We parked our van at a friends on the hillside - of course, 6 hours before moving it for two months, the snow plows come down our street to clear the berms. When I said it was lucky I was home and could move it, the guy said, "Yeah, otherwise it would have been towed." That's crazy. They give you no warning they're coming and you can't park in front of your house? But a project for when I get back. Here's the view on our way bck from the hillside.
The woman in front of me waiting to check-in at the Airport had flown up to Anchorage to catch this plane to Taipei and then was going on to Vietnam where her husband was in the hospital very ill. He couldn't even talk. When we got to the counter she was told she couldn't go because she didn't have a visa to Vietnam. She said she was told she could get one at the airport because of the emergency. But since she had no letter or anything, they said no.
I suggested she could go at least to Taipei and then figure out things from there. Though that was iffy since it's Chinese New Years, but they said ok. Inside the terminal, I was able to go on the internet and find out she could get a visa at the airport in Pnom Penh, Cambodia, which neighbors Vietnam. She has a friend there and that's where she's headed now.
The plane had red Chinese paper with black characters posted around the plane for New Years. And it was packed. But I had a good sleep by the window.
This was a 747 - no seat back videos or legroom. Here we are about 90 minutes out of Taipei.
I was able to switch my Taipei-Bangkok-Chiang Mai ticket to a Taipei-Chiang Mai ticket, but only here in Taipei. Here's the little internet oasis. My Macbook is on the ledge outside the room on the right.
It was 48F and raining when we landed.
[A little later: I didn't need to stand by the wifi booth because there's free wifi at the gate too. But there were some free computers available in there. So, Taipei Airport is a free wifi zone.]
Sounds like fun Steve. Wish I was there... 2 above here in Palmer at 3:11 pm... There's chatter about indictments on Monday. You know where to look. Dennis
ReplyDeletemy classmate is from China and he also celebrated it.
ReplyDeleteYou have a gift of blessing everyone who you come into contact with.
ReplyDeleteThanks Zaki and Ropi. Tea, I suspect you feel that way only because you know about me from my accounts, not from what others say about me. I didn't mention the guy in the Anchorage airport jam to get on the plane whom I accidentally bumped and who insisted, aggressively that apologize. This is a strange group for an Anchorage airport. The flight comes from NY, stops for two hours in Anchorage, then goes on to Taipei. New Yorkers are different from Anchorage folk. Later it occurred to me that while I had accidentally invaded his physical space- and I did say I was sorry, but he rebutted "You only said that after I said you should" in a place where it was hard not to, he intentionally invaded my psychic space where it would have been easy not to. But he'd been on a plane 9 hours. It was 2:30am local time, and he had another 10 hour flight to go.
ReplyDelete