March 8, Thursday, 2007, Phnom Penh Airport

I’m at the airport way too early as always. I suppose I could have organized my day a little better and gone out for a cup of coffee in the city this morning at least, but when that time came I actually fell back to sleep thanks to those blackout curtains in my room. I still had enough time to get a coffee, but that would have meant getting to the airport at the normal time instead of at Doug’s patented “let’s reduce the stress as much as possible” time.

I’m very tired of packing. I feel like I’ve been packing for this entire trip. I blame that on the horrible Ortlieb bags. Nothing ever found a regular home in any of those bags so every single morning I’d essentially have to go through the mental and physical process of packing all over again. What goes where? Where is this? Where should I put this? Will I need this? It never ended. I did a lot of packing up in Guinea and Ethiopia and on other trips, but that was more like breaking camp than packing. Everything had a place where it went and I never had to think about it. It was just a process that took time. It didn’t really take any effort. The packing this time also seemed to go on until the very last minute. Again that’s because the Ortliebs are just giant bags with no compartments. Even putting one last thing away was the equivalent of packing the contents of the entire bag. Then if I had to get at some item no matter how small or large, I had to empty out the entire bag and start all over again.

It wasn’t that hard this morning, though. Or yesterday. The bike was done, done, done. Last night, I packed up my other stuff as much as I could. I wanted to put everything into the two large pannier bags. That would make it easier to put them inside the duffel bag and carry them. When there are three or four bags, the duffel bag flops around like crazy and is impossible to handle. This time I wanted to make it much simpler and easier. So I packed everything down into those two pannier bags. Then I strapped them together this morning after I’d taken my shower and put away my toiletries kit. Then I worked out a way to put them inside the duffel bag right in the middle so that I could use the duffel bag’s handles. I put them in the end before and then it was awkward to use the handles. I put them in the middle and then I used tape and plastic twine to wrap the excess duffel bag material up and around the two pannier bags. As Homer would say, it all came together in a nice neat package.

My last day in Phnom Penh was a very nice one. I found that place with the great coffee, took some pictures in the market, went to the National Museum, went shopping for presents, had a beer in a place overlooking the river, and I also went to the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. I’ve mentioned all of that except for the Royal Palace and Silver Pagoda. I didn’t think it would be interesting and it wasn’t, especially after Siem Reap. It was just a big bunch of pagodas. I didn’t even bother going into any of them. I walked through the grounds and then walked out.

Just before dinner I walked along the riverfront in the sunset light. It was beautiful and hundreds of local people were out enjoying themselves. Lots of the tour boats were going up and down the river with tourists on them taking pictures. I had thought about going on one of those boats. I was doing all the standard things for tourists anyway. But I knew that by the time evening came around, I’d be too tired. If this trip has taught me anything, it has taught me once and for all that I am a morning person. It’s like I’m two different people. I have all of my energy in the morning. At night, I can barely even remember that person. They really do feel like two separate people.

11:26 a.m.

Ah! Doug got a chance to vent. I vented at everybody. The problem was that I was told my luggage was overweight. After all of that careful packing, I was over the limit.

The things I got to vent about were endless. First of all, everyone around me was checking in 60-70 kilograms of luggage. My checked luggage came to 37 kilograms and I was told I was over the limit. Of course, I knew what the problem was but for the sake of venting, I pretended I didn’t. That way they had to explain to me that if I was checking my luggage through to Canada (where this flight ended up) I could have up to 70 kilograms. But since I was picking up my luggage in Taipei, I got much less. In the end, I wasn’t sure about the right figure.

As I started to argue with them, I told them all about the whole experience in Taipei. I told them that they had accepted the exact same amount of luggage in Taipei. They said that was impossible. I was waiting for that and asked them if they were telling me I was a liar? How then did I get to Phnom Penh? I told them the whole story about how their web site said all I had to do with a bicycle was take off the pedals and turn the handlebars sideways. I did that, I explained with painstaking and annoying detail, and then I was told that I had to put the bicycle in a box. And the kicker is that they never weighed the bicycle in Taipei. They just rolled it away.

They told me that was impossible. I got all huffy about them calling me a liar again. I pressed them for logic. Why should a person going to Canada get 70 kilograms, while I, a person on the same plane only going to Taipei, get less? Where’s the logic? They just said that was the rule.

By then I’d built up a good head of steam and I told them in no uncertain terms that EVA Air should get their act straight about how they handle luggage, in particular bicycles. Why would they not weigh it in Taipei and now suddenly want to weigh it? Just because it’s in a box? I was feeling pretty good by this point, like a boxer hitting with every punch. Of course, they weren’t listening to a word. I was just trying to build up a good head of hostility and anger so that if eventually there were some wiggle room, they’d let me have it rather than risk more of my wrath.

I asked them first how much it would cost to just pay for the extra weight. They calculated it at $91. That seemed a tad high to me. Luckily, I had made an effort to make my carry-on bag as light as possible. In fact, I was carrying essentially an empty knapsack. All I had was my NEO and my passport and my Shuffle. The fellow suggested that I take 7 kilograms of stuff out of my checked luggage and put it in my carry-on. I knew that wouldn’t be a big problem. It would just mean dismantling all of my careful packing that I was so proud of. I didn’t let them know that and pretty much recapped my story, how their screwing up in Taiwan meant that I was in Phnom Penh without a proper box for packing my bicycle. And that it took me nearly two days to find a box and pack up the bicycle. And now that I had gone to all the trouble to pack up the bicycle as they wanted, I was being penalized for it because if it wasn’t in a box, they wouldn’t weigh the bicycle and there wouldn’t be this problem. And now I had to go through my personal belongings in the airport and spread it all out over the floor for people to see while I sorted it and repacked, after taking such care to pack it well in the first place. Their smiles were pretty much frozen in place by now. I was nice about it though. I wasn’t rude at all. I simply wasn’t letting them get away with anything and I was stating my case. I was going to follow their rules, but I wanted them to know that there was a problem. I wasn’t going to just take it lying down.

At least she had already checked me in and I had a boarding pass and my aisle seat. So I didn’t feel like there was a huge time limit here. If I didn’t have a boarding pass, then the fact of being at the airport early would have been wasted. I would have been kicked way back to the back of the line and the tour groups were starting to arrive and the seats were being snapped up.

I brought my bike box and my beautiful square duffel bag over to the seats and started to unpack. All the seats were right by the window and at least the people waiting outside got a bit of a show. I don’t think they knew what any of the bags I took out were, but they liked all the bright colors and bags apparently. There was a lot of pointing and speculating. At least I wasn’t dragging out underwear and stuff like that. And I had spent so much time packing that I had an intimate knowledge of what was in there. I knew exactly what to take out and put in my knapsack. I almost made the mistake of just grabbing the heaviest bags and jamming them in my knapsack. I couldn’t do that of course, because what made those bags heavy were my tools and Swiss Army Knife and liquids and such things – things that they don’t want you to take on an airplane. At least that’s a rule I agree with. And I would have felt beyond stupid if after all this trouble, I then went through security and they were forced to take away my beloved Swiss Army Knife or Topeak Alien II bike tool. In the old days, they could give you a receipt for these items and you could pick them up at the other end. Not anymore I don’t think. I think they just confiscate them and you never see them again.

Because of this trouble with tools and liquids, I had some trouble getting enough weight out of my checked luggage. The bike itself plus the cardboard boxes – which were very heavy on their own – took up most of the weight. Taking the bike into account, I was left with almost no weight allowance for my other bag. I didn’t think I had quite managed it, but I thought I would check and I closed up the pannier bags, zipped them into the duffel bag (now all loose and floppy) and went back to the check-in counter. I was still overweight by about a kilogram and a half. They weren’t happy about that. I’m not entirely sure but the guy seemed to be saying that by allowing me 30 kilograms, he was already giving me an extra 7 kilograms. So being at 31.5 was a big problem. It wasn’t just 1.5 kg over, but technically 8.5 kg over. But I guess this is where the wiggle room came in and the woman who was actually doing the check-in looked at the man and raised her eyebrows in a “please” kind of look. “Please get this cycling lunatic out of my line,” she was saying. And the guy nodded at her which was all the permission she needed to just check me in.

The final insult was that they made me sign another form that said my bicycle was fragile and not packed properly and therefore they couldn’t be held responsible for any damage done to it while they were flying it to Taipei. My eyes narrowed as I prepared to do battle again, but I was checked in and it was done and I didn’t want to push my luck. In this case, they really had a point. A bicycle in a box is the very definition of fragile. It would be a miracle if it didn’t suffer any damage.

It just occurred to me that when I met all these cyclists, I should have asked them about their experience with airlines. I’m going to look into this a bit and see what stories are out there. Before I die, I’d like to go on a bike trip where everything works out perfectly where the bike and airlines are concerned.

Anyway, I was just glad to get away from there and head on to the next battle. I had gone earlier to pay my airport tax of $25. The guy kept telling me it was $45. I wasn’t going to have any of that and I started to argue with him and I pointed at all the signs around me that said it was $25. He finally got a word in and told me that he wasn’t saying $45. He was saying “boarding pass.” Apparently you can’t pay your airport tax until you have a boarding pass. I imagine this is because the boarding pass indicates whether you have to pay the international tax or the lower domestic flight tax. Plus, the receipt is a sticker that goes on the back of your boarding pass. Without a boarding pass, you have nothing to stick it to.

With my boarding pass in hand, I went back to that window. I was getting tired of constantly paying money though and I decided to give this guy a bit of a surprise as well. He asked me for $25 and I asked him what the money was for. He was puzzled, as one can imagine. He said it was an airport tax. I said I understood that, but what was it for? Where did the money go? Who got it? What was it spent on? I explained that I had already spent hundreds of dollars for the flight itself. It was a bit insulting to now have to just hand over $25 for the privilege of using the airport. Shouldn’t that be assumed when you buy your ticket? He said again that it was an airport tax. I didn’t let him off the hook yet, though and I asked him again with different phrasing. Who gets the money? What is this tax for? To his credit, he actually thought about it. I don’t think it had ever occurred to him to wonder where the money went. It was his job to collect $25 from everybody and that’s what he did.

I was a bit nervous after that as I approached passport control and security. I had been careful, but perhaps something had gotten into my carry-on bag that I didn’t plan on – some item that they weren’t going to like. I had packed and repacked so many times on this trip, that I could have overlooked something that I stuck into a little pocket somewhere. But I went through fine. I also worried that now my carry-on bag was going to be deemed too heavy. It was fine though and I sailed through. Everyone else was setting off the metal detector, but I went through without a peep. Passport control was also fine. There had been a tiny glitch at check-in that I didn’t mention. The woman flipped through my passport looking for my visa for Taiwan and couldn’t find it. She had to go find a manager somewhere and they put their heads together and talked it over and decided that my re-entry permit was enough to let me board the plane. I had a feeling that the lack of an actual visa would be an issue at some point.

Now came the next stage in Doug’s tirade – the airport coffee shop. I went to this place that looked quite nice. One of their selling points appears to be that they have computers with Internet access for customers. I was pleased about that and sat down, but of course the Internet connection wasn’t working for some reason.

Then I went up and ordered a coffee and two croissants. The clerk totaled up my purchase and it came to $7.50! That’s $7.50 US for a coffee and two croissants. I literally sputtered. I asked the clerk if that was the real price – seven dollars and fifty cents. She said it was. I asked her again. Are you sure? A coffee and two croissants comes to $7.50? She said that was the right price. I told her that in that case she could keep the croissants and I’d just take the coffee. This caused some panic amongst the staff and I had to explain that it was simply too expensive and I didn’t want the croissants. I would pay just for the coffee, which they had already poured. I didn’t know how much the various items cost at that point. I hadn’t even seen a menu anywhere. The woman took back the croissants and re-totaled my bill. The coffee cost $2. That means they were asking $2.25 for each croissant. These weren’t fresh out of the oven, big fluffy croissants with butter and jam. No, these were little crinkly things that had probably been lying there drying out for hours. And this wasn’t a Paris café where you are paying for atmosphere and snooty waiters. This was serve yourself. I wonder what that woman makes in a day as counter staff. If she makes a standard Cambodian wage, she must be astonished at people who end up paying $5.50 for two pieces of bread. That’s 22,000 riels. That’s serious money for this country. Heck, that’s almost four days wages for my bridge worker.

Anyway, I guess I should get used to it. I’m heading back into the first world economy of Taipei and will have to pay real money for everything. I think it’s going to be hard for a while. I’ll keep comparing Taipei to Cambodia. Though to be honest, I started spending more and more money here. Once I started on my steady diet of pizzas and coffee, a meal was running $6.50 or thereabouts. Of course I was only eating once a day, but still, it adds up especially when you start throwing in a dollar here and a dollar there throughout the day for drinks and then you pay for TWO Angkor Wat passes and a flight and surcharges for the bike on the bus and air conditioning at the Angkor Wat International Hotel. If I don’t get on this flight and I have to stay some more days in Phnom Penh for some reason, I’d almost have to live on my credit card or get money from an ATM. I thought I had brought far more money than I’d need, but I didn’t really. I brought just enough. Though if I was cutting it closer to the bone, I wouldn’t have taken that flight and done some other things.

1:00 p.m. – On the Plane

After my rampage through the check-in, airport tax, and coffee shop staff, things quieted down. My coffee was good and I enjoyed it very much. I was tempted to wander through the bookstores and such things, but I didn’t want to push my luck. Who knew what horrors lurked in them?

I noticed as I was going to the boarding gate that there was an extra piece of paper attached to my boarding pass. I thought perhaps it was a warning to all staff to steer clear of me, but it was one of those leaflets they give to people who sit in the emergency exit aisles. It says that you have to be physically fit and competent enough to handle emergency exiting procedures to sit in those seats. I had no problem with that and was pleased, because those seats usually have lots of leg room. I was a bit disappointed, though, and somewhat amused to see that EVA Air had actually jammed in one extra seat into that space, so the legroom advantage was gone. It’s very weird. I’ve never seen a seat there before. That means in the aisle seat which I had asked for there was no more legroom than in any other seat. However, I got lucky and despite the flight being full, the window seat beside me was empty. That window seat does not have a seat in front of it, so there is lots of leg room and no one ahead of me to recline their seat into my jaw. Once the plane reached cruising altitude, I popped over and am now happily in a comfortable seat. They are showing a movie – Happy Feet. I’d watch it except that the sound is appalling. It was so bad there was no point even trying to watch the film. I’d heard it wasn’t that good anyway – just a lot of singing and dancing and frantic disjointed action scenes.

I really felt emotional as the plane took off. This trip hasn’t come anywhere near the adventure levels of Ethiopia and Guinea, but it has been one of the most enjoyable trips I’ve ever taken, if not the most enjoyable. I feel a great fondness for the country and the people. I’m sad to leave it, actually. And I don’t know what it means, but I found my heart sinking as I got closer and closer to boarding the jet and Taiwanese passengers started to dominate. I don’t feel nearly as comfortable amongst them as I did amongst the Cambodians. the Cambodians were so easy-going and friendly. I can’t say that I was on my way to making great friends among them. I just never met people that way. But my dealings with everyone were always warm and gentle and easygoing. Even getting a tuk-tuk this morning was quite a pleasant experience. There were a group of moto drivers and tuk-tuk drivers waiting outside the hotel and I spoke with some. It was an easy thing to explain that I needed a tuk-tuk to get me to the airport with a large box. One tuk-tuk driver came forward and we agreed on a price of $5. I didn’t bargain, as that seems to be the going rate. I think it is a lot to pay in terms of the local economy and considering that the airport is not far away, but I did have some awkward luggage and I’d heard the figure mentioned before.

I went up and got my bike box and took it down. My tuk-tuk driver helped me with it and we slid it into position. Everyone wanted to chat and we talked about the bicycle and flying and how I had liked Cambodia. Then I went back up and got my duffel bag. The tuk-tuk driver took that from me while I checked out. The people at the desk were friendly and they laughed and joked with me as I gave them back their key and they checked to see that I had indeed already paid up. They all wished me good luck on my trip and said that I should come back again. The tuk-tuk and moto drivers were the same and though they had nothing to do with me at all they all waved goodbye and wished me luck. It was a very warm and fond farewell from a group of people I didn’t even know. Of course some of that comes from the fact that they make their livelihood off of people like me. But there is no question that it is more than that. People were simply nice. I contrast that with how I felt on my short trips around Taiwan. It’s not that people aren’t nice. It’s just that they’re not there. I feel excluded most of the time, if not all of the time. In Cambodia, I felt included. There is also a difference in tone, but that is a harder thing to judge. The Taiwanese at the departure gate and now around me are louder and more aggressive somehow. The atmosphere has changed and I feel like I’m in a tougher environment now that I’m going back to Taiwan.

I’m probably making too much of this. It might be the difference between working and being on holiday. Who wouldn’t like the place where they were on holiday better than the place where they work? I think back to those two guys who were teaching English in Phnom Penh. They reacted with knowing smirks when I said that I found the Cambodians to be friendly and nice. They clearly felt differently. That could be because they live there and weren’t on holiday. It could also be because both of these guys were likely not the nicest of fellows.

I have had more than passing thoughts about what it would be like to live and work in Cambodia. I can see that the heat and the dust and the endless traffic flow could get a person down. But it feels like there would be a lot more freedom of movement to make up for it. Life in Taipei feels so restricted. I think in Phnom Penh and Cambodia in general one would be able to move around a lot easier and it would be easier to inject some variety and comforts into one’s life. It’s something to keep on the back burner anyway. I don’t think I could go to Cambodia with the idea of furthering any type of career and saving money for the future etc. But if the time came to leave Taiwan and I had nothing extraordinary to go on to right away, a stopover in Cambodia wouldn’t hurt.

It’s funny, but I’m suddenly seeing Polly Evans, the travel writer, all over the place. She appears to have latched onto a good thing and is suddenly churning out travel/adventure books like crazy. I opened up the in-flight magazine and found an article that was an excerpt of a book she just wrote about learning to ride a horse in Argentina.

I have to admire her. She clearly knows what she is doing as a travel writer. I didn’t think much of her cycling book, but it wasn’t because of her writing exactly. It was because of the choices she made. She chose to write half the book about Spanish history and the other half only loosely about her trip. I didn’t like that choice, but I can see how publishers and other readers would. I also didn’t think much of her bicycle journey itself. It was too broken up and too small in scale. But again, that’s just a choice she made and has nothing to do with her writing. She seems to put some thought into what to do on her trips and she comes up with successful ideas. I admire that. I don’t know for sure about the content of this book, but I imagine it is a similar 50/50 split between her journey and history. She probably did some research and realized that horses in Argentina have an interesting history – the whole gaucho thing. So she included that in her book as well as her “hilarious” attempts to ride a horse. I put the hilarious in quotes, because that is another choice I don’t like. I dislike people who choose to write about their misadventures rather than their adventures. It’s okay to have misadventures and make them funny, but I don’t think it’s okay to deliberately set out to make yourself ridiculous and fearful and clumsy and inept. A lot of travel writers do that and I find it is a weakness rather than a strength. It just gives them a chance to be self-deprecatory and say silly exaggerated things. I prefer people who set out to do something well and who are competent and strong. It’s like her book about riding a bike in Spain. She didn’t prepare for it properly, had lousy equipment, had no idea what she was doing, and then in the writing turned that into something funny, as if it was an advantage. Why not take it more seriously and try to do it right? Have some self-respect. Then if thing go wrong, they go wrong, and you blame yourself rather than turn it into a big empty joke. I don’t know why it bothers me so much, but it does. It’s like Dervla Murphy who in all her decades of riding a bicycle around the world never learned to fix a flat tire. Rather than be suitably embarrassed and ashamed of that fact, she turns it into a “funny” part of her stories. Polly Evans did the same thing and it looks like she did the same thing with this horse-riding book. She makes herself out to be ridiculous when she probably doesn’t think she is ridiculous at all. I find it fake and phony.

I guess if I wrote about what I just did in Cambodia, I’d have plenty of scope to make myself out to be ridiculous. I certainly made a lot of mistakes and there were real problems. For one thing, I didn’t have nearly enough time to do what I planned. I probably could have figured that out easily enough if I’d taken the time. I also didn’t plan early enough so I ended up with lousy and inappropriate gear. I’m not sure that I could have avoided the problems I ran into at the airport with the bicycle. That was beyond my control. I also didn’t pack very well. That all started with the bicycle though. If I’d had a stronger bike, I could have used just two rear pannier bags and a big handlebar bag. But since I didn’t trust my rear wheel, I went with four bags so that I could distribute the weight. And because these Ortliebs don’t fit my style, I ended up having an almost limitless number of bags. It was really ridiculous how many bags I had. I needed bags just to carry my bags which I needed to carry my other bags. I didn’t fully appreciate what the country would be like or the traveling would be like, so I had lots of things with me that I didn’t need. Well, not lots, but I never had a use for my water bag or the map case or the water purifying chemicals, or the mosquito net. I had more clothes than I needed.

I’m actually not that upset about any of this. I’d much rather be over prepared than not prepared at all. I really couldn’t have known what I know now. For one thing, my water bag in Ethiopia and Guinea almost saved my life. Being able to fill up a bag with 10 liters of water made life so much easier. I could use that water for drinking, showering, cooking, anything. I would even fill it up when I stayed in a hotel with a bathroom with running water because who knew when the water would stop running? Many times I was glad to have those 10 liters of water because I’d get up in the morning and there would be no water in the bathroom. Once or twice I filled up my water bag in Cambodia, but there was never a need. There was always running water. I also didn’t need to worry about drinking water or even carrying water on my bike. There was drinking water for sale everywhere, and I mean everywhere. I’d go to sleep with the phrase “Sir! You want cold drink?” ringing in my ears.

I also couldn’t really have anticipated how interesting I’d find the cities and therefore how long I ended up staying in them leaving me with few days to actually cycle. Well, maybe I could have. It is my pattern, after all. I think I was in Addis Ababa for three and a half weeks before I got up the energy to leave and start cycling. I think I was in Conakry for even longer. Actually, I stayed for a long time in every single town and city. It’s just that I had six months to travel in Guinea and 10 months or a year or whatever it was in Ethiopia. So I could do everything and squander all kinds of time. This time I had no time to squander.

I don’t think I’d change anything though if I had the chance. It was the bicycle that made the trip what it was. Without the bicycle it wouldn’t have been the same at all. The one thing I’m thinking is that I could have perhaps flown to Phnom Penh and bought a bicycle there or even bought a scooter. A scooter might have been ideal. It’s hard to say. It would certainly have been a great way to get around and means I wouldn’t have had to fly or take buses at all and I could have gone to just as many places and even a lot more places. But I don’t know what the road would have felt like on a scooter. You’re going faster and then would you have felt as in touch with what was around you? Would you be just as willing to stop and take a picture of a couple of bullocks pulling a wagon? Or would the inertia of the scooter keep you moving all the time and would stopping then be such a pain that you just wouldn’t bother? I don’t know. I’ve never ridden one. I certainly didn’t like the big 250 cc dirt bikes that all the foreigners were riding. Those were just plain nasty.

4:15 p.m.

I wonder what the weather is like in Taipei. I’ve stopped thinking about weather completely because in Cambodia it was always the same – clear and sunny. And then in the rainy season, I think it is clear and sunny with afternoon downpours. I’d like to have been there during the rainy season. I remember the rainy season in Guatemala was wonderful. The afternoon rains came like clockwork. They were dramatic and lasted only a short time. It was easy to plan your day to take them into account. The fact that it was the rainy season made no difference to day-to-day plans. A short distance out of Phnom Penh, we encountered clouds and there have been solid clouds out there for the past hour. I was kind of hoping that Taiwan would be clear and I’d be able to see some of the island as we flew in. I can’t remember the last time I flew on a clear day. Every flight that I can remember has been on a cloudy day.

This has been quite a pleasant though uneventful little flight. I slept well and got my coffee at the airport, so I was feeling good when I got onboard. Now the time has passed by quickly and we’re not that far away from landing. I think our scheduled arrival time is 5:05. But we’ve already started our descent and I think we’re going to be early. That is fine with me.

My odd feelings about being amongst Taiwanese have pretty much gone away. I’m just back to being me with a bunch of people around. My meal was a choice between chicken with noodles or pork with potato. I went for the chicken. It wasn’t going to win any culinary awards, but I liked it.

6:15 p.m. – Airport bus somewhere outside of Taipei

The flight did get in pretty early. I went through immigration without a problem except that I hadn’t filled in the Visa Number on my form. I don’t have an actual visa in my passport, just the re-entry permit. The immigration guy wasn’t happy that I didn’t fill that part out. He told me it was the number on my Re-Entry permit. That was my visa number. So that is the final piece of the puzzle with this whole getting a new passport business. Actually I don’t think the immigration guy was unhappy with me. He was just unhappy. He certainly didn’t smile.

Then I went to the luggage claim area. My bag and my bike in its box were already there and going around the conveyor belt. I grabbed them and put them on a luggage cart and headed for the “Nothing to Declare” aisle. The guy there asked me what was in the box. I told him and he waved me through. No one took my customs form. I looked for someone to give it to, but couldn’t find anyone. Nobody there was smiling either.

Then I wasn’t sure what to do. I don’t remember landing at Terminal 2 before. But I simply exited and then saw a sign for the “Express Bus Waiting Area.” I wasn’t sure if that meant you could buy normal bus tickets there, but it was the only sign I saw, so I headed in that direction. A taxi driver offered to take me for NT$1,200, but I told him I would try the bus first. He wasn’t smiling.

I saw a bank of pay phones, but I had no phone cards or change or anything. I found the bus area and you could buy tickets there. I bought a ticket for the Airport Bus – hoping to get let off right beside my apartment. We’ll see. It cost NT$110. It was 5:13 and the bus was scheduled to leave at 5:15. The guy told me to run, so I did. I got there just as they were closing the doors. They put in my bike and bag and I hopped in.

What a reintroduction to Taipei!.You couldn’t possibly get worse weather. What a contrast. I can’t believe how cold it is here. And the trip in this bus is so different from traveling in Cambodia. It’s so slow for one thing. We’ve been barely moving. And it feels like we have been driving down a long concrete tunnel. I’m really aware now of the total lack of open space here. Cambodia is nothing but empty and open space. Taipei does not come off well in the comparison. Ah, now we’re moving finally. I’m keeping a sharp eye on our route because I really want to get off right at the intersection with my lane. If I do, I can just drag all my stuff up the lane.

March 10, Saturday, 2007

I was lucky with the bus. I recognized the streets that it was going down and when I realized that we would indeed be passing right by my lane, I worked my way to the front of the bus and sat on the steps there. The driver didn’t speak English, but he knew what was going on and I told him that I wouldn’t mind being let out near the corner of Nanjing and Chungshan. It turns out another fellow wanted to be let off opposite a hotel that was right there and the bus pulled to the side of the road without me having to indicate exactly where. It was perfect. I was about fifteen feet from my lane.

The bus driver opened the luggage doors and I dragged out my duffel bag and bike box. I wasn’t sure that I’d be carry everything all at once, but I thought I’d give it a shot. I put on my (now extremely heavy) knapsack, slung the duffel bag over one shoulder, and then picked up the bike box by the twine I had wrapped around it. It was easier than I had expected and I made my way down to the corner and then down the lane without too much trouble.

I was still amazed at how cold it was. I was wearing my Teva sandals and my feet were freezing. The inside of the bus had been like a soaking wet refrigerator. It was so wet that condensation was over all the windows. It was so thick that it ran down the window like a waterfall. Other water dripped on me from the ceiling Ah, Taipei, where it never stops raining – even inside the buses.

The door to my building was open and I dragged myself through it. My arms were starting to get a bit tired, but I thought I’d try to get up the six flights of stairs in one trip. I lifted the bike box higher and started climbing up. I made it to the top, but I don’t think I could have gone even one more floor carrying everything at once. I set off the motion sensor that my landlords had installed in the hallway. They have to be the most paranoid people in the world. If they installed a video camera, it would make their life a lot easier. Then they wouldn’t have to rush to the door and fling it open each time something sets off the motion detector. I sometimes think they have a lot of time on their hands.

I dragged my stuff up to the roof and left my box outside on the verandah. There was no point bringing it inside. It was far too big anyway. It was still raining and it looked set to rain all night and probably all weekend, but the box was somewhat covered and I figured it would be okay. I won’t be in the mood to tackle putting the bike together for a while.

 

 

Tags: bike, Cambodia Bike Trip, Taipei