It's A Beautiful Life... Better Start Living!: Late Night Taiwan

After a quick hop to LA, I boarded the two story China Airline monstrosity for the longest flight I've ever done; 15 hours. Ay yai yai! Fortunately, a great friend of mine had given me 2 sleepy pills before I left Portland. One for on the way to Taipei, and one on the way back. The first few hours were easy to kill, getting settled, orienting myself with the movie, sitcom, music and video game selection. Eating a meal, solely to see if it really is as good as people claim. It was not, though I've had worse. After a few Tetris marathons, I popped that bad boy and slept for 7 hours straight! 4 hours left was totally fathomable, I was so pleased.

The gal next to me was traveling with a few others, and stopping over in Taipei on their journey to Cambodia to share a teaching curriculum in some of the schools. We all had the same layover, something like 11 hours, and decided to try and catch one of the night markets Taipei is known for. All but one of their group joined in the adventure. I transferred as much as I could from my purse into my carry on, and checked (all 7 kgs, thank you China Air...) into a long term storage desk. One guy stayed behind in the airport's transfer hotel. His passport does not allow him to leave the airport, because he is Chinese.

By the time we made it to the city, it was about midnight, too late for the night market. We wandered a bit and ended up in a nightclub, and stuck out like sore travelers. We mooched outlets to charge smart phones, brushed teeth in the bathroom & I'm sure tested the cocktail waitress' patience while slowly counting out the local currency, some in paper and other in coins. We had each exchanged a little bit of money at the airport, enough to buy a couple of beers and a little mystery meat on a stick from a street vendor afterward. The latter part of our evening/early morning we found ourselves sitting in the grass in front of the World Trade Center sipping canned beer, until about 4 am when we decided to head back to check in for our flights.