Taiwan

I finally made it to Taiwan. I put up with back to back red-eye flights (8 hours and 5 hours), no sleep, and lots of rude Asian families, but I finally made it.

Let me deviate from my train of thought for a bit to elaborate on the annoying Asians. Every line I stood in (I'm counting about 10) was filled with large groups of Asians. There were tour groups with matching neon polo shirts, families with way too much luggage, old people, young people, and for some reason a lot of people whose genders I could not determine. Oh, and a ton of old ajushis who kept making lugi noises. Every single one of these groups seemed to hate me! They all would just cut in line and push me around to get past me. I mean, seriously, I can't understand how they have no shame. Do I look like I want to be pushed or wait longer in line than I have to? I'm slightly embarrassed and guilt-filled to say that I elbowed some ajumas back when I had enough, but seriously. It's annoying. And then I was writing in my journal on the plane and this dude next to me kept staring at my face, then reading what I was writing, then staring at my face, etc. Finally, I was like, "Can I help you?" but he just gave me the death glare and kept on staring. I was kinda cornered in the window seat so it got really awkward and I just stopped writing. I hadn't eaten since last night (with the time changes it had been roughly 24 hours) and I was starving, sleepy, and physically drained from walking around with my 19.7 kilogram backpack. But I pressed on because I wanted to see some of Taipei before I called it a day! Ugh so annoyed.

Okay back to my arrival in Taiwan.

Upon arrival, I paid for my room and headed out to FINALLY get something to eat... but I had no more money. Just some loose change and American dollars. So I set off to find an ATM, which took about 30 minutes. I was getting hungrier and hungrier, but I was really excited to eat all the cheap street food that I was passing by... I just needed money... but I had forgotten that my bank doesn't let me withdraw from two different countries on the same day. Earlier this morning, I had used my card to buy a bottle of water in Malaysia and now I was suffering for it. Just a freaking bottle of water! So then I went to find a bank or currency exchange center. I found both in the next 45 minutes. Both were closed. Now I was miserable and hungry and I didn't know what to do. Then I went into super brainstorm mooooode!

I remembered that I had an old lamyun sitting in my bag from back in the Gold Coast. It had been sitting there for about a month just waiting for an emergency. This was definitely an emergency! So I ran back (not really, I walked... I'm just trying to stress the urgency I felt at the time) and cooked my lamyun and ate it all. That's all I've eaten for over a day now, but at least I won't die of starvation. Tomorrow morning, I can withdraw money again!

Traveling moral of the day: Always carry emergency rations. And also, avoid Asians in airports.