PSA: On my two previous fights to Asia, I learned that to avoid jet lag, you need to leave home mid morning. The closer to your normal bedtime you arrive , the easier it is to adjust. Also avoid sleeping on the plane as much as possible. On a 13 hour flight, try to sleep no more than two hours or you will pay for it for a week. End of PSA.
I "upgraded" us from Economy to Economy Plus a few days before the flight because I saw it would only cost $100 more per seat. It put us on a bulkhead and the corner seats had even more legroom because the bulkhead was narrower than the row of seats. Every traveler's dream is to be able to stretch those legs. Mission accomplished without breaking the bank.
After a nice and uneventful flight (who wants an eventful flight?) in which I binge watched four Harry Potter movies, we landed in Taipei, Taiwan.
Two things hit you in the face right off the bat when you arrive in Taiwan: 1. The brutal humidity (95% and 86 degrees at 10PM) and 2. The car horns! WOW, so loud. We were told it's not always like this but my ringing ears can't believe it. We'll see in another visit. The taxi ride to our weekend home should've ended with the driver saying: "Bond. James Bond." I'm certain that old man was running away from something.
As usual, we reserved an airbnb room. This time our hostess was a lovely lady named Dawn and her son Chen. Even though I reserved the entire apartment for us, it turns out Dawn actually lives in the apartment and we were basically renting rooms while she lived her life there. We decided to give it a shot anyway. If we are going to experience Taiwan by staying at a local's place, let's just stay with the locals! Here's a link to Dawn's airbnb page. I highly recommend staying with her. She is a wonderful hostess and she loves hearing travel stories from her guests. I also turned Dawn and Chen into Portland Trail Blazers fans.
We arrived at Dawn's around 8 PM and decided to just grab some snacks and hit the sack. We walked to the local 7/11 and found a variety of weirdly flavored American chips. We got Cheetos because I'm an addict.
After a scrumptious dinner of chips and a hot dog, we talked with Dawn for a while and went to bed at midnight to end this very long travel day.
