Los Angeles to Taiwan is a long flight, over 13 hours. You try to occupy your mind and rearrange your skeletal structure into a pretzel shape to fit into your seat, then when you’ve endured all that you can it’s discouraging to see it’s only been one hour, 12 more to go. Goodness, the seats were so cramped! Again irony that I got the very spacious emergency exit seat on the hop to LAX, but for the long haul I had exquisite unpleasantness. It was a 747 with rows ten seats wide (3 – 4 – 3). I’m pretty sure they engineered in a few extra seats just to tweak the cramp factor. After all of the security regulations of the past few years on US airliners, it’s very interesting to see the difference flying internationally. I noticed that they gave us all a metal knife and a glass glass with our meals. You could maliciously spread butter and chip a tooth with those kinds of implements. China Airlines does try to help you keep your brain numb by giving free alcohol (amazing that no one was abusing it) and placing a small LCD screen on the back of the seat in front of you, inches from your face. It has a little remote control that functions as a cell phone, game controller, credit card swiper, movie controller, audio controller, reading light switch, assistance alert, and so much more. The audio/video is controlled from a bulky black box under the seat where your feet would normally fit. There were over 40 movies and tv shows ready to watch like a TiVo, and if I didn’t feel like an auger was digging into my skull from being so tired I could have binged on about 6 movies.