Continued from Hong Kong Day 3.

Taichung Day 1

I kept on forgetting to mention this, but PL has learned to crawl forward on this trip. Since there’s no where to leave PL except on the bed when we are not holding her, she’s been spending a lot of time on her belly. All the belly time bootcamp has encouraged her to move forward when crawling instead of mostly scooting backwards.

I didn’t realize this until today, the day we are leaving. The hotel provides you with a free cell phone with unlimited local calls and data to use during your stay. This whole time, I just thought that it was a stupid thing that I can’t switch off at night unless I unplug it! I do think it’s funny that they named it a “handy”. Heh…

Another rainy day, hopefully it won’t delay our flight out of HK.

Taxi to train station, then onward to the airport.

Drool…

Our cabbie had no less than 5 cell phones in his car…I bet he’s got another one or two hidding around elsewhere.

Love how luggage carts are free and abundant here.

Go to sleep baby, you need it!

RL caught this photo of this girl dressed up in Lolita style.

HK is cool in that you can check in your luggage at the Kowloon airport express station, so you don’t have to haul your luggage all the way to the airport. Show up, go straight to security and to your gate, easy breezy.

Lots of containers over here.

Reminds me of the construction style in mainland China. Lots and lots of tall residential towers that all look the same.

Ugh, you are just a number here too.

The cloudy weather does not bode well for our plane leaving on time.

Reached the airport. It’s 11:30am, so lunch at airport!

The airport train reaches the airport, left exit for terminal 1, right exit for terminal 2. We don’t know which terminal we are at, but most of the people are going to terminal 1, so I guess we’ll give that one a try first.

And, we made the right terminal choice.

Since we are already checked in, and we’ve got a lot of time, might as well eat some lunch first.

I think I was somehow allergic to those dried fish mixed in with the peanuts. I ate one and my body started itching all over. A quick pop of zyrtec solved that.

Banana!

Fitting to have our last meal in HK be dim sum. I am going to miss eating so much dim sum when I get back to Austin.

They had a kiosk with nothing but drone displays. I don’t understand the whole deal with drones, people always make it out to seem like it’s some new fancy technology that’s going to change everything. It’s just a fancy remote controlled helicopter with a camera on it, and those have been around for decades.

Never thought that I would visit a toy store in the airport, and yet, here we are buying little baby toys.

Banana!!!

Now, onto our gate.

Oh great, again, we get the reject basement level gates. We were assigned these gates last time when we were here in HK, during a layover to Chang Mai. There are no cafes down here, and you need to take a bus to the airplane instead of just walking down the gangway. Lame!

There’s no smoking sign posted everywhere with warnings for fines, and yet almost restroom I walk by, it always reeks of cigarettes. I am going to assume that most of the rule breakers here are from the mainland.

Had to take the escalator back up to the normal level gates to get some coffee. This lady has a reclined sexy panda tattooed on her neck.

Sigh, tired baby needs to be rocked to sleep. Daddy’s back, ouch!!!

It’s pouring rain, hard to see. Our flight is getting delayed about an hour.

Grandpa L gets super antsy waiting around. People are forming a line, except they haven’t called for anyone to line up yet. I asked my dad to sit back down with us, and just join us for priority boarding with the baby later. He refuses….why, I don’t know. I guess we’ll just leave him behind when they actually board for real.

As expected, we start boarding. Me, RL, baby, and my mom(sister and girlfriend are taking a different flight) all walk up to the front of the line, leaving my dad behind in the back…sigh. I had a good laugh about it…

Dad finally joins us on the bus after a while. Oh, the irony of being overeager.

Really windy out there, but I think most of the rain has stopped. They actually handed out raincoats to the passengers just for boarding.

Why is there ice on the steps? Maybe from the catering services?

It was bumpy during take off, but eventually the air calmed down. Thank goodness this is a short flight, just a bit over an hour.

Surprised they are serving a chicken sandwich for such a short flight. Sure, I’ll eat it.

Reached Taiwan, it’s just as gloomy over here. I wonder how much of this air pollution is blown over from China.

Must eat everything.

Derrrr…

Instead of flying into TPE, we flew into the airport in Taichung. Small airport means we won’t have to walk a mile just to get out of the airport.

Small airport also meant that luggage arrived super quickly.

Thanks for our friend RE, we now have an extra car seat to take with us when traveling.

Sweet, they have a 6 seater taxi, now we don’t need to take two.

Ahhhh Taiwan, always enjoy coming back to visit.

So excited to be in the car…for now.

Such typical Taiwan construction.

It’s a symbol designating a moped rider…but doesn’t it also kind of look like someone receiving a blowjob?

Almost to Taichung, baby’s starting to get fussy in her carseat. Entertain me, she says!

Reached our hotel, only took about 40 minutes. That’s about 30min too long according to PL.

Sad. There used to be a 7-Eleven located right across from the hotel, but now it has been replaced with a bridal shop. Why would anyone need a wedding dress when you can instead have a 7-Eleven. I don’t get it…

We’ve got a family dinner schedule tonight, so we only had time to quickly put PL down for a short nap, and then we had to wake her up to join for dinner downstairs in the hotel.

And…the family visits begin. PL is tired, she needs to nap, poor thing.

Now, that’s pork belly.

RL left dinner halfway through to put baby to bed. I stayed around and caught up some more with family.

After dinner, it’s time for dessert in the form of egg pudding from a convenience store.

Wish this was a 7-Eleven and immediately across the street, but it’ll do.

The prize, egg puddings!!!! I love these things!! So tired now, must eat egg puddings and go straight to bed.

Taichung Day 2

Exhausting day yesterday, the plan for today is slow way down. Body still exhausted, need rest.

Still pouring rain today. Two years ago, when we came to Asia at around the same time of the year, it barely rained. This time, we are getting rain everywhere.

The nice hotel breakfast buffet spread.

Photo bombed by RL and dad….sigh.

Odd mix of items. Those round things are sausage balls…they look like round pellets of poop though.

Booked a taxi for the day, going to head to Nantou to see my grandma.

Lots of rain.

Happy…for now. Didn’t last long, she doesn’t like being in her car seat.

Mountains in the mist looks cool.

Drove by my old childhood home.

First, lunch at my childhood favorite restaurant.

There’s very few people here today. Due to weather? Due to shitty economy? Due to the restaurant having seen better days? All the above?

The one thing about this restaurant that hasn’t changed is their placemat.

That mush of food on the skillet is one of my favorite thing to eat in this world. It’s pork chops with egg mixed and cooked on a hot skillet. Yum!!!! Memories of my childhood!

PL is a huge star here. The waitress and another patron both asked to take photos of her. They love half white half Asian babies over here.

After lunch, reached my uncle’s house to see my grandma. My uncle knows me so well, he bought all these egg puddings for me! Yeah!!!

First time seeing grandma.

After our visit, time to head back to Taichung. So tired, I need to zone out this afternoon and just do nothing.

Pit stop at the 7-Eleven before heading back to hotel.

Already have a bunch, but still wants to buy more.

They also sell liquor here. You can have a pretty good party at one single stop to 7-Eleven.

OK, back to hotel. PL needs her nap soon.

While PL naps in the room with RL, I came down to the lobby bar for some coffee.

Got all these free drink coupons with our room, gotta make good use of them.

Iced coffee, much needed boost. Unfortunately, after about 20 minutes down here, RL came down with PL. Somebody didn’t want to take a nap and threw a fit…

Forgot to take a photo of the room earlier, so here it is. It’s a mess, just so much more shit laying around in the room with a baby. Anyhow, we played with PL some more to try to tire her out so that she can take a nap…
They even gave us a baby tub…speaking of which. Let’s give baby a bath, and maybe she’ll take a nap after. PL, at 7 1/2 months old, finally discovered that she can play with the water during bath time. Splash..splash….splash splash SPLASH SPLASH!!! Ok baby, that’s enough, stop it now!

Two hours later from the first time I came down to the lobby bar, the baby is finally asleep. Daddy needs a beer, thank you drink ticket!

I’ll just relax here and blog while the baby sleeps.

An hour of nap later, it’s time for dinner. Here’s grandma and grandpa showing off the baby. My parents always stay at this hotel for extended stay when they come to Taiwan, so they are very well acquainted with the staff. Dad’s been showing photos of the baby to everyone for a while now, so he was very eager to show off the baby in person….sigh. Can we just go have dinner?…

Dinner in the hotel restaurant that we ate at last night. Recovery day means path of least resistance. It also helps that the food at this restaurant is very tasty.

Tomorrow, RL and I will head to Taipei, where we will be on our own again for a week. The plan is to just chill, stroll around, and experience the city. In other words, there isn’t much to sightsee in Taipei, so we’ll just nap and eat.

To be continued at Taipei Day 1 & 2.