{"id":28490,"date":"2018-12-19T07:03:10","date_gmt":"2018-12-18T23:03:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=28490"},"modified":"2026-03-15T20:21:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T12:21:10","slug":"12-days-in-taiwan-day-12-taipei-and-returning-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2018\/12\/19\/12-days-in-taiwan-day-12-taipei-and-returning-home\/","title":{"rendered":"12 Days in Taiwan – Day 12 – Taipei and Returning Home"},"content":{"rendered":"

Taiwan is a really popular vacation destination for Singaporeans, and a quick look at my Facebook feed attests to that. There was an ex-NTU classmate who was in Taiwan with his family during our period of travel and broadly covering more or less the same itinerary, and a Minton neighbor who was also visiting Taipei at the same time. At work, I have two colleagues also visiting Taiwan this month, and my cousin was also just on the same island with her family and returned to Singapore just before we left. I was a bit more selective in deciding what photos to show on Facebook. In part it’s because a lot of the places we went to aren’t finally different from where everyone else has\/is\/will be going, and also \u2014 and this is just me \u2014 I wonder how effective it is to dump three dozen photos in each Facebook post and expect your friends to wade through all of them to find the really nice ones. To that end, I tried keeping the photos per FB post to no more than 5\u20136 per post, and added commentary to each photo whenever I could too.<\/p>\n

Our last day was sedate, though we didn’t have a lot of time left to spend in Taipei before we had to head to Taoyuan International Airport for our flights home. Our mid-morning ride in a pre-arranged cab from Taipei to the airport was uneventful. There was somewhat slow traffic from our place in Zhongshan to the highways, but once we were on the latter, the cab sped along at 110km\/h and we got to the airport after a quick 35-minute ride over the 42km distance. As we had a pile of unused Taiwanese currency still left, the wife went on a mini-spree to buy local pastries and also Christmas gifts, while I dug out my ThinkPad X1 Carbon and started drafting my reflection and retrospection posts.<\/p>\n

From my Facebook feed, most people seem to have opted for direct flights, and the budget airlines do offer quite a range of them. I didn’t find their timings as suitable though, so \u2014 6 months ago \u2014 I booked us on a full-service airline at good rates and with good arrival and departure timings in Taipei too. The only catch was that this would be a flight with a stopover at Hong Kong. As luck would have it, our arrival into Taipei 12 days ago was delayed by two hours because of congestion at Hong Kong International Airport, which ate significantly into the advantage I’d hoped for. Funnily, we had the same plane on both legs \u2014 Taipei \u21d2 HK, HK \u21d2 Singapore \u2014 on our return flights and sat in exactly the same seats even haha.<\/p>\n

The return flight home was smooth for the most part, but an incident during our transfer between flights at HK International Airport again reminded me how much I do not<\/strong><\/em> want to visit Hong Kong. Putting aside the perpetual congestion at its international airport, I’d expected the airport terminal staff to display the same cool manner that I remarked on during my trip there in September<\/a> this year. What additional thing happened then? Well, after having our baggage and persons scanned, I accidentally walked down the wrong queue \u2014 I always thought you walk straight at a junction instead of taking a detour if you don’t know any better \u2014 and was yelled at by a staff member who snarled in Chinese: “Can’t you see you’re going the wrong way?? DON’T WANT YOUR LUGGAGE IS IT??”<\/p>\n

Now, if this was an elderly uncle or auntie who was skewering me for my oversight, I’d be fine. It’s an Asian respect-for-your-elders thing, and they’ve lived a longer life than you have. But this was a young bespectacled lass barely in her mid-twenties who just shouted at me. If this is the manners of young adult Hong Kongers, how much worse will it be when they’re in their cranky 50s and 60s 30 years from hence?<\/p>\n

OK, maybe it was just my manly pride being intruded upon by someone half my age, all because I was unfamiliar with this particular screening system. But just about everyone we’ve met in Taiwan had been polite, warm, and happy to return a greeting and a hello. Compared to the pushing, shoving and cold hard stares I received everywhere in Hong Kong. It’s incredible that there’s just 715km between the residents of these two islands, and while they largely speak the same language and can’t be easily differentiated by physical appearances, they can yet be so different in manners. So no thanks Hong Kong \u2014 you can take your island and shove it<\/strong><\/em>. I’ll happily bring my vacation money to visit Taiwan again soon.<\/p>\n

Pictures! And not of the nasty lady in Hong Kong.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Waiting for our pre-arranged cab outside our Taipei apartment. It looks dilapidated, no? But as several of our drivers quipped, Taiwanese apartment blocks look old on the outside, but the insides can be really modern and beautifully done up. Our homes in Taipei and Hualien were exactly like that.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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P is getting really good at pouting for photos. At least that’s better than him putting up an annoyed look.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Johnnie White Walker @ Taoyuan International Airport! Final Season coming in April 2019.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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We sampled some of the local pineapple cakes in Taipei, and Ling was impressed enough to want to buy a few boxes home.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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H was happily engaged with the onboard game entertainment systems on our Cathay Pacific flights home. She was particularly proud to be listed top-rank on the leaderboards on our Hong Kong \u21d2 Singapore leg.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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On the other hand, P was intolerable with his incessant talking and calls for attention each time during a flight. Or that at least is as Ling tells it!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That’s a wrap for the day-by-day posts. I’ve got several more posts queued up: about itineraries, reflections and a commentary on equipment used this trip, starting with a two part commentary<\/a> on the itinerary we had.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Taiwan is a really popular vacation destination for Singaporeans, and a quick look at my Facebook feed attests to that. There was an ex-NTU classmate who was in Taiwan with his family during our period of travel and broadly covering<\/p>\n

Read More 12 Days in Taiwan – Day 12 – Taipei and Returning Home<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[604,618],"class_list":["post-28490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-traveling","tag-canon-g7x-ii","tag-taiwan-2018","wpcat-17-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/blog-2018-taiwan-day-12-IMG_3188-taipei-airbnb.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28490"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38546,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28490\/revisions\/38546"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}