Two airplanes down, two go. The Denver to Los Angeles flight was early and it was snowing in Denver. The Estes Park contingent had a very early start. Kurt, Ben, and I all stayed in Denver, but it was still an early morning to get to the airport by 6:30 AM. But, we made it to LAX just fine. I had a window seat on the left side of the airplane and was treated to some spectacular views of the mountains and the desert.
The first picture is the Rockies in western Colorado. I’m not sure what range it is.
I’m pretty sure the second picture is the Grand Canyon. Because of the glare of the sun, it was hard to get a clear picture.
Once in LA we had a 7 hour layover and had to keep our baggage for about 4 hours of that before we could check in for the flight. One nice things was the temperature differential between Denver (20 and snow) and LA (65 and sunny). Alas, we didn’t get to be outside much except the trek between terminals.
We finally boarded our flight to Taipei, Taiwan on EVA airlines. The flight time was 14 hours. We were all in economy which was completely full. I thought the service was good even with all those people.
After supper I started watching Spectre, the latest James Bond movie. That was a good choice because it wasn’t interesting enough to keep me awake. I slept through most of it. When it was over I switched to music and must have gotten 6-7 hours of sleep in spite of being in the middle of three seats (with Kurt on one side and Ben on the other.
We all tried to sleep as much as possible. Ben did a great job as you can see from the picture. Everybody seems to have survived the flight just fine.
We had a 7 hour layover in Taipei before out plane to Bangkok. Since it is the middle of the night (1:40 AM as I type this), the airport is essentially closed. We did find some benches that we can stretch out on so Ben Kurt are sacked out. I’m not sleepy at the moment.
I went searching for an ATM to get some Taiwanese money. I finally found one and got 3,000 NTW (New Taiwanese Dollars) worth about $100 US. I wanted the money so I could get a drink from the vending machine. The ATM gave me three 1,000 bills, not very useful. I found a change machine and figure this would be perfect. I put in my 1,000 bill and hit change and it sounded like I had the slot machine jackpot. I got on hunger 10 NTD coins. They must weigh 5 pounds. Crazy. Oh well, I have PLENTY ofcoins for the vending machines now.
Time to get some rest before the trip continues. We have about 4 hours to Bangkok, a five hour layover, and then 90 minutes to Chiang Mai.
