28 April 2023
Full discombobulation
Arriving in Taipei on a Boeing 787 Dreamliner
Well I am here now, I think. It took a really long time to get here. Felt a lot longer than getting to South Korea even though Taiwan is closer to Australia than Korea, this is due to the longer stopover in Singapore.
Anyway, flight 2 was only just over 4 hours, but the 35 minute taxi from the terminal to the runway was very long, other people were getting mad about it, we seemed to turn around and go back the other way at one point.
Lunch on the plane was actually great, some sort of chicken with noodles, the noodles were excellent.
Again I had a spare seat next to me which was unexpected.
So all plain sailing and I am too tired to recall anything interesting enough to exaggerate into a funny story. Now we wait to see what diseases I caught from the sputum Olympics.
Once off the plane there was a bit of chaos in Taoyuan airport - which is the airport you use for Taipei even though it is the next city over.
Recently they introduced an electronic arrival card, but not everyone was told to use it, Singapore airlines sent it to me. Other people were filling out manual ones, mainly Japanese and Korean people based on their passports. This then caused quite a few people who had filled out the electronic one to leave the line to get a manual one to fill out, and then try and get back to their position in the very long line. It got a bit heated between a few people. I will admit that I was not 100% confident my online card would be correct, so when people asked me I said I did not know. If my electronic one was incorrect I probably would have left the window, filled out the paper one and re-joined the back of the line, then complained about it here. Unfortunately it worked so I have nothing to complain about.
The train into the city is new to me since I was last here, it takes only 36 minutes and my hotel is very near the main station, but I exited on the wrong side and it was already dark, yet I was bravely confident I knew where I was going, I was wrong, I became discombobulated, I had to go back into the station and start again! But now, here I am, in my tiny hotel room, full of salad.
This is me looking thrilled to be on the train, after 36 hours of no sleep. I look a bit like the new downs syndrome barbie doll that was in the news earlier this week.
My room. It is a room from a well established hotel chain with no fewer than 5 hotels dotted around the station. Because it is well known and near the station the rooms are tiny. But not as tiny as this picture makes it seem, there's more to the room along the window along the left, where I am sitting now. Also a window. But a bit of road noise. Working out the shower resulted in a combination of burns, and flooding the room, but it is ok now.
The world is scooters now.
I wanted a quick dinner and to get back to my hotel, type this and go to sleep. So I headed to the main shopping part of town, Ximending, where every restaurant had long lines. So I had to walk away from this area a bit.
A bonus street scene in Ximending. Mask wearage is pretty good, despite the dude in the yellow shirt here being maskless.
I found a good option, tofu poke. I was still full of noodles, rice, dim sum etc. from the various airports. This was pretty good. In excellent news I can tap and pay with my phone here. The internet suggested foreign cards still do not work. I think perhaps Americans that still want to swipe and sign are out of luck.