After months of wavering, east coaster defects to best coast
Run, don’t walk to Hog Island Oyster Company and order the Manila Clam Chowder.
Japan is blowing me away.
Today, after being turned away at the check-in counter for China Airlines at Taoyuan airport in Taiwan for my flight to Seoul because my passport backing broke off from my visa pages, I mentally resigned myself to three more weeks of Shin Yeh and beef noodles. It wouldn’t have been that hard, except for my trip to Japan…
After being issued an emergency passport in about 3 hours (!), I went back to Taoyuan, checked in, ran to my gate, and flew to Seoul where I emerged minus 1 checked bag. People who lose their luggage always look like they are doing the walk of shame.
St. Anthony must have heard me. My luggage was found.
Kimchi time.
The dream comes true in 2 days. JAPAN.
I got electrocuted again. It’s like a rite of passage for me when I travel.
Sesame Mochi Bliss at Mochi Mochi Ya, Shillin Night Market, Taipei, Taiwan
“Something of this journey between the near and the far goes on in every life. Sometimes an old photograph, an old friend, an old letter will remind you that you are not who you once were, for the person who dwelt among them, valued this, chose that, wrote this, no longer exists. Without noticing it you have traversed a great distance; the strange has become familiar and the familiar, if not strange, at least awkward or uncomfortable, an outgrown garment. And some people travel far more than others. There are those who receive as birthright an adequate or at least unquestioned sense of self and those who set out to reinvent themselves, for survival or for satisfaction, and travel far. Some people inherit values and practices as a house they inhabit; some of us have to burn down that house, find our own ground, build from scratch, even as a psychological metamorphosis.” - Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost
“If a man must be obsessed by something, I suppose a boat is as good as anything, perhaps a bit better than most. A small sailing craft is not only beautiful, it is seductive and full of strange promise and the hint of trouble.”
Din Tai Fung, Xinyi Road, Taipei, Taiwan
