Our Trip to Taiwan - Day 0

This year our family was blessed with a most fantastic family vacation to the fabulous island of Taiwan! Nate had a business trip to a national lab in Longtan, Taiwan and, since it was only about an hour away from the capital (Taipei), we thought this would be a great opportunity to tack on a family vacation and see the sites. One of the things that I was most excited about was seeing history from an 'Asian' point of view. Both Nate and I have traveled pretty often but all of the countries we've visited have been on the European continent, Mexico, and Canada. I know I'm painting with a broad brush but Europe and Canada are fairly similar as they are based on roughly a similar history. Mexico is different but since we live in Pasco (which has a high populace of Mexican immigrants) it can feel like we're living in Mexico at times. So this really was a new adventure for us!

Another really awesome aspect of visiting Taiwan is that we would get to see Tim Kuo again. Tim was a foreign exchange student that lived with Nate's parents for two years while attending his Junior and Senior years of high school, then stuck around in the Portland area for another seven or so years earning his Bachelor's degree at Oregon State and then his pilot license. Dave and Linda consider him a second son and I got to get to know him pretty well from all the trips that we took to Nate's parents. Due to his military obligations (Taiwan has mandatory service for all boys) Tim eventually hit his time limit for living in the US and had to move back to Taiwan to fulfill his military obligations. I suppose that his family probably missed him, too. :-) It had been about two or so years since we'd seen him last, I think.

So anyhoo. We're going to Taiwan! Officially this trip took a while to get into the 'definitely going' category. Since Nate was going for work purposes we had to wait for his dates to teach to be confirmed before we could book his tickets, then we had to wait for his company to actually book the tickets, next we had to decide when we wanted our family vacation to be (by this time we knew we wanted after he'd finished up his business portion but the actual dates were still loosey-goosey), but finally we were able to book our tickets (including my parents!). There was talk back and forth about whether to invite my parents or not. On the one hand we are a family of three and don't always need to include my parents (of whom my Mom LOVES to travel) even if we go to exotic places, but on the other hand if they didn't go it would be just me with Abby for the entire flight there and back. (Even if we got on the same flight as Nate coming back he would still have been in First Class while we'd have been in Coach.) The option to have help on the plane was what won over the decision to invite my parents along for the trip. At first it was just Mom who was excited but as the date got closer and closer you could tell Dad was getting pretty into this trip as well.

The day to leave finally arrived. And, boy, what a whirlwind that was. Our flight out of Pasco wasn't until 8:20pm so I decided to pack up my stuff the night before and pack Abby's the morning of since I could easily pack my suitcase while she was asleep but wanted to hold off on her stuff until I could pack everything at once (and she still needed stuff for morning and her nap the next day). When I helped Nate pack it was super easy. I entertained Abby while he packed and then I ran errands during the day while he worked for whatever else he needed. When I was packing for the two of us it was trying to pack, while keeping Abby entertained away from the suitcases, as well as running the various errands for things we needed. A bit of effort but I eventually got everything we needed into the suitcases.

The morning we left for Taiwan Abby woke up in such a good mood. She so sweetly asked me for "Mac an cheese pease" for breakfast. I simply couldn't refuse the cuteness. 

Abby also surprised me by falling asleep in the car while we were running our errands. It was the second time in two days that she'd fallen asleep mere hours after waking up from a full night of sleep. Combined with the football team amount of food she was packing in and I figured she was going through a little growth spurt. She was just so adorable that I gave her a quick 30 minute snooze before waking her up and continuing with our errand running.

That night Abby was totally excited about going to the airport and watching for the planes as they came in. Since the Pasco airport is pretty small there's not a ton of people in the building so we were able to find a couple deserted sections to jump around in which helped get out the wiggles. Soon enough we boarded the plane and began our adventure! I was hoping Abby would fall sleep for the quick portion of the trip to give her some renewed energy for our five hour layover in Seattle, but alas she was so excited about being on the plane, and seeing the lights, and pointing things out to me that she didn't get any sleep whatsoever. 

Abby thought the carseat carrier that we used to roll her carseat around with was a fantastic stroller. 

She felt like such a big girl when pushing and pulling her stroller and put up a good fuss if we tried to take it away from her.

Yep, she fits!

Sitting pretty on the flight from Pasco to Seattle.

When we got to Seattle we were fortunate enough to not have to handle our luggage again as they had been tagged to go directly to Taiwan through our connecting flight. But it was now 9:30pm, we were tired, hungry, and starting to get a little fussy. Oh, and Abby was a little cranky, too. :-) Fortunately, we found a kid's play area in the Seattle airport which let Abby run off energy without having to exert much energy ourselves. The only unfortunate thing was that there were two entrances/exits to the play area (seriously, people, why would you build it that way?!) so we did have to maintain a pretty alert focus on her as she loved trying to sneak out. After hanging out here for a while we grabbed another bite to eat, then went to hang out for another few hours until our 2:00am flight to Taiwan. Abby fell asleep in her carseat-stroller around 11:00pm so Mom and I airport walked for another half hour or so until sitting down and resuming the wait.

Abby found a friend to play with in the Seattle Kid's Play Area.

She LOVED the slide. She'd slide down and immediately start jumping for joy at the bottom.

This stack of 'suitcases' also made a handy slide. All the play toys were made out of a rubber like material. They looked like hard plastic but when you pushed on them they were soft and gave a little.

Finally, it was time to get on the plane. Abby woke up for maybe 30 seconds while I was buckling her carseat into the plane seat but then passed right back out afterwards. I tried so hard to keep my eyes open but after a week of not sleeping well (since I rarely sleep well while Nate is gone) and then staying up late for this plane I was exhausted. I put in my ear plugs, put on my face mask, and then passed out. I didn't even wait to get served dinner I was so tired. Admittedly I figured I'd wake up when the carts started to come around but it wasn't until around 7 hours into the 13 hour flight that I woke up. Or, well, was awoken by our seat mate. When booking our tickets we had waited so long that when I saw the small number of available seats together on the flight over I screamed a little then scrambled to get the last remaining sets of two seats together so that Abby and I could sit together and my parents could sit together. I'm not joking when I say there were six sets of two seats together and the rest were individual seats scattered throughout the plane. We definitely waited down to the last minute to book our tickets! Anyway, back to my story.

Abby had made a couple peeps and the guy sitting next to me thought that Abby was waking up so he woke me up. Which was kind of him considering he thought I might sleep through it, but my Abby makes noises while sleeping so it was actually another hour before she woke up. That was okay as I grabbed a couple of munchies and read a bit more of my book. I'll spare the long drawn-out details of the flight (I know, I know this is already a long post so I've missed that mark) and instead give an overview. For the next five hours I tried my best to keep Abby entertained with the various games I'd bought her, various movies I'd brought with us, walking her up and down the aisles, and having my Mom walk up and down the aisles with her. Dad was funny as the times I asked my parents for help he'd immediately turn to my Mom and say "Trish, it's your turn.". :-) Finally, it was nap time so I grabbed my Ergo and walked to the bulkhead with the exit door and I stood and rocked her until she fell asleep. While I was happy she'd conked out again, after the first hour my feet and back were feeling the lack of shoes and the extra weight. But I soldiered on and Abby got in a good two hour nap. Then it was back to our seats for the last hour of the flight.

This area became a favorite out-of-seat area for us as it was big enough for her to stretch out on the floor when we were walking the aisles and gave me enough room to hold her while trying to put her down for a nap.

My sleeping beauty. 

At this point Abby let us know that she was done. She kept saying "All done plane" and fussing to get out of her seat. I threw every activity at her that I could think of to make her happy just a little bit longer. Finally, oh finally, our plane touched ground, we packed up our many loads of gear, and stepped off the plane. By the time we'd exited the plane, taken a bathroom break and a diaper change, gotten our bags, and gone to customs we were literally the only people in the customs area. Literally. The guy staffing the diplomatic express line waved us over and processed us he was so bored. It was at this point that we realized how unplanned this trip really was.

In previous foreign travels my Mom and I would spend weeks going over travel books and planning our itinerary. Even when we booked through a tour (as we did in Scotland) we still researched the places we'd be visiting to have an idea of what we'd see and what else we could see during free time. However, prior to the Taiwan trip Mom and Dad were recovering from various injuries and working overtime so they weren't able to do any sort of research and I was helping Abby recover from sickness and doing general Stay-at-Home-Mom stuff so I didn't have a lot of time either. When we were in touch with Tim and his sister, Grace, they kept saying "Don't worry we'll take care of it". Two weeks before the trip we confirmed that we'd be staying at Tim's parents house in Linkou, Taiwan. Grace also emailed us a rough draft itinerary but said that we shouldn't worry as her Mom would take care of us. (Warning. Spoiler Alert!: When they said they'd take care of us, they weren't kidding! They REALLY took care of all the details of this trip and made it the fantastic trip that it was. More on this later.)

So here we were at the customs booth when the guy asked us the address of the place we were staying and we realized we had no idea. We had no idea where we were staying! Then he asked us to just put down the phone number of the place we were staying and we had to scramble to find an email that had Grace's work number. Seriously? We traveled 20 hours to a different continent and had no idea of the contact information of the people we were meeting up with. Yeah. Stupid. But we fully trusted the "we'll take care of it" mantra. As we walked out of customs we were joking about hoping that someone was waiting for us at the main arrival entrance as we had no idea how to get in touch with anyone should no one be there. But, we turned a corner and there was Tim! Our family vacation to Taiwan was officially beginning!

Continued...