Adventures in Taiwan: Part 1 "The more that goes wrong with the wedding, the better the marriage will be."

This is a rough translation of a Chinese saying. And if its true, I think I'm going to have the best marriage EVER!

In the end, everything worked out, but the problems started before we even left the country. The plan was for 8 of us to leave Kansas City the morning of Sunday, May 22, 2005, and fly to Chicago for a connecting flight to Tokyo, Japan, before connecting to a flight to Taipei, Taiwan. We were to arrive in Taipei at 6:30pm the next day and I had arranged for the hotel we were staying at to pick us (and our luggage) up from the airport. Then we would get settled and head to a night market.

Well, we got to Chicago, where our flight was delayed and was scheduled to arrive 5 minutes AFTER our connecting flight was supposed to depart. Needless to say, we would miss that flight. So as we listened to a Japanese woman speak over the intercom, and could decipher words like "miss," "connecting flight," "call American Airlines." So I borrow my brother's cell phone and call American Airlines. I tell them the situation, thinking they would get us on another flight. They tell me that there is only ONE FLIGHT PER DAY FROM TOKYO TO TAIPEI and the next one was FULL. They then proceed to tell me there is nothing they can do and to talk to the agents at the gate.

So I wait in an enormous line and finally speak to an agent at the gate. She isn't familiar with international flights and was just there helping out, so she asks another agent, who says for me to call American Airlines. Obviously, I had just called them, so the agent tells me there is nothing they can do and to take care of it in Japan. I decide to call my mom, told her the situation, and asked her to call my cousin and tell her to let the hotel know not to pick us up from the airport. She comforts me by saying that there are a ton of airlines that have tons of flights from Tokyo to Taipei everyday. Perhaps that one flight per day was just that one airline. I felt a ton better and figured there wasn't anything I could do about the situation until I got to Japan, so I didn't stress about it. Instead, I dreaded the 13-hour flight from Chicago to Japan.

Towards the end of the flight, I decide to ask one of the flight attendants where I need to go to take care of the missed connecting flight situation once we get to Japan. She told me that there would be people at the gate to let me know.

When we arrive in Japan, I am relieved to find that everything had already been taken care of. They couldn't get all 8 of us on the same flight, so they had to put 2 of us on a different flight. I ask them if they can call the hotel for us to arrange for them to pick us up, and they happily give me a phone to make the call.

After cramming all of us and our luggage into the 2 small "vans," it is after midnight when we arrive at the hotel and get checked in. We decide to go ahead and try to make it to the night market because I was starving since I didn't eat dinner on the plane. By the time we get there, its pretty dead, and the shops/food carts that were still open, were starting to shut down. But after strolling through the entire market, we find a few food places still open and sit down at the one with the most people.

The next day, we headed out for a day in Taipei. First stop, the National Palace Museum. I had been there before, but it was still a great exhibit (my favorites were the miniature carvings that had a ton of detail that you could only see with a magnifying glass). But unbeknownst to me, it was under construction and my counterparts didn't get to see how beautiful the building itself is and were unable to go to the attached garden. What a bummer.

When we came out of the museum, it was raining. Rain usually isn't a good thing, but a byproduct of rain is cooler temperatures. Which worked out well because most of the rest of the day was outside.

The second stop on our tour was the Martyrs Temple. I had never been there before, so it was new to me, too. We had good timing. While we were there, we were able to see a changing of the guards ceremony, during which, the rain stopped. But it started up again as we headed to the Confucius Temple.

There was a pleasant atmosphere at the Confucius Temple. It was calming to walk around with the light rain falling and the light music that was played. There were musicians practicing on Chinese instruments.

After the Confucius Temple, we headed to lunch. I planed on us going to a tea house I read about in a travel magazine, but we couldn't find it. We ended up walking around, asked a couple people, and just couldn't find it. So we decided to stop at a restaurant that we happened upon and had some really yummy (and cheap: about $100 for 8 people) dim sum.

While we waited for our food to arrive, I ran across the street to call my cousin and aunt to make plans to have dinner with them that evening. I had been calling them all day, but to no avail. Finally, I was able to reach my aunt and tentative plans were made. When I hung up the phone and started my way back across the street, I saw the tea house we were looking for; just a few stores down from where we ended up. Funny how things turn out.

By the time we were finished with lunch, we were pretty wiped out. So we decided to head back to the hotel for naps. I finalized dinner plans with my family and eagerly awaited the time to meet them.

When everyone arrived, it was happy chaos. My favorite uncle tried to get everyone drunk and thus, got along quite well with my brother-in-law and his friend. And 3 of my (female) cousins and I talked and giggled like little schoolgirls. It felt so great to be with them again; just like the good old days when I went to school in Taipei and gathered on weekends at my uncle's house. But after all the laughter and enormous amounts of food and beverages subsided, good-byes had to be exchanged...