Author's Note (10/15/2023):
Continued from Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4
Day 16: Thursday, March 26 (stranded in Taiwan day 1)
Time to go home! Well, as originally planned. Now we’ve got an extra couple of days here waiting on our new flight, and hoping against hope that we still can get home then.
We slept in today, just sheer exhaustion from everything - physically and emotionally. When I woke up around 1:30PM, Teresa was happily playing Animal Crossing on the Switch. I went ahead and contacted the US Citizen Services at the American Institute in Taiwan (their version of an embassy here). Matt wanted to do a shopping trip to the Carrefour, and he had some laundry to dry, so we walked with him. Along the way, we stopped to pick up buns from a local shop, I got a spicy pork bun and a red bean bun, and Teresa got a non-spicy meat bun and brown sugar bun. We took them to the Carrefour. Teresa and I bought a new suitcase, since we’ve been buying too many things out here to easily take home with what we have, and we only checked one bag each on the way in. They gave us a discount, and also we were able to get the tax refunded on it. I went up to the food court to eat my buns, and then grabbed bubble tea. Teresa and Matt hadn’t come up yet, so I went down to find them, and saw them on the ramp-style-escalator going up while I was going down! I went back around and up and shared bubble tea with Teresa. She had bought a few more souvenirs and gifts for people back home. We went to get the tax refunded while Matt returned to get his laundry. We were able to put the rest of the purchases into the suitcase, to conveniently wheel it (and carry it where not possible) back home! We stopped in various convenience stores asking about masks, since our supply wouldn’t last the rest of our now-extended stay here. Finally, at the Hi-Life across the street from Matt and Rosie’s building, I found exactly two of a fancier style, but it was $258 for them (about $8.60 USD). Sprung for them anyway, since nowhere else had any.
I heard back from the embassy as we got back. They said:
“Thank you for the notification.
Hope you can get home safely.
If you need further assist please let us know.”
Matt and I set out once more because we needed to get new SIM cards, since ours are set to run out today (15 day plan). We left Teresa and Rosie, and headed out - walking quite a ways to a phone store. I ended up getting Teresa and myself new 3-day SIMs for $10 USD each. On the way back, Matt stopped at a Roti street vendor and got a bunch of roti wraps, and I decided to get a chocolate one for Teresa, and try the spicy beef myself. By the time we were finally back, it had been a couple hours. We tried the roti, although it didn’t sit well with Rosie, and mine was just ok (too much cabbage!) Teresa and I heated up our fancy noodle bowls that we bought at the ryokan. Unfortunately, hers turned out to be too spicy for her, but she found enough to snack on. We put on Frozen 2, but didn’t get very far before Rosie had to head to bed. I checked flight statuses again, and oh joy! We now have a surprise extra lay-over in Chicago, as our San Francisco flight to DC has now been cancelled too. A lot can happen in the next 2 days. We’re getting pretty nervous, especially with the prospect of getting stranded at any step of the way. Tokyo is being completely locked down this weekend, so would not be a good place to get stuck (as much as we originally wanted to spend a ton of time there!) We chatted over the phone with Matt’s Mom (who worked for the state department before retirement) and she gave us some advice, and sympathy, and stories from when she was at Chernobyl and Matt was a baby and how she has been evacuated at least 5 times from 5 different countries before, and her parents had their honeymoon in China as Japan started invading, then took a boat to the Philippines as the Japanese started invading there, and then got to Honolulu right after Pearl Harbor - and then got back home to find their bank accounts frozen since they were in enemy territory. So hey, our honeymoon is eventful, but it could’ve been much worse!
The rest of the evening was spent watching anime, eating noodles, showering, and online. (And Teresa played Animal Crossing).
Day 17: Friday, March 27 (stranded in Taiwan day 2)
While I had thoughts of one last day in Taiwan, it was decided to just spend the day in Taoyuan and keep things simple. Matt recommended another shop to find Japanese goods, so we went off via Uber to Hard Off - a Japanese thrift store. They had lots of figures, anime goods, used videogames and, of particular interest to us, used Japanese CDs for very reasonable prices. (Japan normally sells an album for about $30 USD - many of these were between $3-$5 USD, since they were used). Of course, browsing for foreign language CDs is very slow, and involves trying to read the katakana labels (which I can now do, slowly, since I started learning Japanese), or if we’re lucky, the romaji or even English names. I just started at the top and went across each row, disc by disc, and Teresa followed me and found things I had missed. We pulled out several J-Rock cds from bands that she likes, and some that Rachel had recommended to me. I didn’t find any of the bands that are my particular favorites, although we also found some Ghibli and anime sound-tracks, and ended up getting a huge amount of CDs to take home, since they were a good price, and you just can’t find these anywhere in America or often even online. We also bought a few figures and trinkets. In the end, after over 2 hours in the store, we spent more money here than anywhere else this trip! Retail therapy. It’s a good thing we had purchased a new suitcase to get everything back home!
We walked across the street to yet another Carrefour / shopping mall. We headed to the restaurants, and ended up going to a place that specialized in tonkatsu (fried pork cutlets), and Teresa and I both ordered the katsudon (normally a rice bowl with tonkatsu, onions, egg, and a special sauce - although it ended up with the rice on the side here), and a side of fries to share. Matt ordered a couple popcorn chicken varieties and fried tofu. Oddly, they only brought Matt and Teresa’s food out, and we eventually realized that they mistook us both ordering the same thing for only one order. Luckily, it came with miso soup, a sweet jelly dessert, and other sides, and they even generously gave us all soda cups - and it was actually plenty of food to share for this late lunch, so we were still satisfied!
Lunch finished, we checked out the stores there, and the arcade, and grabbed another bubble milk tea with brown sugar and buckwheat at Coco, and then headed into the Carrefour itself. Matt ended up finding a special deal on really nice American Tourister backpacks (the same brand as the luggage we bought the other day): buy one get one free, and they were also already on a huge mark-down. He decided to get one for himself, and another bag that was on the same sale for Rosie. Rosie had also said she wanted one of the lap tables like Teresa and I had bought, so I reminded Matt when we passed those, and he grabbed one too. While Teresa and I headed outside to finish our drink and waited for him to check out, we saw him getting assistance from first one, and then two employees. It turned out that buy one get one meant the EXACT SAME bag, not any 2 items on the same sale! So he had them get him 2 of the same ones and met us, and we decided to re-pack our purchases of the many CDs into the new backpacks to make them easier to carry - when he discovered that he had accidentally instead gotten 2 of the slimmer bags! So back he went to exchange them for the backpacks he had actually wanted in the first place!
We took them home in another Uber, and luckily Rosie really liked the backpack too. We had been thinking about buying one of them off of Matt, we liked it so much, and ultimately decided that we would just get our own pair and hit up another Carrefour after dinner tonight.
We ended up walking to a chicken place to finally meet up with Rosie’s friend Nancy (who had previously tried to meet us at the Haidilao, but missed us by going to the wrong one), and her friend Brandon from South Africa, who none of us had met before. Nancy ordered several dishes for us, including a whole chicken (which meant the feet and head were also included), tofu, delicious garlic eggplant, a beef dish, fried rice, and crispy pumpkin slices; and we also grabbed several drinks from a cooler - including two kinds of plum vinegar, and a calpis, water bottle, and I think a beer. Everything was placed on the lazy susan and shared around the table. Since we weren’t too hungry, we were able to eat our fill easily, and chatted with everyone. I was getting fairly antsy to get back though, since we have an early flight and still need to pack, and I wanted to call United to get us switched to a new direct flight from San Francisco to Dulles, so we don’t need to deal with the surprise additional layover in Chicago. Once we finally headed out, and said goodbye to Brandon (who exchanged contact details with Matt, since he was looking for more friends in the area), we then walked to the Carrefour to get our backpacks, and found some other nice travel goods - a facemask (which I want for my daily train commutes, whenever that happens again), and a toiletry bag for Teresa. We got some more chips and a matcha “egg roll” snack, hopefully we can fit all these snacks in carry-ons! We have no idea if anything will be open in the airports, and are facing down potentially 30 hours+ of travel at this point, and only one of the flights actually will serve meals. (Too bad we had to toss our jerky!) Everyone dawdled a bit checking things out at the store (they had plenty of toilet paper, by the way), before we finally said we have to go check out, and then went to customer service for the tax refund (getting back almost 5% in cash). Even though we loaded everything into the backpacks to head out, I wanted to take the cart up the moving escalator-ramp, since the wheels lock in place into the escalator grooves, and I hadn’t tried it all trip! We take what little pleasures we can.
Once out, we said goodbye to Nancy, and walked back home at last. I finally called up United, and Teresa worked on re-packing. I thankfully got a very helpful and friendly rep on the phone this time after only 5 minutes on hold. She was able to switch us to a red-eye flight from San Francisco direct to Dulles. It would mean over 12 hours in San Francisco airport, and arriving around 7AM back in Dulles, but we took it. (There were actually 2 options that were up to 45 minutes earlier, but we went with the biggest plane, and also figured it’ll be easier to get a ride from the airport if it’s not quite as early. That said, at this point, we aren’t sure who our ride will be, since both Uncles seem to be balking now. A Joco Cruise friend, Marshall, who lives near Dulles did make an offer if we can’t find anyone else to pick us up). We ended up spending over an hour on the call, since first there were some complications with her changing the flight - since I had checked in already with EVA air, the tickets had been locked in even with United. However, she said she was able to book us on the flight we wanted, we just have to check back in at the United desk in Tokyo or San Francisco to get our tickets revalidated and get them corrected, and also ensure our bags get on the right plane in SFO. Since we will have a 12 hour layover there now, we have tons of time to get through customs and handle this. She said she would try to unlock it so that she could update our flights, but it seemed that this was not successful. We also asked her to get us the economy plus seats that had been given to us before, but lost when the original SFO-IAD flight got cancelled, and she obliged, and then I asked if there was anything she could do about the fact that we were charged extra for our flight change after the cancellation. She spent a long time on hold then, and eventually told me that since our new flights now were a lower fare class again, she could try to get us a travel cert for the difference. We’ll take whatever we can get at this point. Unfortunately, she wasn’t able to get this for us, so said we could contact customer care afterwards to try to get compensation. By the time the call was over, 80 minutes had gone by, Rosie had headed to bed to rest, and Mom had emailed that she no longer had time to facetime. We continued to pack, as we have to leave for the airport at 4:30AM!! No sleep, yet again, on the night before flying.
Day 18: Saturday, March 28 (travel day 1)
Once we had finished packing, around 2AM, Rosie joined us again to say farewell. We thought we might try to play some more Jackbox, but didn’t hear anything from Paul, and with time tight, we decided to just chat and have a few more drinks. Kavus Torabi (of Knifeworld) was doing a livestream concert from his home, and I’ve recently gotten into his work, so I put this on quietly in the background, as we all hung out and finished our milk tea with bailey’s mixer.
About an hour before it was time to leave for the airport, I checked flight statuses again. And while all the flights were flying, United wasn’t showing our EVA Air flight to Tokyo under our itinerary any more. I had been checking flight status with EVA Air directly, but only by flight number, since there wasn’t a way to link the confirmation number with my account with them (it was booked third party, and their app is not very intuitive - it oddly doesn’t even use the built-in system keyboard for many fields and uses their own weird one, which orders the numbers oddly!) When I checked on their website with our confirmation number, it wasn’t listing any flights under it at all! We had a sinking realization that now, with barely an hour to get to the airport, we needed to make more calls and get this sorted.
We called EVA Air’s number on Skype, and while waiting on hold I asked Teresa to place a simultaneous call to United, since it was almost certainly their screw-up. Sure enough, after 20 minutes on hold with EVA, they said they see our flight, but we aren’t ticketed, and we need to contact who we booked through. Teresa is already on with United at this point. However, this time we have a really bad connection and someone with terrible english we can hardly understand, and have to ask to keep repeating herself. Often it sounds like weird robot noises over the line. After an agonizingly long time trying to sort things out with her and not understanding every other word, we ask to speak to a supervisor, since we need someone to understand and we have such a limited time now to get back on this flight! But she says that will cause a longer delay, so she wants to help us now since we need to leave for the airport within 30 minutes at this point. After some more time on hold, she tells us to check email, and oddly, we have certificates for $145 off a future booking with United, for each of us. Flummoxed, I say I don’t want a refund now, I need a flight, we need to get home! But she asks to check again, and we finally have the itinerary emailed to us, and I confirm everything on all websites, and all appears finally good to go, so it appears that we even got that small certificate compensation for our troubles! (But it means United has to be still around and flying flights we want to take within the next year.) It’s something, though, which is more than all the earlier cancellations and inconveniences got us.
We wrap things up barely in time, hit the restroom one last time, get changed (since we’ll be wearing the same clothes for over 30 hours travel time), and a bit after 4:30am we grab our things to head down to the lobby so that Matt can call an Uber. On the way down, we hear the rain pounding outside, and then see lightning illuminate the windows. Downstairs, Matt is having trouble with the Uber app - it won’t accept any form of payment, for some reason. Neither Teresa nor I got the app working with our Taiwan phone numbers, so out of options, Rosie runs back up to the room to get some extra cash for us to use for a taxi instead. Matt and I run out in the pouring rain to head across the street to the Hi-Life convenience store on the corner so we can call a taxi. The attendant doesn’t understand English, so Matt manages to use a translator app to get the taxi booked. Meanwhile, I purchase a rain poncho for Teresa, since she is in her expensive hand-made new dress, and I have a rain jacket. We run back across the street, hug Matt and Rosie goodbye, grab our bags, and get back across right as the Taxi pulls up to the shop. We barely manage to get all our baggage stowed (at this point it is now 3 large wheeled bags, another smaller checked bag, 2 large backpack carry-ons, Teresa’s shoulder bag and my camera sling) and get in. I show the driver the airport on my phone, and manage to communicate which terminal, and off we zoom - sending up waves of water as we rush through the storm.
The taxi gets us to the airport in plenty of speed, and thankfully it is under a roof, so we are able to get in without getting ourselves soaked (and thankfully our shoes are still dry!) It also ended up being a little bit cheaper than the Uber XL would’ve been, so that was fortunate! We find the EVA Air desk to check in; in front there is a screen showing all the cancelled flights - almost all of them are cancelled except ours! - and almost every desk is manned, despite the airport being devoid of customers. We walk up and hand over our passports. And the attendant scans them in. Then types on a keyboard, then scans them in, then keeps typing, and checking the passports again and again, then asks the next attendant over some things in Chinese, then they start looking at it together, finally they call in a supervisor, and they keep trying to figure out how to get us checked in. We’re getting worried at this point (is something messed up again? And I recall how when I checked in online before they messed up Teresa’s name, stitching her middle initial onto her first name, and fat-fingered my birthday off by one day - could that still be an issue?) But finally, they hand us our boarding passes - and they include boarding passes for Tokyo to SFO as well, and everything appears to be set for the expected full itinerary to DC next as well. Finally, we find security, get through it very quickly with no wait, and make our way to the food court, which isn’t yet open for the day, but there are several workers getting them ready, so I figure they will be open within 15 minutes when it hits 6AM, and sure enough I was correct! I grab a combo with spicy dandan noodles and szechuan beef to-go, and Teresa doesn’t find anything she wants, so I hand her a $500 Taiwan dollar note to find something else, and we head over to our gate. She comes back with just a bubble tea to share, and a slice of cake, which she eats, before we head down to the gate. There is a vending machine to get drinks there, so we decide to use some of our excess Taiwan dollars there - first trying to see if it will work with our Easy Cards, which still have a little money on them, but it is giving errors so we just give it some coins to get coffee and tea to take with us, before finally boarding the plane.
This flight takes 3 hours to fly to Tokyo. Sadly for Teresa, all the Asian dramas don’t have any English subtitles available, so she watches Cats for some reason! I checked out Jojo Rabbit, which was a fairly interesting take on a ten-year-old boy living in Nazi Germany with an imaginary friend version-of-Hitler, who discovers his liberal Mom is sheltering a Jewish Girl. I have some mixed feelings on how sensitive the movie was to Jews, but overall it was entertaining, and the boy grows through the movie into acceptance, and the more ridiculous and comedic takes on Nazis were mostly through the lens of this boy’s delusions, so it was a fairly fun movie. I tried eating the food I had brought and manage to have a good amount of it, but then my stomach started to be fairly upset with me. Thankfully I had some chewable pepto bismol with me, and I was able to make it to Narita airport in Tokyo.
So now we were actually in Tokyo! Not at all how we wanted to get there. First thing, we both hit up the bathrooms - and luckily they are very nice for airport bathrooms, even having washlets on the toilets, and changing rooms, and so forth. Far nicer than anything in America. Then we head through security, and accidentally I said “Xie Xie”, before realizing that I should use Japanese! “Sumimasen! Arigato Gozaimasu!” Hilariously enough, Teresa confesses she made the same mistake! You get so used to everyone being Chinese. We also had tossed the snacks and tiny water bottles the plane gave us into our bags, which they discover - whoops! I scarf down some of the tea I had bought, we toss the water bottles and they offer to empty my re-usable bottle, and we are on our way, and now properly in the airport.
There are several shops with Japanese goods, so we do some souvenir shopping, but we’re too tired to walk about much. Most of the shops available at the airport are unfortunately just the same brand-name stores you find at every airport, but we do find some nice Japanese goods, and Teresa is excited to find her second-favorite Japanese drink, a vitamin C sour drink that we grab 2 of for each of us. Since we have about 5 hours before our flight out, we do manage to head down to one end of the terminal and find a cute book-store and a tea-specialty shop, and get a “happy bag” of assorted tea, and I find a book for learning kanji (since we’re studying Japanese.) We find a small food court, and get ramen and fried chicken to share, and a bubble tea. This food was decent, and also comforting on our slightly upset stomachs. Finally, running low on time, and too tired to do much else, we get to our gate, which is filled with mostly other Americans! This is the first time since we started this trip that I’ve heard so much English around me, and seen such a large percentage of people not wearing masks!
The 9 hour flight to San Francisco was actually fairly full, including screaming toddlers in nearby rows, and seats all around us packed - but we were fortunate to still have a row all-to-ourselves, so Teresa could prop her leg up and minimize her pain. The air pressure when flying is making her hip feel much worse. This flight actually had 2 meals, and it was kinda funny how they dumb things down for foreigners. For dinner we could choose “chicken or shrimp”. The chicken turned out to be chicken katsu curry, and was actually decent! For breakfast, it was “omellete or noodles”, but thankfully Teresa had overheard that the noodles were actually yakisoba, so we both asked for that, and again, it was actually decent. I mostly tried to sleep, while Teresa watched more movies on the flight. I watched Bob’s Burgers, since they had 4 different episodes from the flight on the way in, and some entertaining food shows about burgers.
Finally, we landed in San Francisco, and were so glad to be back on American soil. The airport was so eerily empty for a major international airport in the middle of the day on a Saturday! Customs was a breeze - there was zero line; and I had been so excited to use my global entry for the first time! At least it meant I could use the machine rather than finding a pen, which they had taken away. We got through very easily with minimal fuss, switched back to our proper American SIM cards in our phones to finally have cell service again, then got our baggage and went to re-check it. The tickets we had wouldn’t let them check the bags, and we realized we needed to get our boarding passes for the next leg anyway, so we went up to the counter and got everything sorted with fresh new boarding passes, and new labels on our bags for the final leg of the journey. We got them checked, and got back through security very quickly with no wait.
We unfortunately now had a 12 hour layover, and we already hadn’t slept in a bed for a full night in over 40 hours at this point. Across from security were some comfortable seating, so we relaxed here for a good long while, just building back up our strength to move on. We checked in with my parents, and friends online, and ensuring that our travel home and our key to the house were all set for us. Thankfully, a JoCo Cruise friend who lived near the airport offered to take us as a fall-back, and then Bob and Carol said that they would be happy to pick us up, and were even able to get the key that Mom had left with Lisa! Everything was finally sorted for the most important leg of our trip, the last one to actually get home!
After awhile, we decided to find food before we just passed out where we were. Only about 1 in 10 stores or restaurants even open. I scouted all the way to our gate to find restaurants - the Japanese place we had eaten at on the way out was actually still open, but we ended up eating at a soup place that was closer to where Teresa was sitting and waiting for me. They and the coffee shop were the only 2 open in the food court. Teresa got a pre-made turkey pesto sandwich, I got the daily special, which was an Indian-inspired coconut daal with butternut squash bread-bowl. This tasted fine, but after awhile started becoming very bland and samey. I justified that it was at least gentle on my stomach, but didn’t end up finishing more than half.
We tried napping on the wide soft benches that were also in the food court area, but had to take turns as there were still people about and we wanted to keep an eye on our luggage. Teresa lay down first. We gave Paul and the Bartholomew brothers a videocall and tried to chat with them for a bit, but everyone on the call was exhausted, so it was mostly just nice to hear familiar voices and see faces. Teresa went to sleep and I tried to keep myself occupied with videos on YouTube, before realizing that I was also dozing off, and not really paying attention. I was literally too tired to keep my eyes open. I went as long as I thought I could, and Teresa wasn’t waking when I gently nudged her - until I finally caught her trying to scratch her face and I woke her up to stop that (you shouldn’t touch your face without washing your hands in the time of Coronavirus!) She wasn’t happy to be awake after a half hour nap, but I explained that I was literally incapable of staying up any longer. There is exhaustion, and then there is EXHAUSTION. Tunnel-vision, inability to focus (visually and mentally), just extreme exhaustion. This has been a long several days at this point, and we still had many hours to go before even boarding our last flight home. She let me take a turn, so I napped for about half an hour as well. After this we decided that we really both needed to rest, so we would head towards our gate, which should be somewhere quieter away from the crowds (such as they were). We grabbed a caramel frozen coffee drink to wake ourselves a bit for the long exhausted hike to our gate, trudging along and taking many breaks along the way whenever there were seats. This meant walking all the way to the international terminal, which was quite a ways to go, down many long halls (only one with a cool rubbery-bouncy moving sidewalk), and up another long escalator. We finally found a quiet corner in the seating above our gate. There was a small 2-seater with an affixed table in a corner facing the windows. We set all our bags in the corner, and Teresa sprawled on the 2 seater, wrapping around the armrest as only someone small like her can. We plugged in my charger to the nearby outlet to get our phones and batteries charged up. I tried to get comfortable in the perpendicular seater behind it, but rest is more an uncomfortable black-out state than actually restful napping, as I am constantly shifting to try to get into a position that isn’t too painful to hold for long. The travel pillow helps, but only a little. The floor would’ve been more comfortable, but we don’t trust the cleanliness. Actually, at this whole airport, while we’ve seen social distancing, we haven’t seen anyone sanitizing anything - and nobody checking temperatures, and few wearing masks - it was nothing like Taiwan where we felt much safer! America doesn’t seem to grasp yet the most basic lessons of this pandemic! Meanwhile, while I attempted to rest and mainly blacked out sitting up uncomfortably, I discovered that my nice semi-reusable mask that we had specifically purchased had fallen from my face and was now on the airport floor! At least it had served for over 24 hours of use by this point, so I switched to an older paper mask I had worn before.
Once it was finally close to boarding time, we realized we didn’t really want dinner - and good thing too, as the restaurants I had earlier scouted near our gate were actually closed now! We decided to check on the price of an upgrade to first class, and discovered that it was only $159 per person! This seemed too good to be true! We decided to wait until the desk attendant showed up to ask them about the upgrade, and also whether we could use our travel certificates towards it. About 10 minutes before the flight, the attendant showed up, so after using the restroom one more time we headed down the escalator to our gate, and approached the desk. She asked if we wanted business, or first class, so I asked her to check the prices for each. “Am I seeing the right price here?” she said, as she did a double-take, and double-checked, and confirmed that it was indeed only $159 for first class! We couldn’t use the certificates, those are only good for new bookings, but we decided that we should go for the upgrade. Not only is this the only time it’s ever been attainable, but this is also still our honeymoon, and after this much time travelling and without real rest, we really would appreciate the upgrade - nay - deserve it! So we accepted, and I handed over my credit card, and we got back our shiny new first class boarding tickets, and then boarded in the first boarding group in very short order! And as it’s been more than 24 hours for us, despite the current timezone being just after 10PM, I’m moving onto the next day...
Day 19: Sunday, March 29 (travel day 2)
These were Polaris first class lie flat seats! The plane was mostly empty, including in first class, so we were totally isolated, nobody sitting anywhere around us. This meant we could remove our masks, with nobody nearby. We got two seats next to each other in the center, and these were basically fancy pods with plenty of space for you, and a wall between them that could be lowered (we put it down). Each pod included a generous table to the side with a nice dim lamp, a locker for possessions, a hook for your jacket, a large flatscreen, a detachable remote to control everything, generous room for your “under-seat” personal items, and a deep cushioned “foot-rest” which is hard to reach until you lie the seat back. And did I mention the seat can completely recline and even lie flat? It was extremely comfortable, and the seatbelt included an extra shoulder harness to keep you secure. We also got nice over-ear head-phones to use on the plane, and service immediately asked us what we wanted to drink. Teresa asked the options, and hilariously was just listed a bunch of juice and sodas, so she got apple juice. When my stewardess came by (it was a different one!) I asked if we got alcohol, and got the options. She was a bit frustrated that I was taking time to decide, so decided to return back later, and I ordered a Bailey’s on ice. It felt like they expected us to know what we were doing and how everything worked in first class! Ha. But I think given how kind we were, and how much we thanked them and appreciated their service, by the end the service had warmed up to us. It’s hard to imagine that there are people wealthy enough to fly first class as a matter-of-course all the time! But we were set to enjoy every minute of this service. And then we learned that we were going to be short-changed: the captain announced that--good news--the flight would be arriving 30 minutes early! While ordinarily this would’ve been great news for us, we were actually disappointed, which says a lot for how amazing these seats were!
After take-off, we were offered food - choices were calzones or grilled chicken salads. The salads sounded better to both of us, our stomachs still a bit delicate. We both ordered Bailey’s on ice with dinner. And the grilled chicken salads were excellent, with fresh spring greens, delicious grilled chicken, and vinaigrette! (And included a square of Ghirardelli dark chocolate with caramel for dessert). We got real silver-ware and cloth napkins. The trays that pulled out were spacious, and adjustable (and you could even have it hold your tablet, if you didn’t find anything to watch on the screen. Despite bringing my surface, I always found something to watch.) I ended up watching “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”, about Mr. Rogers, and it was truly excellent and moving. Once I finished my meal and the movie, I decided to switch to my own headphones and mp3 player, and try out the lie-flat seats for a nap. They were incredibly comfortable, and the flight felt very smooth - even the slight turbulence wasn’t a bother in these comfy seats, it felt more like being rocked gently to sleep, as if on a cruise-ship at sea. I was able to get in an hour of napping, listening to Radiohead’s A Moon Shaped Pool and Thom Yorke’s Eraser, before the announcement came to put the seats back up. Teresa only napped for about the second half, since she decided to watch 2 movies! The time had flown by (ha) too quickly.
Finally landed, Teresa abandoned me to run to the restroom, as I gathered my possessions and exited the plane. I found the restroom just to the right of the gate, and set my bags down to wait for her, before noticing she had messaged me on my phone to say that she instead had headed left towards baggage, not wanting to walk any extra, and had missed that bathroom and was now riding the train to baggage! So I picked everything up and trudged down to trains and rode over, and after a bit trying to find her (there were multiple exits it seems), we finally met and were able to swap bathroom breaks, and then grab our bags. Already, the conveyors had turned off! We met Bob and Carol outside; they had come to pick us up in their van. We switched to fresh masks that we had saved for the trip back. Bob helped us with our bags, and we got into the back row of the van - the middle row had been pushed forward, so we got to socially distance from them during our ride home. Thankfully the first class ride had semi-refreshed us, so we were able to make intelligible conversation, and enjoy the company of our family friends on the 40 minute ride home.
Home was a sight for sore eyes - and our tree in front was in full blossom too! Carol gave me the key to the house, which Lisa had put in a baggy and thrown through the door to her, to avoid social contact. We got our bags inside and said goodbye. Lunar was thrilled to see us, but after feeding him his special fish wet-food that he gets twice a week, he disappeared. We got mail, lysol wiped all bags, my hat, phones, belt, wallet and anything else we could think to wipe down. We started laundry to get sheets going, since Mom had been sleeping in our bed and we wanted fresh linens for ourselves. We called my parents, and then Teresa went to switch laundry while I shower, giving myself an extra scrub down. Then she took the shower, and I collapsed onto the bed after drying, keeping my hair on my towel. She found me there, and collapsed with me, and we got between layers of blankets… and ended up sleeping like that for over 20 hours, just completely exhausted.
After the trip: Monday, March 30 (stay home day 1)
At some point in the night, Teresa went downstairs to get some applesauce and cuddle with Lunar. I also got up a while later to brush my teeth and get some water, and again later to use the bathroom - and I found her asleep on the couch downstairs, so I convinced her to come back up the stairs, and we napped some more. We had basically spent a full day in bed. Still groggy and fuzzy, I realized that I had gone about 30 hours without food at this point, so I got myself up and made some angel hair pasta, which Teresa ended up deciding to have too. Angel hair, sesame oil, peanut sauce, grated jarlsberg and plenty of grated parmigiano reggiano cheese with a bit of bangkok seasoning. Fortunately, we’ve got plenty of pasta, sauces, rice, frozen food (including chicken breast), and non-perishables. We thankfully had stocked up at Costco on toilet paper, paper towels, lysol wipes, liquid soap, detergents and dishwasher soap and such not long before we left, so we have plenty of supplies to shelter-in-place for a very long time if we need to. We could definitely use fresh milk, produce, bread, sandwich supplies, etc., but for now we are waiting for a good time to get groceries when there are smaller crowds, we’ve quarantined a bit more, and potentially we can get supplies for friends as well (or they can grab some for us to drop them off).
Today, Maryland Governor Hogan announced a stay-at-home order with $5,000 fines (and possible 1 year jailtime) if you are out of home for any reason other than essentials (groceries, medicine, medical care, essential workers). It sounds like I will also be teleworking for at least the next month. There are now over 1,000 cases of COVID-19 in Maryland alone, and many more in the region. The US itself is now number 1 in the entire world in cases, as of last this weekend! Things are looking fairly bleak. My Aunt Jenny K’s sister got tested, thankfully negative. My best friend, Paul, had been home sick for a week, and just got tested - but has to wait a week for results.
With lunch, I watched Star Trek: Nemesis, the last TNG film in preparation for Star Trek: Picard, which had just finished the season - and CBS All Access has just given a free month trial subscription, so I will be watching it all over quarantine! Lunar cuddled on my lap the whole time, and purred. Teresa called her Mom, and later also talked to her sisters. We ended up feeling pretty tired, and calling it an early night at 8PM. We at least managed to grab the sheets from the dryer this time and make the bed, before falling asleep again. It is going to take awhile to get over the exhaustion of travel, and jet-lag of being exactly 12 hours off. Thankfully, I already have the rest of the week as leave from work (although I may decide to telework part-time later this week, if I’m feeling ready for it.)
We’re going to be home for a very long time - possibly months. Nobody knows when this will be over, but the hope is that if we “flatten the curve” (i.e. don’t overload hospital capacity by all getting infected at once) by social distancing and staying home unless essential, we will beat this thing. A vaccine is still at least 12-18 months out. In the meantime, we will do our best. Taiwan definitely felt a lot safer and had things better under control, but we didn’t want to be stuck there indefinitely, and we wanted to be home for Lunar, and for me to be able to return to work. We will make this work.
I’m looking forward to Persona 5: Royal, and the Final Fantasy VII remake, but those won’t be arriving for awhile. In the meantime, I am wrapping up the final ending of Steins;Gate, and plan to read the side-stories, and play the sequel. Teresa will get to play Animal Crossing. We can stay in shape with Ring Fit Adventure. There is plenty to watch and keep ourselves entertained with - Picard, finishing The Expanse season 4, The Mandalorian, Farscape, The Good Place, and many others. After so long out of the country, and all the travails trying to just make it back, I’m actually even looking forward to just being home, and staying there, for now. One ordeal ends; another begins.
The honeymoon is over. Now begins the greatest trial of our marriage - self-quarantine and staying home with only each other as company for possibly months. This is going to take a lot of patience, and care! We’ll see everyone on the other side!
Epilogue: Two Weeks Later
We’re now two weeks after we got home, and our self-imposed self-quarantine is finally over. Now we just have to continue to follow the Maryland stay-at-home order! We weren’t told to actually quarantine ourselves, but after all those airports we thought it best. A friend dropped off some groceries during the first week, and now that our quarantine is over Teresa put together a mask with a bandana and one of the used paper masks to venture to Costco and grab fresh groceries (and then the Krispy Kreme drive-through, since she has been craving donuts).
The weeks have gone by in a blur. Teresa has been playing a lot of Animal Crossing, and I have been playing a lot of Persona 5 Royal, which arrived in the mail April 1st, a few days after we got back. I started working again, putting in a partial day the Thursday after getting back, then working all of Friday, and the full next week. Thankfully my office is letting everyone telework through at least the end of April. They will re-evaluate at that point, but I suspect that it will continue, as this pandemic is still not yet at its peak.
Things are pretty scary. The DC-Maryland-Virginia area has over 10,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 now. The US has become the world leader in both cases of the virus and deaths. Meanwhile, Taiwan is still sitting at just over 300 cases in their entire country. And it still feels like they’re way smarter about their precautions and handling of things! The US only recently finally admitted that we should be wearing masks. (Of course, our President immediately undercut that by stating it was optional, and he won’t be wearing one. But that’s par for the course for his terrible leadership, and especially his mishandling of this crisis. But the less said about him, the better - this is my blog, and I don’t want to talk about politics. Wisconsin, crazily, forced their primary election to go on - and denied an extension for mail-in ballots too! OK - enough politics).
For now, we stay home. There is no end in sight. The whole world has ground to a halt. Both Teresa and I have friends and family who have gotten tested; thankfully so far nobody has tested positive. My Grandma got trapped in Germany even while we were trapped in Taiwan, and only finally made it back home recently. My aunt and uncle took her home from the airport in their van with a plastic sheet between the front and back, and she’s now self-quarantining at home too. They surprised her on her birthday a couple days ago with a banner and flowers hanging outside her window, and Grandma spent her birthday at home without any family to visit her. I’m hoping that she will not catch this, as at her advanced age it’s a lot more dangerous! I hope that we all get through this, and that the hospitals won’t become over-loaded and overwhelmed, that masks won’t run out, that ventilators will be available. It’s not sounding great on any of those fronts. Record millions have applied for unemployment. Our front-line workers are the doctors and nurses, the delivery drivers, the retail and food workers. They really need to be treated better. Meanwhile, insurance coverage being tied to employment seems like a huge mistake in our country. I hope everyone out there is staying safe, and taking care of themselves!
The world hasn’t seen anything like this. We’re even seeing carbon emissions making the biggest drop ever, but not due to any effort to stop climate change, just because the entire world has stopped. I’ve heard this called the great pause. The question is, can we reboot and learn our lessons from this and make society better? Can we learn the right lessons - giving universal healthcare, keeping sanitary, washing our hands properly always? Time will tell.
I don’t know when we will finally make it to Japan for a proper trip. I’m not even sure when we’ll be able to leave our house for more than a quick grocery trip! We’ll continue to look forward to the planned Japan vacation. In the meantime, despite all the stresses and ordeals we went through, I’m still glad we had this chance to go to Taiwan, and to visit with Matt and Rosie. It was a wonderful break from the world!
Postscript: As We Enter 2021
While everything above had been written either during the trip, or within the two weeks after its conclusion, I had not managed to post the final two parts of this travelogue until now. The reason for this delay is due to the rocky times that our relationship fell into once the honeymoon was over and we found ourselves trapped in lockdown by a pandemic with the world turned upside down around us. As a result, working on the rest of the photos and putting up the blog posts became emotionally fraught, but I had expected to put up the rest once we had weathered the storm. Instead, I am putting this up as a final closure on this project, because this trip was an amazing experience - the one bright spot in a truly miserable year - and the adventure we went through traveling as the pandemic began around the world is a story I believe will be interesting to have told in full. When I wrote that we would face the biggest trial of our relationship after this trip ended, I did not realize how prescient that statement truly was, but I knew challenges lay ahead. Sadly, they took their toll and Teresa asked me for a divorce on September 30th.
As the months since returning home progressed, we played a lot of Jackbox games with family over Discord (as initially trialled with Paul and his brothers from Taiwan), and it proved an excellent way to keep in touch while socially isolated. I also played Civilization 6 with my siblings (and one of their significant others), and enjoyed zoom parties, Netflix watch parties, virtual cons, BoardGameArena online boardgaming with friends, and various YouTube and Twitch streamed events. After a long break, while I played through the bulk of Persona 5 Royal (up to the new epilogue content) and Teresa put in hundreds of hours of Animal Crossing, I went back to Final Fantasy XIV in order to have a fun activity to enjoy together, as it was becoming one of the few things we still had in common and shared an interest in. Work ended up going full-time remote for the rest of the year, although it was initially week-by-week until it became clear that things were not going to change for a long time, and likely will remain remote many months into 2021 as well.
When Maryland state lock-down restrictions were lifted enough, we formed an “isolation cell”/pod/bubble with Paul and his brothers and a couple friends, and were able to visit with them for some much needed sanity. We would treat ourselves to take-out and bubble tea now and then, grocery shop sparingly and carefully, and mainly keep to ourselves. Going out entailed masking up, taking hand sanitizer, and then wiping down with lysol, showering and changing upon returning home. The world outside has become a hazard to navigate, and unfortunately America decided to do the stupid thing and politicize mask wearing and other safety precautions, and we now have to worry about super-spreader events and belligerent Covidiots who insist on flaunting mask mandates because of their “freedoms”. Meanwhile, Taiwan managed to completely eliminate Covid and go back to normal in very short order, while the US through complete mismanagement of the pandemic soared to become the world leader in cases and deaths to this tragic circumstance. As time went by, government inaction continued to offer inadequate assistance. (And I should clarify - Republican inaction on Democrat passed relief bills). I have had friends and family members lose their jobs, and others contracted COVID-19. Thankfully all have recovered thus far, but this pandemic is not over yet. Family members that own their own businesses have been hit hard and are doing their best to weather this storm.
Meanwhile, the week after the election was especially stressful, as record breaking mail in and early voting due to the pandemic caused huge delays in the counts, and swing states gradually moved from the red to the blue column, while our President and his supporters sowed confusion and claims of fraud. When Biden finally won, there was a huge relief for but moments, as no concession came and things moved to ever more ridiculous court cases, and coup attempts that threatened our very democracy as the loser clung to power. Every day he remains in office he does more lasting damage to a sick and dying nation, and it remains to be seen how our people, our democracy, and our dignity can be restored.
As the end of the year approached, my siblings and I made plans to get together at my parent’s in Florida as safely as possible, so that we could all be together and support each other in these trying times. Two weeks before Thanksgiving, we were to drive down (since it will be safer than flying) after spending two weeks in complete quarantine from our bubbles and all getting tested. Initially the plan was to spend one week at an AirBNB halfway between us in South Carolina, before going to my parents house until Thanksgiving (after which my siblings who didn’t live with them would return home, and I would remain at least a couple more weeks). However, this plan suddenly changed when Dad had a fall on a Pickleball Court and broke his wrist, and then couldn’t get approval for surgery until doctors looked into some troubling signs about his heart. Once he finally got checked out, they discovered he had a widowmaker that might have taken his life within weeks, and he got scheduled for a quadruple bypass surgery that had to be done before his wrist surgery! Thankfully this was caught in time and the surgery was successful, but he was not ready to travel in time so instead we all met at my parents home in Florida, which was a two-day drive.
It was wonderful to be able to spend time with family, and since I could work remotely I ended up staying and helping to care for my Dad until the end of the year, during which time we worked on building up his strength through walks that started out holding his hand and going just a block, and ended up walking around a lake! Meanwhile, I was able to get in a lot of gaming with family and spend a lot of quality time together. Shortly after our family Thanksgiving, Alex, his fiancee Meghan, and Rachel drove home together. While we didn’t get out of the house much, we did see a rocket launch from across the water, another rocket launch from my parent’s lanai, we watched the meteor shower, and we got to see the Jupiter and Saturn conjunction, all of which were quite spectacular! We cooked together, and enjoyed several movies and shows such as The Queen’s Gambit (truly excellent) and Marvel’s Runaways (which lost our interest), Palm Springs (absolutely amazing), Wonder Woman 1984 (a huge disappointment), Pixar’s Soul (wonderful), and Dad and I watched Star Trek Lower Decks (far better than I expected and truly hilarious), For All Mankind (excellent), and started season 5 of The Expanse (at this point it’s one of my top sci-fi shows of all time). We exchanged gifts on Hanukkah, enjoyed a Christmas ham and video-chatted with family back home, and rang in the New Year together, before I had to finally drive back home. Rebecca’s boyfriend Viral was able to join us towards the very end of the year (he was already isolating and got tested daily), and we all had a lot of fun getting to hang out and game together. I will treasure this time with family as I look towards a future of living all alone and continuing to have to remain mostly at home.
I reflect back on a year in which we have been through so much, and lost so much, and I hope that we are now through the worst of things. Cases are surging, hospital ICUs are full, but vaccines have been created, and are even now starting to be distributed to the most vulnerable. Our divorce will be done soon, and we can both move on with our lives. Biden will be inaugurated January 20th, and nothing short of a full on coup can stop him. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, we just have to survive this time. And as I reflect on a year that brought so much pain and hardship, I can at least be content that we had this one wonderful trip to Taiwan, with wonderful friends, delicious food, and experiences that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. It was not the trip we planned for, but it was exactly the one that I needed, and one bright spot in the year that was 2020. So here’s to 2021, and healing.
