I am in Chaing Mai, safe and sound.
It was a good trip. Thanks to being seated in an otherwise empty row (albeit between some bathrooms and an emergency exit) I got to lay down and sleep my way across the Pacific. When I awoke I received some damn good food. I can’t remember the last time I got a meal on a flight.
After eating I did my best to distract myself from the Tim Allen movie playing on five giant screens. Too reclined to reach for my carry-on luggage, I turned to everyone’s favorite seat pouch readers: Sky Mall and the air safety card.
Sky Mall was nothing special. Your usual overpriced perfume and ridiculous Sharper Image rejects. But the safety card… perfect. Gone were the faceless figures who are just going through the safety motions a’la American safety cards. China Airline’s characters do not phone in their performances and it shows.
For example:
What’s that kid doing? Chewing on a wire? Pulling off a leech? Flossing? I have no idea; but whatever it is he’s not supposed to be doing it, and you can tell he’s starting to figure that out.
Once on the ground in Taipei the warnings were a little less detailed but a lot more to the point. I spent my layover sitting beneath a sign that read “Drug trafficking is punishable by death in the R.O.C.” There wasn’t a picture.