Is there really a difference between an airplane pilot and an Uber driver? Pilots can’t really see what’s in front of them and they both depend on navigational aids to get where they’re going.
When I landed after a flight from Taiwan to New York City, I looked at the flight path and noticed we had flown over China, Russia and North Korea. Being a Taiwanese carrier, the flight wasn’t subject to Western sanctions against Russia or being an enemy of North Korea. Yikes! Wouldn’t want to have to land in those places even in an emergency.
I used the Flighty app which was much easier to use and more informative than Flightaware. I would buy it.
Given that many think the next world war will erupt over Taiwan, I thought I’d swing by and see what all the fuss is about. If China tries to take it back, I might not be able or want to visit there anymore. There is a lot less desire to go to Hong Kong since China “ruined it.” I still find it amazing that you can sit on a plane for 16 hours (that IS a long time, even in business class) and wake up somewhere completely different. The streets look similar but then you look up and see everything in Chinese and nary a pizza parlor in sight. I felt that I learned a lot from my 4 day visit. Later in this posting you can read my travel notes from my visit the first week of December 2025.
A few months ago I talked about pillows. Since then, I found an excellent flat pillow for side sleepers. It’s $35 at Target and it’s called Dyonery. It comes in 3 widths half an inch apart, so you can get exactly the angle that you want. The advantage over the other pillow is that this one does not have ridges all over it; it’s a really nice evenly flat pillow.
I’m being told that a Jewish graduate of Oxford University has no chance at a good internship or job in England because the country is still hopelessly woke in DEI and the current government isn’t doing anything about it. Nigel Farage, a populist leader, is most likely to be its next prime minister. Jewish kids in the UK are going to Israel and the USA because they don’t see a future in Britain. I don’t see why Israel or almost anywhere in the Middle East region offers a brighter future, so the UK’s prospects must be really bad. The above begs a question: I look around the world and I see countries in decline everywhere – the US, England, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, you name it. So if you are a 25 year old person today – where do you see your future? That’s a question I pose to you – where are the up and coming places of the future on this planet? Please write and tell me.
Most women on dating apps won’t date a man who is less than 6 feet tall. That weeds out 85% of men. That’s pretty harsh. Considering that the average guy portrays himself online 2 inches taller than he really is, it could be worse.
Two lasting thoughts about the recent government shutdown in the US which I think stands for Ultimate Shitshow. Number One: This could have all ended in a day had air traffic controllers simply went on strike. No pay, no work. It seems so simple. Two: The sticking point was health insurance subsidies under what was known as Obama-Care. If you read the New York Times, you’d think premiums were about to skyrocket and people would be put out on the streets. The Wall Street Journal said the premium increases were minimal and that all sorts of rich people were getting the subsidies. I still don’t know what the truth is. Real information is still hard to get, even in the US, because the news media is more interested in influencing that informing.
I have this feeling that the corruption in Trump’s administration is becoming so pervasive and in-your-face that sooner or later Trump will make a mistake and be brought down by it. People are openly saying how this administration is selling America’s national security and it makes no sense to see all these pardons of drug kingpins going on at the same time that Trump is sending the military out to kill people for alleged drug-dealing. Having your defense secretary give orders to kill any survivors of a ship already being sunk is going to come back to haunt somebody at some point. I expected nonstop outrage and I’m not even writing about 99% of it. But don’t you think special mention is deserved to this girl flying home from college for Thanksgiving to visit her parents on a ticket paid for by friends who was stopped at an airport by ICE agents and deported to Honduras even though she’d been living in the US since age 7. Then ICE goes to her parents’ house and starts stalking the place trying to intimidate them for making the story public. Unless you are a particularly mean-spirited person, I don’t think most people are proud of this and feel that this is what America is about.
I decided not to upgrade my iPhone 15 Pro Max and to get a new battery for $100. I don’t like having to pay an extra $700 every year to get a new phone when the one I have works just fine, especially with a new battery. I spoke to 3 sales people at the local Apple store that said they saw no reason to upgrade either. While my phone was being repaired, I felt really odd having no phone on me. I was sitting in a shopping mall for 20 minutes utterly bored without it, because I had arrived early for an appointment. Phones are so useful; they answer your questions with internet, give you your messages and help you get where you are going. Over the 2 hours, I racked up 27 incoming texts that I later had to go through. I actually love it when I don’t have a phone around and I used to be so much more calm on vacations when I switched it off, but during the business day, they sure are useful.
Last posting I thought the renewal of the U.S. 10-year memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Israel wouldn’t happen. I’ve changed my mind. I think the Gulf countries will urge the US to renew the MOU with Israel. When push comes to shove, they trust Israel more than the US to use its military against its enemies, namely Iran and organizations such as Hizbullah and Hamas which are not in their corner. They need to know that Israel will be strong and that the US will be there for Israel, because if they are not there for Israel, they probably won’t be there for them either.
Consider this statement from a senior US general: The US planes got hit more often from their campaign against the Houthis than the Israelis did in their entire 12-day war over Iran.
Last posting I mentioned that regional leaders in the Gulf said in closed door meetings that they don’t want to get their hands dirty in Gaza. This month again I heard from someone who met intelligence, military and political leaders from across the Middle East who are still saying quietly that they don’t want to send their militaries into Gaza to be part of the International Stabilization Force. That includes Egypt, Qatar and UAE, for starters. In Lebanon, the locals prefer to have the Israelis do the dirty work and say that either the Israelis do it or it won’t get done. The problem is that Hizbullah and Hamas have the guns and they will use them against others who try to disarm them. So nobody wants to get involved. The upshot: Gaza will be split into two sections. The Israelis will control half of it and Hamas the other half. The thought is that hopefully over time the Israeli sector will grow larger and larger as people get jealous of life on the Israeli-controlled side and as Hamas gets weakened. But it will take years. In Lebanon, the Israelis will be acting against Hizbullah because the Lebanese are afraid. In Syria, the Israelis don’t trust the country’s leader because all the commanders around the country are ex-Jihadis. The Israelis feel the Americans are naïve about Syria. But meanwhile Trump will say to them that there is no better option and at least the leader Asharra hates Iran. In Iran, the Israelis are not looking for a fight right now but the Iranians don’t believe that the Israelis mean what they say even when they hear it off the record from top-level sources. So what you can expect in this region is continued low-intensity conflict with occasional flareups, although a return to war doesn’t seem probable this year as Israel goes into elections probably in June. Israel might have the last laugh in Syria which is not as stable as it seems. Remember that it only took 2 weeks for Assad’s government to fall when nobody could see it coming. I’m not talking a whole lot about Stage 2 for Gaza. I can just tell it’s not credible; when I read that Trump is sending a 2-star general to be in charge of it, I know that the people on the ground there won’t take him seriously.
China is impressing me and others with its large pipeline of pharmaceuticals. Not just crappy drugs but good ones. China has a whole of government approach to drug development just as the US is making it harder to develop drugs. The US government is cutting research cooperation, the FDA has so many obstacles to drug approvals and the dysfunctional Medicare system is not helping. Drug companies in the US have fewer incentives through a reformed patent system to develop drugs. This is a real problem for the future.
I’m in the midst of reading a NY Times section about how far behind the American military is becoming. It says that every time the US runs a war game with China, it loses. It’s a depressing read especially since China’s military hasn’t fought a real war in decades. Russia and China spend 26 hours a day obsessing about how to take America and Europe down. We are complacent and staring at our own navels and arguing with each other. I’ve said many times and I will say it again: One day we will be attacked. We will be “shocked.” How could this be? We will eventually recover but we will take kicks in the groin and kidney really bad. This has to happen in order for things to change. Sad.
In the same department, look at what happened this week in Australia. 1,000 Jews get together for an event with 2 police guards, one of whom is a trainee and neither of whom are armed. Despite having strong gun control rules, a Pakistani who recently became a citizen, was licensed to have 6 guns. Because of these rules, private security forces are not allowed to be armed. It took a long while for other police to arrive and meanwhile the shooters went after sitting ducks. It took an hour before news of the attack made it onto TV. Newspapers the next morning didn’t even headline the fact that Jews were targeted; it was described as a shooting incident at a beach. Two years ago, Israelis at a music festival near the Gaza border with poor security were attacked and a good number were killed and/or abducted into Gaza for over 2 years. Australia’s parliament was given a report 6 months ago to clean up its act and did nothing. The country has had more anti-Semitic incidents in the last 2 years than in the past 10. This was not just an accident waiting to happen — it’s a disgrace but it is indicative of how naive the country continues to be. Two years ago while we were visiting the country, some guy hijacked a plane at an airport. It took hours for a counter-terrorist force to arrive and then they sat around for hours doing nothing due to a lack of training and the scarcity of such incidents in Australia. You can fly domestically without showing ID there. If you have a chance, see the video of the Moslem guy who snuck up against the shooter and disarmed him. It’s really cool. Unfortunately for him, he tried to be civilized and put down the gun instead of shooting the attacker. The attacker retreated to colleagues who had more weapons and soon enough the guy was shot. Lesson learned: If the killer is in your range, shoot first and ask questions later. This attack looks more like ISIS via the Philippines but if Iran was involved, I’d expect the Israelis to take the excuse to go after their ballistic missile program, which seems to have become even more immediately problematic to the Israelis than the nuclear program.
Taiwan Travel Notes
Given that many think the next world war will erupt over Taiwan, I thought I’d swing by and see what all the fuss is about. If China tries to take it back, I might not be able or want to visit there anymore. There is a lot less desire to go to Hong Kong since China “ruined it.” I still find it amazing that you can sit on a plane for 16 hours (that IS a long time, even in business class) and wake up somewhere completely different. The streets look similar but then you look up and see everything in Chinese and nary a pizza parlor in sight. I felt that I learned a lot from my 4 day visit to Taipei and a second city known as Tainan.
Eva Airlines is the better of the two carriers that fly nonstop from NYC to Taipei. It is a Star Alliance carrier and you can use Citibank Thank You points for upgrades or free tickets through its frequent flyer program. It is roughly 16 hours flying there and 13 hours returning. They are 12 or 13 time zones ahead of NYC depending on the season. They do not have summer time. Taipei is a 90 minute flight from Hong Kong with tons of daily departures and about 2 ½ hours from Tokyo. There is a lot of connection between Japan and Taiwan given that Japan occupied the place during WW II. The Japanese Mitsukoshi department store has a big store here. The international airport is large with many flights all over; tourists like Taipei because the weather is pleasant in the winter time and there is good shopping and value for dollar. I was amazed at how cheap this place is compared to USA. I paid less than $5,000 for a round trip business class ticket. A suite in the Shangri-La hotel in Tainan (a secondary city) on the club floor was about $300 a night, and a suite in the Mandarin Oriental in Taipei on the club floor was less than $1,000 a night. There is a new competitor 5 minutes walk away called the Capella which I visited; either place would be fine with excellent facilities and food options for westerners. If you want cream cheese with the morning buffet and they run out of it, you can buy some at the quickie-mart across the street.
I think that Eva airlines stands for “E-vac” because the cabin was full of coughing passengers on the way to Taipei. I had to change my seat to get away from my hacking neighbor, and I can see why Asians are crazy about wearing masks. It was a god-awful flight. On the way back, to be fair, there was no coughing. Their in-flight menu was a royal feast for a Chinese person but for me it was completely out of bounds. I nibbled at the western vegetarian food, some of which I cannot describe and which was worse than hospital food. Bring your own snacks. The planes have these cracked decorative framed posters at the front of the cabins. I saw them going both ways on different planes. The flight attendants have never noticed. The internet on the flight is passable (they use Panasonic which is a lousy system) and they use Boeing 777’s. The flights are prompt.
Get some cash at the ATM upon arrival. You need cash here especially to get around. Metro and taxis require it. Uber doesn’t and saves you the trouble of communicating with a taxi driver who doesn’t speak English. Some kiosks at tourist sites or small groceries will not take bank or credit cards from outside Taiwan. When I arrived, I took the metro to Taipei Main Station. It is a 40 minute ride if you take the trains marked “Express”. When the train approaches the station, they play funky jazz music over the loud speaker and it’s cheerful. Everyone queues at a particular door standing in a marked lane. The ticket costs about $5 and it runs every few minutes. There is a high speed rail train to the city but it does not run straight into the airport. By the time you take the shuttle bus, you are not saving any time. Save your token or train ticket when you ride any train because you have to show it when you exit the station. From the station, there are taxi stands and the ride to the Mandarin Oriental or the Cappella is 20 minutes. Even during rush hour, the streets move fairly well with large boulevards. The 8am English radio news (there is an English station) led with the story that the local center for disease control could no longer work with the Trump Administration that seems to have given up on dealing with disease control. A microcosm for everything going on around here with America.
There is a also a short-haul airport about 2 minutes drive from the hotel with flights to Hong Kong and Tokyo and Taiwanese islands.
I had roughly 80 hours in Taiwan and you could either marathon it going nuts not to waste a minute. I’d rather go for short bursts and rest in between and pace myself. My midnight flight came in at 6:30am and I reached the hotel room by 8:30. So I spent the morning on arrival taking a short nap, eating a nice breakfast, swimming and using the health club and walking around the neighborhood, and then started my first tour at 2pm.
I spent about 6 hours sightseeing Taipei city center. I split it out over 3 tours in 24 hours using Tours By Locals, a service I really enjoy using because you get good guides even if it costs more than other options and you can research the background of the various guides to find one that really suits you. I wanted to meet a variety of people so I didn’t just use one guide. For example, some of my guides were able to arrange dinners with interesting people who briefed me about Taiwan issues. First a 3 hour tour to the 101 Tower with city views. Then to a Buddhist Lungsham Temple and the memorial to Chiang Kai-shek, which reminds me of the Lincoln Monument. Chiang Kai-shek was the leader of the country for about 40 years after he took it over after fleeing the mainland when the communists set up the Peoples Republic of China in 1949. The temple is big business run by the mafia with lots of people chanting, giving offerings and indulging their superstitious asks. The observatory had a short line when I visited Monday at 3pm and no fast pass was needed. The memorial was on a huge piece of land probably worth a billion dollars but it made for a great tourist site and a fitting memorial. No doubt Trump would like to take half the Washington Mall and set up a temple to him. The observatory had good visibility despite a cloudy day. Lots of cool-looking buildings, mountains, rivers and parks to see. Schools have nice sports facilities. Lots of Christmas in the air even though only about 4% of the population is Christian. It’s become a shopping holiday and tourists also like it. That evening, I went on a one hour tour to visit a night market and to keep moving, which is a good thing to do when your midnight flight arrives at 6 in the morning and you’ve already slept on the flight. We passed up the market people usually visit and instead went to the smaller and more manageable Raohe Street Night Market which was fine since it was raining and I don’t want to shop or eat street food anyway. If you wanted to order in, Uber Eats works here according to signs inside the market. Street stalls come with Michelin ratings too. Instead I ate dinner in the hotel’s club lounge off the in-room dining menu which had bland items that were comfort food for me such as fish, spaghetti and cooked vegetables.
I was scared that I would be zonked with the flip of the clock but a strong sleeping pill kept me alert and sane with about 7 hours of sleep each night.
People told me that Taipei was boring and ugly. I didn’t think so. Would I want to repeatedly visit there? Nope, but the city definitely has character and it has pleasant parts to it. It is definitely modern. Not as gleamy as Singapore but it is larger. The next day I had a 4 hour tour starting at the National Palace museum for world-famous treasures of Chinese art. Bowls are of particular significance here, especially those that were possessed by emperors, and several of those are their biggest treasures. We didn’t spend much time there though you could. You learn a bit about the conflicting nature of Taiwan; you have Taiwanese who are pro-China, those that are against the Peoples Republic of China and think of themselves as Pro-Republic of China (the official name for Taiwan) and then a third group that simply sees themselves as Taiwanese and not part of any China. We continued to the Martyrs’ Shrine with a changing of the guard ceremony. Then to the Grand Hotel which was built about 50 years ago by Kai-Shek’s wife. We had a snack there. It’s a bit dated and out of the way and I’m glad I didn’t stay there. Then to Mr. Lim’s house which was a mansion almost 200 years old of a wealthy person which was moved to a site where it now stands. Gives you an idea of the old aristocracy. He had a monopoly on some kind of tree. Then to a small Buddhist shrine and then to the 2-28 museum to commemorate a piece of Taiwanese history. After Mr. Kai-shek took over the country, he became a dictator and killed lots of people. One of the famous incidents was known as 2-28 and it’s become a museum to the 40 years of martial law and oppression suffered by the Taiwanese. The country now sees itself as a democracy and people want to preserve that. That tour was supposed to last 5 hours but we did it in 4; probably could have spent more time at the National Palace if we had wanted to but my guide rushed it since he was afraid of running out of time and then having to skip parts of the tour later.
That afternoon I took the 4pm High Speed Rail train from Taipei to Tainan, the original capitol city of Taiwan. It is a real bullet train and it takes 1:45 to do the 170 mile trip. There is a business class car with reserved seats. You can buy the ticket online (and you should because it sells out) but you have to pick up the ticket at the window and show your passport or whichever ID number you gave when you bought the ticket. The train is going almost 100 MPH before it even leaves the station. TAKE THAT, AMTRAK! Why can’t we have this in America? You could go from NYC to Boston or DC in 2 hours and I paid $70 one way in first class instead of $500 each way on Amtrak for slower service. They offered me black tea cookies with kumquat flavor. Again, bring your own snacks. Even the Starbucks here has hardly anything to eat. There are bagels but no cream cheese. Croissants with beef and pork but nothing only with cheese. The internet and cellphone works on the train. My initial impression of the Taiwanese landscape is of Puerto Rico. My overall impression is that this place is much larger than it appears on a map. China would have a hard time walking in and taking over this place. It took almost 2 hours on a bullet train to go from a city in the north to the south.
I had dinner at the hotel buffet with someone who served 8 years in the marines as a basic training drill instructor. He is currently a student who wrote a masters thesis on a military topic. He doesn’t look the part of the drill instructor and said he tries to reason with his recruits. But he is very patriotic and said he would rather die and fight for the country than leave it. He thinks 60-70% of Taiwanese agree. His main point is that if China tried to invade or take over the seaway, Korea and Japan would be forced to fight because Taiwan controls their sea lanes and their way of life. If China moved in, those countries would be ripe for domination. So whether or not the US is prepared to fight, he doesn’t think that is the most important issue because Korea and Japan have vital interests at stake. The week I was there the Japanese prime minister stated as such, that an attack on Taiwan would be considered an attack on the vital interests of Japan. China hated that because they don’t want Taiwan or fellow Chinese to know that Taiwan has allies who aren’t afraid to admit it. China’s strategy is to intimidate Taiwan into giving up hope so that they don’t have to fight them. China rules by fear and Taiwan doesn’t want their way of life ruined. Even without the military angle, Taiwanese have many economic ties to the mainland and self-censor because they don’t want to alienate Chinese investment or purchase of what they produce. A travel agent will force her employees to donate to a charity in China so that she can show how loyal she is.
I think Mr. Xi made a huge mistake. Had he tolerated Hong Kong, he could have kept buying up Taiwan and eventually taken it over. But now that he showed that his word is not to be trusted (one nation, two systems) Taiwan knows they have no future with China and will never willingly be absorbed by it.
I believe that Mr. Xi from China is motivated only by one thing – whether or not he believes his generals when they tell them that they can win. If he thinks he will not be embarrassed and risk losing power, he will go for it. Whether or not the world will hate him for it is not important. Saudi Arabia had 5 years of ostracism over the Khashoggi killing but is back on track. 5 years in China is a speck of time.
I mentioned that US analysts fear that Taiwan is being led by generals fighting the last war and that people are talking the talk but not prepared to walk the walk in terms of defending themselves. He said that it’s true that the army wants tanks when drones are more in vogue but that some of these toys help give civilians on the ground confidence that the military is there. He says the air force and navy are changing with the times. He feels that America might be on the downside right now but eventually it will find its normal balance and that at least Americans and Taiwanese share values of freedom and economy. The Taiwanese by and large hate the Chinese and see them as evil bent on domination and exploitation.
Interesting point only he could make about the relationship of Chinese social culture and the military: Chinese people don’t trust anyone. They don’t honor contracts and it’s a culture of every man for himself, despite what you hear about commitment to community. Maybe that is Japan but it’s not China. The Chinese military is untested in battle. This drill sergeant believes that unit cohesion will be poor and that many soldiers will run away in battle. He doesn’t know how much corruption exists in the Chinese military but it makes sense to him that there is a lot of it. I had been wondering if Mr. Xi’s purges of the military are real or a ruse to convince the West that their military is brittle.
I’ll repeat here a note from a conversation I had earlier this year with a navy officer from the US. Because of the condition of the high seas, it’s only feasible for China to launch an invasion by sea 2 or 3 months out of the year, during the summer. So I felt I was safe in December, and besides, the temperatures are much cooler in the winter.
The conversation was good; the food was hard for me to eat because nearly everything had meat or shellfish in it. I really don’t like eating in Asia. At night there is nothing near the hotel Shangri-La but for the train station across the street. It’s actually enough because it’s super convenient to use the commuter train to ride to Shalun station about 30 minutes away which is the nearest high speed rail station. You could take a taxi from Shalun to the hotel (I did that one way) but it took 45 minutes in lots of traffic and cost 10X as much. The hotel was fine and really good value for money, but I was told that the Silk Place was also a good hotel but I didn’t see it.
I didn’t see any homeless or beggars during my visit. Streets are clean and I felt safe going around even at night. Fair to note that my hotel was in a nice part of town known as the Songshan district; I can’t speak for all of Taipei but whatever parts I saw seemed OK. Traffic moved better in Taipei than Tainan. So many people still wear masks. Part of it is shyness and not having to put on makeup (and not having to show your face). Part of it is simply being scared of getting sick or not wanting to make other people sick. I don’t think the flu vaccine is popular here so people don’t want to get sick.
Taiwan is more literate than China; people go to school and learn stuff. Taiwanese have a different identity based on their colonization by Japan and Chinese nationalists. The country feels free; you don’t see policemen all over the place in the streets. Pop music in Chinese originates more in Taiwan than on the mainland because artists there are so restricted as to what they can sing about.
In Tainan, I took a 4 hour tour mostly in the city center walking around. Saw some Shinto temples, an old Dutch fort (the area’s first rulers for 40 years in the 1600’s). Saw the site of street massacres in their version of the 2-28, saw a local movie house with locally-made posters of popular movies, and the old city hall. The idea was to get a little local flavor of something outside of Taipei. It’s warmer here and even in December it was about 80 degrees. In Taipei it was about 10-15 degrees cooler. We snacked in a 7-11. You can get yogurt and trail mix there. Visited Hayashi Department Store, an old-fashioned store with lots of cute souvenirs where I did my best shopping. My guide spoke the Queen’s English which he had learned in a private school and had studied in England. He wore a suit and a fedora hat. He said he likes preserving old buildings and likes old cars and works as a journalist. Says he can’t go visit China because of things he has written. Tainan is not fascinating but it has its charms and pockets of unusual lanes, parks, buildings and history. The original name of the city was Taiwan. The local written version of Mandarin is not the same as the mainland.
I used the commuter rail to go to the high speed rail station. It costs $1.25 and was faster than the $30 hotel transfer service I used the day before. Returned to Taipei and had dinner with a local attorney who is a top-rated arbitrator and has special certification from mainland China. But he also has an apartment in Tokyo. At least one million Taiwanese have a second passport. The lawyer didn’t believe that China would ultimately invade. He pretty much agreed with my impressions of the country. I told him that I was sorry that America was being such a jerk as an ally but that it wasn’t my fault.
So far as long as I go to bed at midnight, get up at 8, swim and use the steam room and the gym to get energy and take a sleeping pill at night, I am holding up well.
On my 4th day I took a 4 hour tour to the suburbs of Taipei to see some nature sites. Visited a nice “Shi-fen” waterfall that all the tourists go to see and then to a street market in Ping Xi where people make paper lanterns, light them on fire and then send them up to the sky. It’s a happy place with lots of families having fun and taking pictures. It’s a great concept for a tourist site elsewhere. Drove half an hour to a coal-mining village called Chongwen overlooking the sea with another pedestrian market featuring a tea house with a great view. Here I had some Asian food; a bowl of noodles with sesame oil, some cut up spinach and fresh passion fruit juice (that was really yum). That was my culinary walk on the wild side. After freshening up at the hotel’s health club, I headed out to the airport for the return trip. Food at the airport was awful but I found some place near gate C3 at Terminal 2 that sold bagels with toasted cheese and greens inside plus some flourless chocolate cake. I enjoyed that immensely upon entering the aircraft. Airport security here was a breeze and the lounge was OK even if there was hardly anything I could eat.
So what to make of my visit? I got a sense of the various factions that make up the country. I saw that people fear that the PRC owns the opposition party and that people fear a sellout. Things run well here. It’s sad seeing people who look up to America seeing what America is today and feeling disappointed by it. My main impression is that this place is much larger than it appears on a map. In Taipei, a good number of people speak English. Most things are pretty cheap for Americans and it’s a good tourist site with cool things to see and lots of good connections to other places in Asia. Everywhere I asked someone where he or she was from, I heard places such as Malaysia, Thailand – all sorts of places. People are friendly and signage is good for the international traveler. Decent shopping. And in the small world department – I was at breakfast on Tuesday with some Thai guy visiting from America watching Monday Night Football on his laptop. I asked him if he would make a video to Jeremy wishing him well as they both watched the same game at the same time on opposite sides of the world. The irony of it all was lost on Jeremy. These days it’s just taken for granted.
When I landed, I looked at the flight path and noticed we had flown over China, Russia and North Korea. Being a Taiwanese carrier, the flight wasn’t subject to Western sanctions against Russia or being an enemy of North Korea. Yikes! Wouldn’t want to have to land in those places even in an emergency.
I used the Flighty app which was much easier to use and more informative than Flightaware. I would buy it.
If you ask me what Taiwan ought to do, my simple answer is “get the bomb.” It’s worked for North Korea and it’s probably their best insurance against China. They don’t need to sit around worrying about whether China will invade or blockade their country. The Koreans and Japanese will get their own anyway sooner or later and the Chinese already have it. Would save the US and the Europeans the hassle of all that defense expenditure and asset tie-down.
