Monday October 16, 2000

Today marks the last day of our stay in Taiwan.  The flight was scheduled for late afternoon (~4pm) so we had time to get ready and still hang out for a few hours.  We took a cab to the airport and were dropped off at the wrong terminal.  Despite my father's expressed doubt, the cab driver was confident that he was right: "I've dropped off many Americans at that terminal", he proclaimed.  Luckily we gave ourselves plenty of time to get to the airport so we're able to take the airport shuttle and get to the right terminal.  We took some pictures while we waited.  At the gift shop the store clerks were again following us around and pressuring us to buy all sorts of things.  Having learnt my lesson I basically ignore them completely and got only what I wanted.  It's amazing how quickly you grow a thick layer of skin after having been burned by the pressure tactics of Taiwan store clerks.

The flight to Vancouver was about 9 hours; 3 hours less than the flight in reverse direction.  Since the plane was barely filled, both Russ and I were able to get our own row of seats.  I actually managed to sleep for 2 or 3 hours.  Overall the flight was very quick and comfortable and I got off it refreshed (now how often can you say that?).  Of course it helped that we were staying at Vancouver for 3 days and not flying straight back to Boston.

We arrived in Vancouver mid-afternoon and the first thing we did when we got to the hotel was take a nap.  We spent the night walking along Robson Street where our hotel was located.  Robson Street is *the* street for shopping in Vancouver (like Newbury Street in Boston).  We noticed quite a number of homeless people on the street.  We had dinner at a small sushi restaurant serving food that were actually reasonably priced compare to our local sushi restaurants.  We were both looking forward to seeing more of Vancouver in the next two days.