Much more space than American Airlines

We flew EVA Airlines from Kaohsiung, Taiwan to Shanghai. It was a nice flight that took 1 hour and 45 minutes. Joy slept through most of it. I am becoming quite envious of her ability to sleep on airplanes. Of course, she’s still small enough to curl up on a seat and be comfortable. The space at our seats seemed much larger than on the American Airlines plane. Even the seat was more comfortable. The first thing I noticed when sitting down in the AA plane was how uncomfortable the seat was. That was immediate, and that seat was going to be my home for about 13 hours.

Watch out!

Taiwan is full of gasoline scooters. China, or at least Shanghai, is full of electric bikes and scooters. It’s much quieter which is nice. It's also better smelling than all of those gas scooters, which are a bit like a bunch of lawn mowers going down the street. The only problem is hearing them coming. I almost got run over my first time crossing the street. I had not yet realized how much traffic laws there are suggestions instead of rules. Run a red light? No problem. Drive the wrong way down a one way street? Why not? Drive on the wrong side of the road? Let’s go! Walk out in front of moving traffic? How much more fun can you have? Many of the taxi drivers we rode with were quite aggressive. Nicer looking private cars tended to be a bit more cautious. I’ve been with aggressive taxi drivers in New York City, but this takes it to a new level.

There are plenty of gas and pedal powered vehicles here too.

Yes, that's a McDonald's in the background. Lot's of them here. And lots of KFC.

 



We saw a few different fleets of KFC delivery bikes.

Rain

It was raining when we arrived in Taiwan. It rained pretty hard off and on our first night here. This was the first significant rain Taiwan had since October 8, 2009. The rain helped cool things off, but it was still hot and humid. I was sweating just standing around in the pharmacy.

BLOCKED!

Blogspot is blocked in China. I couldn't post anything the whole time we were there. Now that we're back in Taiwan I'll try to get caught up.

Meet Haibao. He's the mascot for the Shanghai Expo. Got this shot at the luggage pickup area in the Shanghai South Airport. On the left is Amber. She's the daughter of a friend of Mei-Jen's. On the right is Jia-En, Mei-Jen and Guo-Yen's son.

Shanghai

Sunday afternoon we'll be flying to Shanghai. This will be the first visit to the mainland for Joy and me. Hui-Ling's younger brother works in Shanghai. Expo 2010, or in other words, the 2010 World's Fair is happening now. We plan to visit.

The photo above is Chinese Yuan, which we'll use there. Taiwan has it's own currency.

Goose Blood

Did I get your attention? After we took our things to my sister-in-law's apartment, we decided to get a snack. Across the street is a goose restaurant. These blocks of rice are the first things that were brought to us. I tried one, suspecting a certain ingredient was present. I was correct. These are made of rice and goose blood. Actually it was not bad.

It's 1:57 AM here and I just about fell out of the chair fast asleep. Time for bed.

We're in Taiwan!

Thank you for visiting.  The photo above is our first plane, waiting for us at Harrisburg International Airport. We had a great friend drive us there, and saw another friend there who works there.

We made it to Taiwan with no problems. Left the house at 5:45 am. Flew Harrisburg to Chicago, Chicago to Tokyo, and Tokyo to Kaohsiung (pronounced gaoshung). We had layovers of at least a few hours each in Chicago and Tokyo. We arrived in Kaohsiung right around 10 pm the next day. That's a lot of traveling.

As a first taste, here's a youtube link that does a great job of showing some of Taiwan's wonderful things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38O5J-hi7r4

Enjoy it, and check back later for more.