As I said in my previous post, I'd write more about my time in Taipei since I loved the city so much.

I spent the second half of 2006 in Beijing and went back to China for 6 weeks this summer, so I have a decent grasp of Mandarin. The version of Mandarin spoken in Taipei is very clean, similar (at least to my ear) to that spoken by well-educated Chinese people and people in the Northeast (who are known for having clean accents). Even the taxi drivers spoke without a strong accent, which certainly can't be said about Beijing cabbies.

Anyway, after landing in TPE, I breezed through immigration and caught a "Free Go" airport bus (飞狗机场巴士) to the city for NT$140 (about $4.50 USD). I got off the bus somewhere near a subway stop and took the subway to Ximending (西门町), which is a trendy shopping area that was described to me as such: "If it's Japanese and cool, Ximending sells it." It certainly lived up to that description. I got to check out my favorite store of all time, which I had previously only seen in Hong Kong: Muji. It's a Japanese company that sells all sorts of cool stationery and organizers, kind of like The Container Store but more stylish. Next, I went to the 24-hour bookstore eslite (成品), which also had lots of cool little gadgets. After that, on my way to meet a friend in the PageOne bookstore in Taipei 101, I stopped by the Crocs store near the New York New York shopping center to buy a pair of their amazing sandals. They might look dorky, but whatever.

The friend I met in Taipei 101 had been in the city for a couple of weeks, and he showed me around a bit. We went to the Shilin night market, which was pretty happening. I ended up staying the night in a inexpensive and charming hostel near Taipei Main Station (台北车站) called Taiwanmex for NT$300 ($10 USD). Not bad! ^

The next morning, I caught a bus back to the airport and hung out in the lounges for a couple of hours catching up on my email. My Asiana business class boarding pass granted me access to EVA Air's lounge, so I checked that out first. The interior was a bit shabby, but the drink selection was great. The food was certainly intended for Asian palates, which makes a lot of sense (and I was one of 2-3 non-Asians in the entire lounge). I had heard great things about the SQ SKL in TPE, so I decided to go check it out. Its food and beverage selection was much smaller (especially their beer selection), but still decent. I spent the rest of time time in the SKL since it emptied out right after I arrived, and it was nice and quiet.

I made it to the gate right as they called for business class passengers to board, and with only 3 of us total (in an A321 with 12 C seats), it went quickly.

Part 5: TPE-ICN


Saturday, December 22
OZ712
TPE-ICN
Aircraft: Airbus 321
Seat: 3A
Departure Time: 4:15 PM
Arrival Time: 7:25 PM


I don't have any exact numbers, but our takeoff roll seemed extremely long for an A320-class, and our ascent seemed extremely steep. But we obviously made it up in the sky safely in the end.

Obviously, a flight on an A321 isn't going to match up to anything on a B777 or A345. The seat pitch in C is a disapopinting 36 inches, which is about the same as Economy Plus on United. There's no power port for my laptop and no individual video screens. But the service and meal were both excellent.

Dinner was a halibut salad and steak with mushroom sauce, and they gave me some A-1 Steak Sauce to put on it. (As an aside, I live about 5 minutes away from Kraft headquarters, which makes A-1, and I drive by it a lot when I'm home. It's always fun to see "Glenview, IL" on food labels halfway across the globe. Same thing at McDonalds in China—the hand dryers are made in Illinois, and they're the exact same ones that I'd find at the McD's right near my house.) There was some fruit on my plate that I had never seen before, so I asked about it. The FA didn't know the English or Chinese name for it, but she went and found out for me. Then she asked me if it was delicious, and even though I didn't like it that much, I didn't want to hurt her feelings. So, I told her that it was indeed delicious, and she brought me some another whole plate of it. ^

After we landed in ICN, I zoomed through immigrations and went looking for a place to leave my suitcase. Unfortunately, the left luggage place closed at 10 PM and didn't open until around 6 AM, and that wouldn't work for me since I'd need to grab my suitcase before I fell asleep. So, I decided to just go into Seoul with my luggage.

More on Seoul in the next installment. Until then, I want to make a big, shameless plug for a website I made that you all will certainly find interesting. It's called FlyerStats.com, and it lets you put in routings like ORD-SFO-PEK-HKG-SIN-EWR-ORD and see the flight path on Google Maps, and it also calculates RDMs and cents-per-mile numbers for itineraries (kind of like Great Circle Mapper but way better). As an example of the site, here's the flight path for this trip: http://flyerstats.com/itineraries/8-...CN-KIX-SFO-ORD Try it out -- add your own itineraries and tell me what you think!