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.

The in-flight meal service was superior to current American fare. As you may know, US flights typically ration out a splash of Coke and bag of crusty old pretzels for the whole flight. I was amazed to get 2 full meals, beyond the bag of crusty, unspecified carohydrate snacks (but it involved seaweed). I was the only one in our group brave enough to try out the Chinese porridge for breakfast. It was some kind of rice mush with blobs of fishy stuff – oh, and pickles and tofu in soy sauce. Richard’s business partner really came through with a helpful favor the night before we left. He and his wife put together little packages of snacks for us – perfect for getting going in the early morning and getting along great on the plane. We really appreciated that.

Landing in Taipei I was looking out for that moment of culture shock, but I must be dead to it. Really it looks like descending into any other city, and the airport itself (Chang Kai-Shek International) looks very new and modern. I guess since I spent a few months in South Korea I’m already used to whatever there may be here that is “strange”. Like seeing all the signs in squiggly writing with awkward Engrish translations, the soda machines with little cans of coffee, or drinking water out of a paper envelope. Our next stage is another flight of a few hours then a landing in the middle of the night in Bangkok. As if the hour of the night had any meaning to us. The clock here says 10 pm Tuesday, but to us it’s really 8 am Monday.