Food, Glorious Food

Well, travelers, I have finally made it across the pacific ocean. It took three connections in total, and 18 1/2 hours in the air, but here I am in Taiwan. This was not only my first ever trip outside of the United States, but also my first plane trip where they served food! "What about airline food?" Is a popular joke about the mediocre quality of the food served over 25,000 feet, and until today, I had never been on a plane long enough to be served more that peanuts and water. When I received my flight itinerary I was thrilled to see that I would finally be in on the joke. I was told many times, by many different people, not to get too excited about the food, because it wouldn't be very good. But I maintained my childlike enthusiasm  Now that I have eaten three meals on a plane, that excitement and curiosity has been curbed. Not to say that the food is bad, it is just underwhelming. On a thirteen hour flight, one does not eat for energy or flavor, they eat because it provides a break from the monotony of trying and failing to catch up on sleep from the restless pre-trip night, endless in-flight movies that you can barely hear over the buzzing in your ears, and the steady stream of turbulence that sends your stomach plunging to a dark depth and then soaring back up your throat right afterwards. Melodramatic, I know, but true.
For the first meal they served several different things: a salad, a chicken and rice microwave entree, two pieces of sushi, crackers, a wedge of wrapped Swiss cheese, a caramel brownie, and a water bottle. A little more food than I wanted to eat on the plane, but it was nice all the same. Several hours later, they came by again with a ham sandwich. And for the last meal, they gave everyone a choice between more of the same chicken and rice from earlier, and pizza. This time around though, they just gave out the entree and a shortbread cookie, instead of another mini feast. The way my itinerary was laid out, I had a one hour flight to an international airport, then a thirteen and a half hour flight to Narita airport in Japan, and then four hours to Taipei. All three flights were on time, and the trip was smooth; but by the end of the day, I was fed up with sitting.

 One of the interesting things about my trip was that I got the opportunity to see three different airports. For instance, in Narita, the airport was full of duty free shops where they sold everything from giant bottles of alcohol to Hello Kitty dolls to Mont Blanc pens. The following are pictures from the Narita airport:

Duty free shop in the Tokyo/Narita airport

pastries 

Typical tourist stuff

Good luck cats

Stuffed characters from Hayao Miyazaki films

Fake food outside one of the restaurants

Upon arrival in Taiwan, you have to go through customs. You have to fill out a form that states where you will be staying, what your business is in the country, and whether or not you need a visa, (by the way, a visa is like temporary citizenship, and it is necessary if you will be in the country for more than 90 days). Then you show your passport, and are asked if you have anything to declare, such as fruit or animals. I didn't bring my ant farm with me on this trip so I didn't have anything. That is a joke, for those who don't know and were wondering who on earth, over the age of seven, has an ant farm these days.

                                            

My family picked me up from Taoyuan, which is the name of the airport. It is half an hour away from Taipei, so I got to see some of the landscape on the way. My favorite thus far is a river just outside of the city whose name in Chinese means wet. I really appreciate the dry humor in that, (pun intended). I also got my first glimpse of one of the famed night markets, where I tried some zha ji which is this amazing fried chicken that is so good apparently 1 million of them are sold per day in the city. I got to wash down this excellent meat with frog egg tea. This is just the name for this sweet tea that is made with jelly and lemonade and has little balls of a tapioca type substance that looks, and has the same consistency of frog eggs. I will get some pictures of the frog egg tea and the zha ji later on.

Here I am at the night market

Busy city streets

Until next time!