there, like McDonald's and Baskin Robins, but they didn't look that interesting.  (I'm very anti-McDonald's and places like that when I travel.  I want to try new things!)

The food at the food court is interesting because it's always served on real dishes with real chopsticks - as in not disposable.  As we munched on our yummy lunches we realized we had no idea of what to do when we were done.  Take our trays somewhere?  Leave them on the table?  No clue.  And no one around us was giving us any clues.  Dang.  Eventually we decided to leave them on the table, and felt better once we saw workers clearing other tables.  Phew!  Did not want to be 'ugly Americans' so early in our trip!

TAIWAN - Getting There

I'm gonna lay it out straight - Taiwan. Was. AMAZING!!!!

Seriously, this was such a great, eye-opening trip.  Not that everything went according to plan (more on that later), but it was just so different from any other type of travel I've done before.  All of my foreign travel before this had either been with a group (BYU Jerusalem Center), in a country where English was spoken (England), or on a cruise, which hardly counts as foreign travel at all (Jamaica, Grand Cayman, Mexico, etc.)

This was hard-core foreign travel and I loved it.

I really feel so lucky and grateful to have been able to go.  It all came about so fast and it all came about so smoothly; I really think I was just meant to go.  Not that I initially thought so. Back at the very end of April Lance mentioned going to Computex, which is a huge tech show held every year in Taiwan.  I, of course, was very jealous and claimed that I wanted to go, but laughed it off knowing full well that I would not be joining him.

Well, awesome husband that he is, Lance negotiated my airfare and hotel stay as part of the deal for him to go. (We're talking $3000+ here, people.)

For reals.

Well.  If they were willing to pay for me to go, there was NO WAY I was going to pass an opportunity like that up!!  So we frantically thought about who we could pay to watch the kids again, and we made a short list when it suddenly dawned on me that the Janene and David Silvers (who watched the kids last year when we went to SF) were still in town.  I figured it couldn't hurt to ask, sent them an email with our offer, and they said YES!  Hooray!  

So in less than a month I put together a week-long trip to Taiwan, including booking the flights, hotel, transportation, and what the heck I would be doing while there. (As with SF, Lance would be off at the conference during the day, leaving me to my own devices.)

So.  The week leading up to May 31st was, of course, super busy.  Lots of end-of-school activities.  Lots of cleaning of the house.  Lots of mess-making by the children.  Our annual last day of school treasure hunt.  Even some appointments that I just couldn't get out of.  But, by the morning of our departure we were packed and ready to go!

Spencer left earlier that morning for a Cub Scout activity.  We could barely get a good-bye out of the child.  I'm not entirely convinced he even realized we were gone for the week.  Josh reminded me that I promised to bring back candy.  Cole... was surprisingly good.  I think because I told him the Silvers would play games.  And Tess?  Poor Tess was not very happy.  She was quite clingy.  But I think a melt-down was averted when they agreed to push her on the swing as we left. (That girl will do anything if you offer to push her on the swing!)

And thus we were off!

At the airport we met up with Randy, who was coming along to help Lance 'sell' Aimpad at the conference.  Randy is a very friendly, very Midwestern older man (maybe around 60?) who I liked at once.  So friendly!

We had a quick lunch before getting on our first leg of the trip - from Indy to Chicago.  Lame, I know, but Indy is not really an international airport.  As per usual with American Airlines, the flight left late, and so even though it was only about 40 minutes long we were late for our connecting flight at O'Hare.  We literally sprinted from one gate to the next as we could hear our names and warnings of final boarding calls for our flight.  I cursed American the entire time.  (I've had a grudge against them since they stranded me in Tel Aviv while the entire Middle East decided to blow each other up. It's been 18 years since then, so I figured it was time to give them another chance when it came to booking our flight.  Mistake.)

We got there just in time and entered a HUGE plane with everyone looking moodily at us, as if it were our fault our first flight was late. Blame the airline, people, not the passengers! Happily, we discovered we were in the first row, just behind First and Business class, which meant we actually had leg room!  Heaven for a 12 hour and 50 minute flight!  (You read that right.)

The next HALF OF A DAY was spent sitting, reading, watching movies, sleeping a little bit, and eating.  It seemed like every couple of hours they were shoving more food and snacks and drinks at us, and because there was nothing else to do we of course ate all of it.  The flight was not that fun, but it wasn't as bad as I was dreading, either.

We finally arrived in Tokyo.  Since we crossed the International Date Line it was now Sunday afternoon.  Weird.  We dazedly walked around the airport a bit and took a few pictures of the plastic food they display at restaurants because I knew Josh would get a kick out of it.  (He did.)

We also took this awful selfie, which I am only showing to prove just how out of it we were. (We'd basically been up for about 24 hours by this point, because can anyone really get good sleep on a plane?  I say nay.)

I also had some fun in the bathrooms.

I remember the airport being VERY hot and stuffy.  Grossly so.   I think that might be kind of a cultural thing, because it seemed like lots of places we went to throughout the trip were fairly warm, even with the AC on.  Or maybe we're just ugly Americans who demand it to be chilly indoors in the summer.  One of the two.

It was hard to want to get back on the plane for what turned out to be a 4+ hour flight.  (We had to wait on the tarmac FOREVER.)  I was pretty dazed but tried to stay up, figuring it would make going to bed that night easier.  (There's a 12 hour time difference between Taiwan and Indiana.)  I watched a movie and ate a cute little bento box dinner with chopsticks.

Finally - FINALLY - we made it to Taipei.  We slouched through the airport, got in line for immigration, and then left Lance in line while Randy and I exchanged some currency.  While in line I realized just how foreign of a place I was in.  I mean, I technically knew how different it would be, but that's not the same as actually being there.  It was very interesting to be one of only a handful of white people in that gigantic line in an even bigger airport!  

We finally got through immigration and followed signs out of the airport and got into a line for a taxi.  Brilliant girl that I am, I had printed the name of our hotel - in English and Mandarin - which made it much easier to explain where we wanted to go.  Randy was impressed that I had thought of such a thing, but to me it felt pretty basic; I went into this trip assuming no one would speak English!  (I felt pretty smug as I watched some Australian chics try to explain to the guy in charge of taxis where they wanted to go.) ((I am not very nice when I am exhausted.))

Then we got to experience the danger that is riding in a cab through Taipei late at night, which included the cabby texting the address into the GPS as we flew down the freeway, swerving in and out of lanes.  This, coupled with the entertainment of Randy trying to talk to a man who obviously did not know any English, woke us up pretty well!

We finally dragged ourselves into our hotel (the Hope City Fushing Hotel), close to midnight, I think.  I was a bit nervous about the hotel, only because even though the internet has made things WAAAAAY easier as far as booking hotel rooms internationally, you never know what you're really in for until you get there.  

Turns out, our room was pretty great!

The glass wall back there is the bathroom, which I never got pictures of.  It included a good sized tub, a shower with a sprayer and a rain shower head, a toilet (Western style, not squat!), and a vanity with no counter space.

If the pictures seem dim, that's because it is.  They're not big into bright lights there.  Also, yes, we knew there would be two twin sized beds.  It was either this or sharing a full sized, and since I wanted actually sleep on this trip (thankyouverymuch), I chose the singles. (Sorry but not really, Lance.)

By this point I hadn't showered in close to 36 hours and had been shuttled around all sorts of weird places, freezing on the plane from Chicago to O'Hare, and melting from Tokyo to Taipei.  It was gross.  So after quick showers we fell asleep, exhausted.