Let's jump back to late August of 2010 for just a moment. I had decided to use most of my summer vacation to come back and visit the US. The cheapest fare I could find was with EVA Airways, a Taiwanese airline that had me switch planes in Taipei before continuing to Los Angeles. On the way back, I had an 8 hour layover starting at 6 AM local time.
First, though, a quick aside about the real dumb thing I did. I misread my itinerary and thought 01:15 meant 1:15 PM, so when I showed up bright eyed and bushy-tailed to LAX, my plane was already almost touching down in Taipei. I haven't felt many worse feelings. However, I was able to call the EVA help line, and they rebooked me a couple days later. As it was still during summer break, I didn't have any trouble getting a couple additional days off, either.
For as much as I travel, I kind of suck at it.
After being bailed out by all the nice people and obliging systems around me, I did get my 8 hours in Taipei. The airport is an hour from the city, so with travel to and from I got 4 hours to walk around. It was incredibly hot and sticky (especially because for some reason I was wearing jeans), but I really enjoyed my time in the city and got to buy some great local food, too. Hopefully I'll get a chance to return to Taiwan at some point.
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| Scooters are HUGE in Taipei. Smart people. |
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| Here they were making juice out of pressed bamboo, from what I could tell. I tried some, and it was certainly something different. Might be an acquired taste. |
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| Small market in a park where I got the hard sell by several vendors and bought some amazing pineapple, dried mango, and tea. |
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| I really enjoyed the variation of architecture from what I was used to in Japan. |
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| When you're in the same city as the second tallest building in the world, you have to go check it out. |
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| Here I saw a definite similarity in the Buddhist architecture, gaudy as this example was. |
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| Hot, sweaty, jetlagged...international travel! |
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