Taipei to Toronto: TPE to LAX to YYZ (2024)

We made it back from Taiwan! I thought we might never leave, and given the dumpling situation, it was a toss-up.

We were up at the crack of dawn shoving the last things into the suitcases, packing the snacks and marching out the doors, strapping on a diaper (just the baby, not the rest of us, although maybe it might not have been a bad idea, with what turned out to be ahead), and clanging the gates shut behind us. (Actually we closed them very quietly because it was very early in the morning and we are nothing if not respectful Airbnb guests.)

And we made it to the airport. Jon had said we should just take a taxi, but Taoyuan is pretty far from Taipei and expensive via taxi, and I had thought it wouldn’t take us long to make to Taoyuan Airport from Taipei, by taking the MRT to Taipei Main Station, and then the Taoyuan MRT to the airport.

Google, normally very reliable, especially in an urban metropolis like Taipei, and upon which we had been relying heavily for the last two months, told me it was 1 hr door to door. However, it turns out Google does not take into account the fact that children do not move quickly with luggage and the fact that with our luggage and our stroller we need to take the extra time to search for and wait for elevators. It doesn’t sound like we would be that slow, or maybe it does, but we were very slow. We had two suitcases and a tote bag to check, and everyone had a carry-on backpack, and one not very useful human in a stroller. She’s okay cute but, like, also a total liability. Let’s not use the word burden here but we can all think things in our heads.

On board, the food was no good. In my life, I’ve mostly been fairly impressed by most airplane food but I guess even airplanes have off days. I think in general if you’re on an Asian airline, they’ll offer a Chinese/Japanese/Asian meal and a Western-style meal, and if you’re on an Asian airline you should definitely get the Asian food.

They offered “chicken or beef” and I took the chicken which was the Western meal and it was terrible.

I was gracious enough to give Junia the beef, which was the Taiwanese meal, and which was not quite as terrible—but not even Junia liked it, and Junia is not a super picky eater.

We had a four hour layover in Los Angeles, which I thought wouldn’t be so bad, since it would help break up an otherwise long period of time cramped up in our seats, but actually it was the most stressful part of our journey.

I was shocked to find out that at LAX you need to physically transfer your own luggage. Is that a thing? This is literally the only airport I’ve ever been to (including South America, Europe, Africa, Asia, Madagascar, Peru, Russia, Heathrow, Denmark, O’Hare, San Francisco) where, when you are transferring between flights, you need to exit the airport through immigration, retrieve your own luggage, and then check it back in, and then go back through TSA airport security. Let me tell you, it was not a smooth, fast, or civilized process, and I thought I might be in a third world country for some time of it.

They (of course) have separate lines for American citizens and other people, and I am an other person, and therefore apparently suspect of being an illegal immigrant and they’re asking me what I’m planning on doing in LA in a very hostile manner and what I’m doing in LA is trying to retrieve my own luggage and schlep it back into the airport somewhere to check it back in and then take my shoes back off and get x-rayed again, all with my three children who have just exited an early morning trans-pacific flight.

I guess for several brief minutes (having stood for two hours in an immigration line, I was in a bit of a rush to make my flight to Toronto), I did breathe in American air while yelling at my kids to pick it up as we tried to make it to the right terminal. I will say that the TSA person did not yell at me quite as aggressively as she yelled at everyone else, which was very nice of her.

While in Taipei, and checking in for the first leg of the flight, the EVA air person told me I would need to do this exiting-through-immigration-and-checking-my-luggage-thing, and I remember asking her if four hours was enough time for that, and she said the minimum time between flights was two hours, so we were sure to be okay. I asked her for clarification, given that LAX is a very large airport and I had to do this whole additional vague luggage self-transfer thing that she didn’t seem to have very good details on, with the three children in tow, going back in through security as a non-US citizen and all, and her response was that she didn’t really know because she had never done it before (??). It was ominous at best.

I was pretty suspicious at that time that this was going to be a hairy process, and so maybe I manifested the prophecy into life, or maybe the lesson is basically try not to transfer through LAX if at all possible. Plus we didn’t have time to buy hot food so I spent $9 USD on grapes that no one ate.

One advantage of that little extra side quest is that everyone was exhausted on the flight from LAX to Toronto, and we all slept through that flight until we made it home.

***

What an adventure, this whole thing.

It was an adventure just to make it home, through the valley of peril, which was maybe a fitting way to end the whole thing. A relief to have made it through alive, and with no children scooped up and detained by US Immigration, dicey as it was for a while there. I probably would’ve sacrificed Caleb, since he’s the most capable of surviving in a wiley situation, although I’m glad it didn’t come to that.

I’m only now finishing up the last of my Taipei journal, and I’m glad to be doing it, browsing through the last of the photos and scribbling down what I can remember. These hefty notebooks! What chaos and treasures and tiny details and coffee spills and uncoordinated scrawls they hold. I’m also, with some effort, muscling the kids into finishing their journals as well, holding onto the hope that one day they’ll look back on them with wide eyes at the adventures they once went through.

If you follow on social media, you might have seen that we arrived home a week and a half ago, but I’ve been keeping busy—we had the TSL family here in Toronto for a couple more days after their workshops, then we left for a long-planned camping trip—but I still have so much to share.