The
China Airlines
The flight I took from LAX to Taipei was from China airlines. At first I was skeptical, but after my experience all I can say is that, if I ever travel to Asia again, I would choose them again. The atmosphere for the flight was neat, they had lights all over the plane that would change color depending on the time of day, to simulate the sunset and sunrise. It gave off a very warm feeling
during that 1am flight.
Despite the late hour, it took me quite a while to go to sleep, mainly because the flight provided films to watch which I didn’t get the chance to see in the states before I left. An example would be Guardians of the Galaxy, the new Pirates film, and many more that came out recently on DVD. As time passed, they eventually dimmed the lights, but I was way too excited, looking forward to the rest of my trip. Eventually, I did manage to get some shut eye.
Earlier I chatted with my immediate neighbors: one was going to see his girlfriend and the other was a USAC student on her way to Osaka, just like myself.
The next day
I was never clear how much I slept on this plane, since my clocks were not synced at all, and due to the high number of time zones we were crossing; even my wrist watch, which has this neat feature of showing multiple time zones, was not correct: I had to wait for our landing to reset it, because I had no way of validating what time it was. I woke up just in time for breakfast; they even gave us heated towels in the coach section. Now, that’s service, if I have ever seen it. Surprisingly, I must have slept very well, or maybe I was just very excited for the trip, the thing is that I never felt any jet lag. Every seat has a video screen embedded in the back of the seat in front of it. It was neat that you could see a real-time flight path of where the plane was heading. Another nice feature was that one can bring up information for their connecting flight, and the next flight of the same plane.
Taipei airport
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| Flying over Japan |
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| Landing in Taipei |
Taipei airport
Did not get a good chance to see all, it was about 6 in the morning local time, and most of the stores were closed. However, they had a small art gallery and museum about their culture and heritage. I looked around for a bit, but was more concerned about getting to the terminal for my connecting flight.
What was really surprising was that as I was waiting in my departing gate, other students traveling abroad with USAC were arriving one by one. We got the chance to get to know one another, connect and figure out each other’s Japanese level, and really build a network. This is an unintended, but very welcome side effect of the fact that we were all given a 10-hour window to arrive at the airport in Osaka.
The Final flight to Japan
The Final flight to Japan
The final flight was thrilling and exciting and luckily, I sat with another USAC member who has been a great friend ever since. We chatted for most of the trip until we got distracted with a film. But this time I found that one option on the screen actually allowed me to view the outer video cameras of the plane and see both the earth under the plane and the sky ahead. It was really mesmerizing.
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Erik, a senior international studies major, is spending the Fall 2017 semester studying Japanese in Osaka through USAC.
Read more from Erik at https://erikarrjapan.blogspot.com/
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