3/3/95
We were at the airport by 9:30am for our 12:50 flight from Manila to Taipei. We had to run our luggage through X-ray just to get into the airport. An hour was spent waiting for boarding passes. Next came the most rigid security check I have ever had. We had to run the carry-on luggage through more X-ray machines. We then went through metal detectors and a thorough pat-down for weapons. Once inside the security area we walked past the duty free shops and stores to our gate. Here we underwent another security check. First another pat down followed by a very extensive luggage search. A little boy in front of us had a green plastic toy water gun. The security officers took it away from him and tagged it for pickup upon landing. Another boy behind us had a plastic ball with him. The security officers stuck a large pin through it to see if it was hollow. Gina had a small bottle of water in her bag which was confiscated by security officers and Kurt had his Swiss army knife taken from him and tagged for return in Taipei. Strangely enough, the guard in the first pat down had found Kurt's knife and let him go right on through with it. I was not so lucky however. I had been carrying a small can of pepper spray in my fanny pack while in Manila and forgot to move it to my check-in luggage. The security officers found it in my pack and confiscated it from me. Gina had a duplicate pepper spray in the front of her backpack and the guards did not find it for some reason.
The Eva air flight to Taipei deserves an award for high-tech. The plane was a Boing 757-300 with some special modifications. It's video monitor display system was set-up to display all kinds of cockpit telemetry information. It alternated between air speed, altitude, temperature, estimated arrival time, and several other things. It also switched between displaying in English and Chinese. Supplementing this information was a color map of the area with our planes position represented by an outline of an airplane. The first leg of the flight was Northward so the airplane icon pointed up. As our position changed, a red line was drawn behind the airplane icon to show our course from Manila. As the airliner banked westward to follow the coastline of Taiwan, the icon of the airplane pointed left. I was so enthralled with the video display system, I had little time to fill out more free post cards.
We arrived in Taipei for a six hour lay over. To our surprise, the first thing they did after we got off the plane was run us through X-ray and metal detectors again. I guess this was to ensure that we didn't find any weapons on the airplane and pick them up. Next came the scary part. When checking in at the ticket counter, they took all of our airline tickets as well as our passports. Then they pointed us to a waiting room and said wait there. I was excited about going to an Asian city like Taipei but a little apprehensive about the fact that America does not have an official embassy here. It was a scary thought to be in a country like this and have all your travel documents stripped from us. It got worse. Very few people spoke enough English to tell us what was going on and what to expect. Two hours later a guy that spoke English came back to the waiting room with our documents including our new boarding passes. We were then allowed to go up stairs to the duty free shops. More problems. The only currency accepted at the airport were US dollars or New Taiwanese dollars. The NT dollars is the standard currency of Taiwan. There was no money exchange provided by the airport to convert foreign money into either of the two usable formats. Anyone who is traveling through the Taipei airport should know that if they have any world currency other than US or NT dollars they will go hungry. At the bar in the area where we were told to wait, a coke cost $2.00 US. Upstairs in a small coffee shop, they were $1.00. I bought one and kept the can because the writing was in Chinese. We looked around the duty free shops, but there was not much worth purchasing. Everything was very expensive and there were few native products of Taiwan. Well, I take that back, there was a bunch of electronic equipment for sale.
After our 6 hour lay-over, there was another pat down and visual inspection of our carry-on luggage before we boarded the plane from Taipei to Los Angeles. The flight to LA took only 11.5 hours which was over three hours shorter than our first flight. This time difference is due to prevailing jet stream winds. We were glad to be back on American soil again. Glad, that is, until we reached US customs. I am sorry to say that our US custom employees were the rudest, most indignant airport personnel we met during this entire trip! The only good thing was that they did not do any serious luggage searches. They just treated us like an annoyance and let us go on through.
After another six hour layover in LA, we took a domestic flight to Dallas. There, we had a two hour layover before the 45 minute flight to Oklahoma City. We arrived at 8:00 AM. The effects of jet lag soon caught up with us and sleep suddenly became very high on the priority list. All of us slept the remainder of the day and most of the following day as well.
We all had a fantastic trip and would recommend it highly. Our only regret was that it ended so soon. Two weeks was just not enough time. Oh well, there is always next time...
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