It’s approaching midnight in Los Angeles. We’re at Los Angeles International Airport, checked in, waiting for our flight to start boarding. We’ve got tickets to Taipei. Let’s get this trip started!
Today is Sunday. Very late on Sunday, but it’s still Sunday. On the itinerary that I always make for myself, I show us leaving on a Sunday. The flight to Taipei takes 14 hours. That’s a long one.
The Missing Monday
Taipei is 15 hours ahead of Los Angeles. Due to the late hour of our departure, the long duration of the flight, and the 15-hour time difference, we won’t arrive in Taipei until Tuesday. Monday just disappeared.
No one I know looks forward to spending 14 hours on an airplane, but consider this: We left around midnight, so we were already tired. Dinner was served not long after departure. After dinner, it was pretty much lights out for everyone.
I’m not good at sleeping on planes, but on this flight, conditions were ideal. I slept like a baby. For hours. I had never had that experience on an airplane before.
It didn’t hurt that our accommodations on the plane were excellent. We flew in premium economy on Starlux – a new airline for us. The plane appeared to be fairly new. Everything about the flight was great.
Starlux is based in Taiwan. Thirty years ago, a Taiwanese billionaire created a massive shipping empire and started an airline called EVA. In 2018, two years after the billionaire’s death, his son started his own airline – Starlux. I’ve read good reviews about both of them.
Taiwan Taoyuan Airport, Taipei
We touched down at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport Tuesday morning. We took a shuttle to a Novotel hotel at the airport. Novotel’s are perfect for short stays if you don’t want to make a long trip with multiple connections all in one shot.
Our room had a view of the airport. Massive construction projects were underway everywhere. Someone in Taiwan is expecting a lot of future business at the airport.
There’s another reason why we chose to stay one night in Taiwan. It has to do with the missing Monday noted above.
We’re required to have visas to travel to Vietnam and Cambodia. They’re easy enough to obtain through each county’s respective embassy, although you want to be sure you’re on the embassy’s website and not a “Visa-Help/Embassy-Look-Alike” website. You’ll get your visa, but there’ll be an additional fee.
We’ll be on a boat in Vietnam for part of this trip. The cruise line sent an email advising me to check my visa for accuracy. If ANYTHING was in error, the authorities will likely deny entry until an accurate visa is obtained. I wouldn’t want to go down that road.
Visa Trouble
I like to think that I’m a careful and thorough trip planner. Not only that, everything I do in preparation for a trip undergoes the intense scrutiny of my detail-oriented, former auditor Better Half. (That’s why I’m careful and thorough. It doesn’t come naturally).
OK. It’s easy enough to double-check visa Info. I looked for typos, dates, anything that might be in error. Whoa. Something WAS in error. Are you kidding me?
Our visas showed an entry date that was one day later than the date on my itinerary. I had not accounted for that disappearing Monday. Dang. We’d have to stay an extra night at the Taipei airport, and we’d have just one night in Hanoi instead of two.
That reality took a while to get used to, but it wasn’t the end of the world. After beating myself up sufficiently, I moved on. So here we are. Next stop, Hanoi!
To be continued…
Note: Awesome photo of Taipei’s skyline, credit: istockphoto/Sean3810
