In Taiwan

I left Beijing Thursday night. My flight was majorly delayed, first because of problems on the ground in Hong Kong (with the airport, not the airline) and then due to a thunder storm in Beijing. Because of the timing, we wound up sitting on the tarmac without air conditioning for more than an hour. That was unpleasant, but what was more unpleasant was rowdy passengers who started to feed off of each other, incessantly punching their call buttons and angrily declaring than Hong Kong airlines should compensate us ... for a thunder storm. Some American guy behind me did that very American thing where he loudly declared the flight his "first and last time riding Hong Kong Airlines." Never mind the service was impeccable and very apologetic. 

I figured I wouldn't see James until Friday morning, but when I finally got into Hong Kong he surprised me by having the same (also super delayed) connecting flight to Taipei. Yay!

Now we're at his grandma's house and on Monday we're going down south for a couple days at a beach resort.

It's so nice to be back here. Everything is a little bit nicer than China. Less trash on the ground, the street food is cleaner, the convenience stores have better layouts, the cars are less likely to cut you off and the service is much, much friendlier. When we stepped off the airport shuttle in Taipei I noticed how much clearer the air was - the colors of buildings appeared sharper than they do in Beijing. I knew Beijing has dirty air, but the contrast surprised me.