The long Easter sunday

Well nothing else extraordinary happened. My flight from Singapore to Taipei was fantastic. The food was superb, the choice of movies excellent, I could have watched all the Oscar movies, 3 hours of CSI or law and order. I watched the sun set over Asia for a while. I opted for Amercian Gangster on the basis that I had 11 hrs from Taipei to San Francisco and I would use that for No country for old men and Juno and three hours of CSI.
Like a drug addict getting ready to enter rehab, instead of following the signs that said transfer, in the airport in Taipei, I followed the signs that said Arrivals. You see I needed to get more stamps on my passport even if it meant lining up at immigration and emigration all in the space of 20 minutes. So I filled out the forms and got my stamp and then got luxuariously lost in the airport in Taipei, not only did I not know what terminal I was supposed to be in but I also didn't know how to get there in the event that I actually figured out where I was supposed to be. I wandered around for about an hour, ignoring taxi drivers making weird steering wheel signs at me. Information wanted to send me to the Sheraton in the city centre. I knew that taxi driver would literally take me for a ride. Eventually, I found a guy who looked like he wasn't going to lie to me and he told me to take the shuttle bus to Terminal 2 and everything would be okay. The problem was that all the signs pointed to Shuttle Bus to Terminal 2 but then when you got to where the signs said you had to be there was a sign telling you to go back in the other direction. Hence me walking around in circles for an hour. He told me to ignore the signs, they were meaning to take them down. I got the shuttle bus, alighted at terminal 2 and went to security, then the most awful thing in the world happened. I realised that I had left my bag with my books, a copy of vanity fair and Nini on the bus. I rushed back through security, thru the terminal, I even pushed two Chinese (Taiwanese) kids out of the way and ran back outside, the bus was still there, or had returned, and the bag was still there. And Nini was still there. She didn't seem to care, but then again she's a stuffed toy so why should she.

The plance from Taipei to San Fran had no tv screens and only showed cartoons in Chinese on a big screen. It was almost an hour late leaving the terminal and I was like an anti christ. I was hungry, tired and stressed and pissed off at having to face almost 11 hours of entertainment free time. I waited for dinner, took a sleeping pill and woke up about an hour outside of San Francisco.

Immigration was a doddle for the first time ever. The guy asked me the purpose of my visit. I told him that my friend was getting married and I was the maid of honour, he asked what did that mean and I said it probably meant I had to be her slave for the day. He flicked through my passport and asked where my favourite place was, I said Cambodia. We chatted and he took my hand print. We both agreed that he had never seen a hand quite like that before. I showed him where my missing knuckle actually was. He laughed stamped my passport and i picked up my bag got a taxi. He dropped me at the wrong hotel and I had to walk and he snarled when I only gave him a $4 tip.

It was still Easter Sunday when I arrived at my hotel, in fact I arrived at my hotel 2 hours before i checked onto my flight in Taipei. So I had two Easter Sundays and still no easter egg.
Today I picked up my train ticket for tomorrow, walked around fisherman's wharf, almost went out to see Alcatraz but it's too darn cold. Instead I bought a fleece had a Sam Adams and some Fish and Chips.

Tomorrow I have to be at the Ferry Terminal at 6.3o to get a bus to somewhere and then a train for two days to Denver.