Zhongshan

We left Napier just before 1:30pm on April 7th, weighed down by a few gratis nibbles at Napier Koru, including the shockingly delicious inclusion of cheese rolls!

Less than an hour later we navigated the wasteland that is Auckland International, killing time until check-in opened for our China Airlines flight to Taipei, via a brief stop in Brisbane. In reality we had to kill 2 hours, and at Auckland International you've exhausted all the options within minutes, so I was boooorrrreeeddd!
Eventually the clock struck 4:30pm and I sauntered down to the China Airlines Business Class check-in line. CA don't have their own lounge at Auckland, so they share the Strata lounge. This is a 'mixed' experience lounge, part Fawlty Towers customer relations, part communist Russia queue line. Fortunately the food is good, so I wolfed down multiple portions of their chicken curry and fruit friands, washed down by ginger ale. Everything has more flavour when it's free! (I know technically I've paid for it through my ticket, but let me pretend.)

Around 6:50pm it was time to board the first flight of this trip. The A350-900 is my favourite airplane and China Airlines have a superb business class, which makes flying on it even better. Eagle eyed readers will know that by this stage I had already eaten two meals, however I had pre-selected my meals on all CA flights for this trip. Surprisingly (or not if you know me) I seem to have chosen beef for all of my meals. I had three meals between Auckland and Taipei, two dinners and a breakfast and they were all delicious, especially the dinner between Brisbane and Taipei, which I was eating at 2am New Zealand time, how very continental of me!
I haven't yet had to request an extension for my seatbelt, but eating at this pace it can't be far away!

China Airlines fly a great plane, serve delicious food and have young, attractive and attentive hosties. (I'm looking at you Air New Zealand!) It's a winning combo and I'd recommend them to anyone.

Our flight from Auckland to Brisbane was smooth and uneventful, but flying into Brisbane we witnessed the most incredible lightning storm I've ever seen. Check the attached video. The storm was still cranking 1 hour later when we re-boarded our plane and got the heck out of 'Straya headed for the mysterious East, which confusingly we were headed West to reach.

I managed to get about two hours sleep between Brisbane and Taipei, when I wasn't eating, or lying cast in my lie-flat bed, and we must have had a tailwind, or the pilot had left his oven on because our 9 hour flight took just 8 hours. This meant our plane touched down at Taoyuan airport Taipei at 5:12am Saturday the 8th.

The only fly in the ointment with landing this early is that most hotels won't let you check-in until 3pm. I know, it's an international scam. You pay for 24 hours but get just 20! Sign my Change.org petition to give the hotel cabal a kick in the goolies! ;0

The upshot is that our Uber dropped us off at the hotel about 6:30am. The mathematicians among you will have carefully calculated that this is a deficit between checking in and getting into your room of exactly 'Oh crap, many hours!'

The solution was to activate 'Operation MRT'. This involved me buying two 72 hour MRT passes and riding the rails like I stole the caboose. Between dropping our bags off and actually getting into the room we visited the National Concert Hall, Chiang Kai Shek memorial hall, Longshan Temple, Taipei 101 and saw approximately 7,452 scooters. It's obvious that your average Taiwaneser (may not be accurate, but sounds good, so we'll stick with it) loves a good scoot, and by god they are everywhere.

The personal highlight of this purposeful arsing about was visiting Longshan Temple. The Taiwanesers show such reverence when they visit this sacred place, and the love and craftsmanship that has gone into every inch of the temple is utterly beautiful.

Right now I am in the hotel, finally, and I may collapse either through exhaustion, or a delayed meat coma, so I better end this entry now.

Tomorrow, more Taipei sightseeing before another glorious China Airlines flight to Tokyo on Monday.
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