Touchdown Taipei.

The day arrived and I was on my way to pick Stephen up from the airport.  I decided to leave a bit later instead of standing like a bell end at the airport.  In hindsight this nearly turned out to be a mistake.

The reason it nearly turned out to be a mistake is because Taipei main station is like the Crystal Maze, even though I have been here for 1 year now I still think so.  As I was heading for the bus station, I followed the sign for the bus station as you do.  It turned out, it was the wrong bus station.  I had to belt out the station, down the road, and across a bridge.  The distance wasn't huge, it wasn't even a little far and I am no Speedy Gonzalez to begin with but in this heat I was slower than a snail.

Then when I got to the bus station the woman selling the bus tickets to the airport was battering my head worse than a load of cod in the chippy about taking her bus.  When it was clearly not the express bus, which I wanted and needed to get there on time.

Stephens flight was due to land at 6.15 and seeing as the bus took 1 hour to get to the airport I was indeed cutting it fine.  By the time the bus departed the bus station it was 5.45.  There was clearly nothing I could do about this, other than kick back, whack on the tunes and enjoy the ride.  It took another 15 minutes to get out of Taipei City!!

By the time I was getting closer to Taoyuan the sun started to set and it was the most beautiful and scenic sunset I had seen for a long time.  All oranges and reds reflecting of the clouds and giving off an awesome scene in the sky, that made you think I wish the sky was like this every night.  If I was back home, it would of definitely been a red sky at night, Shepards delight moment.

The sky called for me to change the music, and go for something even more mellow, and chilled out.  I opted to listen to Stornaway, and kicked back into a right proper chillaxing mode.  The chilled out moment was only slighty broken when I realised my sandal was stuck to the floor of the bus, by some mongs chewing gum!!!

When I got to the airport I was more than a little late.  Stephen however, wasn't mulling about like a lost sheep wondering where the hell I was.  So I assumed he was still waiting for his bag.  When I was waiting I was stood next to a Taiwanese guy with the biggest afro I have ever seen in the world.

I was stood there waiting quietly admiring the afro when all of a sudden there was a huge commotion and running towards this girl.  I thought she was a celebrity or something and I was missing out on a life defining moment here in Taiwan, but after calling Jen, and getting her to speak to the guy next to me.  It turned out was just proposing to his girlfriend.  With the reactions of all the people it looked like the answer was a firm yes, although by the looks of some of their party I think some were secretly hoping for a no!

At this point I was wondering where Stephen was.  It was getting close to nearly an hour after he had landed. I came up with a master plan that couldn't fail.  I called Jen, told her to check the flight details, and told her to call me back.  After the obligatory why didn't you take them with you?  (I just thought what can go wrong with turning up and waiting?)  So I told Jen "log into my Facebook, and check it out"  Which she did.

Then she wasn't too pleased because there was over 1000 messages between me and Stephen trying to plan what we were going to do when he got here.  The funny thing is, she thought the message box was a search function.  So she typed in flight.  Which Stephen replied from his Iphone getting my bags.  Classic!

Then eventually he showed up we then took the bus back to Taipei and a quick taxi to mine.  We changed out of sweaty clothes, and a shower from a can.  Then we headed off to a traditional Taiwanese beer/food place.  Me and Jen had booked it for when he arrived to make sure we could get a seat.

We got there a little later than planned Jen ordered 6 dishes of food and then the drinking commenced.  After a while the table behind us started to get louder.  We would occasionally turn to check out what was going on, then all of a sudden we started chatting with them.  Stephen then said cheers in Chinese.  (gan bei)   That then set the tone for the rest of the night.  If you say cheers in Chinese you have to down your drink.  (I'm sure my dad will know the word for cheers in Chinese no problem when he comes here.)

At around 10.30, Rainbow arrived from work to join the party.  We had a really fun night and the people on the other table were really friendly, and wanted to gam bei us all night long.  They were all out together in a big group, because everyone in Taiwan had a day off the next day, because of the Dragon Boat Festival.

We had 7 or 8 dishes of food, and god only knows how many beers.  The total bill only came to around £36 for 4 people.  Which I think is very reasonable.

The night ended with a few games on the ps3 and I even managed to see my dad online.  We went to bed at 6am because Stephen was quite a bit jet lagged after his 18 hour journey, then eventually we hit the hay.

p.s

Sorry I didn't have my camera with me in case I lost it when I was drunk.