And… We’re off!

This day seemed like it would never end! I had a ton of things to finish up at work and also a bit of last minute shopping.

I managed to get out of work at 3 PM, got some stuff from the store and was home by 5 PM. A quick last minute check of our packed bags and we changed into travel gear (cargo pants and a loose t-shirt) and we were ready to fly!

A combination of Muni and BART got us to SFO. I wanted to make sure we get there at least 3-4 hours before our flight (a bad habit I would carry with me throughout the entire journey) since we did not have seats reserved and we wanted at least decent seats. For some reason, travelocity (where we booked our tickets) would not allow us to reserve the seats online). Anyways, we were able to check-in fine and got decent seats (decent being a relative term since we were flying cattle class). We went through security and then walked around in the international lounge. Not much to see or do. Since we had not had any dinner, we got some sub-par quesadilla (all Mexican is sub-par after you’ve eaten in San Francisco) at some place on the airport. We walked about to kill time, and finally found a spot by the window from where we could watch our plane being loaded and sat and read a book.

After what seemed like eternity, they started boarding our flight. We got to our seats in cattle-class and were slightly less than impressed with the plane. It was an older 747, which means no personal TV, no choice of music stations and the seats are just not as comfortable. Our flight was just 15 hours – so what am I cribbing about anyway. For whatever the airline lacked in terms of amenities, they made up in service with a smile. As soon as we took off we were served a meal – vegetarian chinese food. It was alright, but I was really hoping for some hot noodles, not semi-cold bland tofu. After the meal, we went to sleep for about 6 hours. The rest of the flight we walked around the plane, read and spent a lot of time talking to each other about all the places we were about to visit. So, not having the TV and personal music was really a blessing in disguise.

We landed at Taipei airport on Friday morning (lost thursday) at 6 AM. We walked towards our gate and found a restaurant that was selling dim sum among other things. We got ourselves some Oolong tea, a vegetarian curry puff and dim sum filled with some green vegetables, but it tasted delicious! Tanked, we walked about the airport for a bit. We came across these nooks in the airport that had pictures and specimens of flora that is found around Taiwan. We felt it was a clever thing to do since they serve multiple purposes all at once:

• Provide a respite from the otherwise boring airport duty-free shops.
• Had a lot of information about the unique flora of Taiwan.
• Served as a slight tourism promo.

After using the free internet at one of the few booths that are available on the airport, we decided to head to our gate. It took us a minute to figure out our gate even though we walked by it because the whole gate was decorated with a Hello Kitty theme! (Hello Kitty is the mascot for EVA Airlines, Taiwan’s national carrier). We kept thinking it was a kids play area.

Our flight to Bangkok was in a much nicer plane (Boeing 777) – newer and more comfortable seats and personal TV with a wide selection of movies. Heena watched Hairspray, and I watched Transformers. However, throughout the flight we felt very excited since we’d been looking forward to going to Thailand – and this was it!!