I got married to my wonderful girlfriend(now wife) RL!! We decided that we wanted to go on a long honeymoon, the first part to Asia and the second part to Europe and South America.

It was quite stressful planning for this trip. First of all, we got married just 2 days ago, so there was all the wedding planning and logistics. Secondly, the Asian leg of the honeymoon will be around two and a half months, so that was a lot of travel planning going on at the same time of wedding planning. The wedding went off without a hitch and we all had a blast!! Now, we can focus on the honeymoon.

Ready to say goodbye to our home for a few months and head out on the road. We had one day to pack right after the wedding and packing took us into the wee hours, so we were already tired when we had to leave at 6am to the airport.

My sister flew into Austin to attend my wedding, and she’s flying back to Taiwan(our first stop) on our same flight. An early morning pick up from the parental units.

This being Monday morning, the security lines were as long as I remember seeing them. Everyone is flying out of town for work or travel.

RL and sister. Smile now before the 20+ hours of travel ahead beats you down.

Tradition is tradition, Salt Lick at airport every chance I get before I leave town.

Yum!

I married an insect. Please note, that’s not a bra, but an eye blinder with pop-outs so that your lashes don’t get flattened.

Dreary San Francisco for a layover.

Why are escalators/moving platforms always breaking?

Some simple Japanese for lunch.

Vacation means beer with my early lunch.

There she is.

I found this at the airport, Nutella with breadsticks. The Japanese invented this decades ago in Pocky.

Excited to go traveling, but dreading the 13 hours of ass numbing flight ahead. Yeah, that’s right, matching jackets. That’s how you know we are the cool kids.

I’ve always loved international flight food, probably because I am always hungry and bored, so eating gives me something to enjoy.

In the middle of the night, they came by and served us ice cream and a sandwich as a night cap. The ice cream hit the spot!

Breakfast was meh. Breakfast on a flight is almost always lackluster.

Are we there yet!!!??? This was such a miserable flight. I could only fall asleep about 1/3 of the time, which still left me with more than 8 hours of staying awake in cramped quarters. Hating life.

Finally starting our descent, the sun is setting over Taiwan.

For Taiwanese tax reasons, every couple of years I need to come back to Taiwan using my Taiwanese passport instead of my American passport. The lines were pretty short here at immigration. I waited maybe 3 minutes.

Not so for the non-citizens. This picture only shows about 1/5 of the non residents line. I think RL(center of photo) had to wait close to 30 minutes…

Another tradition, visiting the 7 Eleven inside the airport terminal. Doubt you have this at your local 7 Eleven.

Taxi ride to the High Speed Rail station. How does our taxi driver see out of the car with all these things on his windshield? On top of everything, he had a TV show playing the whole time on his phone on the dash, and also had a suicide knob on his steering wheel.

We were so beat by this time. All I want to do is take a shower and lay down flat.

Tired.

Arrived at Taichung station 40 minutes later on the train and then into my sister’s car for the final leg to our hotel.

There she is. My dad stays at this hotel all the time in Taiwan, so we’ll get perks like free drink tickets, free breakfast and free room upgrade.

Obligatory bathroom photo with newlywed selfie.

Ohh, fancy bidet toilet.

Mini suite. This will probably be one of the nicer places that we’ll be staying at on this trip. Once we get to Southeast Asia, we’ll be staying in a lot more guesthouses.

Our haul from 7 Eleven. Egg pudding!!!!!!!

Time to take a hot bath and go to bed so that I can be up early in the wee hours of the night unable to fall back asleep due to jetlag.

To be continued at Taiwan Day 2.