Elusive Paradise

Living overseas, I've gotten lot's of opportunities to get good at packing a large family, if I do say so myself.

 My biggest nemesis when packing is Ander. That cute face? Don't fall for it. He can undo an hours worth of progress in about 20 seconds.

 When the 7 of us arrived at the airport - remember our niece Maddie was with us, yay!- we were kinda giddy to discover our Gate was the new "Hello Kitty" Gate. Saawheet!

 Tell me how Kohen can still be so completely enthralled and captivated...

 When he is watching some cartoon that is in Chinese with Chinese subtitles?!?!?

 Hello Kitty with your Peace sign, it doesn't get more Asian than that.

 What? Can't a girl just enjoy the Hello Kitty ambiance?!

 Hello Kitty Store opening into waiting area- well played Taipei International Airport, well played.

 Every gate needs a playground. Nuff' said.
K, on to the actual traveling. Sometimes things are difficult and frustrating living overseas. Things never go as planned and that's about all you can plan on. I have found that trying to explain how and why is tedious and difficult and my worst experiences never make the blog because frankly, I just don't know how to explain it. Me at a loss for words? I know.
Anyway, let me try and illustrate this day. The flight to Manila is about 1 hr and 45 min. Then we were going to drive ourselves 2.5 hours to where we were staying. So in your mind your thinking, total travel time, about 5 hours, right? Like a flight from San Fran to Boise and then hopping in the car and heading up to McCall.
Theoretically, yes....

Reality = No.
I don't know if you know anything about Manila but um, let's just say every store, like Starbucks, for instance, has a Security Guard standing at the door with a full on shotgun hanging from his chest. Yeah. So not the safest place. And there is a serious lack of infrastructure. A lot of poverty.
We started off from home with a 45min drive to TPE airport, about 2 hours to Manila and then we walked straight out to the car rental place and hit our first detour. Of course the "mini van" they promised Nathan was not, in fact a mini van. It could fit 7 people if said people had zero luggage. So the negotiating began with the other companies vying for business making all sorts of promises, many of which after talking to their managers, they could not keep. While Nathan is busy with this, Maddie and I are trying to contain 4 hungry, cooped up children in a filthy, dirty little space.
FINALLY, after about 45 min, they strike a deal and send a van to take us over to the rental place. Fine. So we get there and the van they promised was from the early 90's and looked like a tin can. We pointed to a larger van that was the only vehicle that looked suitable and the negotiations started again. At some point they come to an agreement and move us into the van while Nathan goes to sign papers.
We wait in that van for over an hour. I have zero idea what was taking so long. But I now have weeping and wailing from my kids because they are starving. Frankly by then, so was I. At least the van was on so we weren't dying of a heat stroke.
Eventually -after enough time had passed for a caterpillar to spin it's cocoon and reemerge as a beautiful butterfly and fly off, beating us to our destination- Nathan appeared. In the same parking lot we discovered a shady KFC and he ran in to get some (*gag*) "food" and we were off!!!

Boy were we glad for the training that driving in Taipei had given us! Driving a big 'Ol Five Speed van in the middle of traffic in Manila, navigating where we needed to go, it was like we were on a leg from the Amazing Race. We were trying to make it to this Mall of Asia where apparently there would be food and supplies for our week.
We got there and I waited with a couple kids for another 2 hours while shopping, and then potty breaks, and then running back in for one more thing, went on. We were finally leaving town right at peak traffic and I have to tell you, Nathan has mad skills because he handled it calmly and with confidence. It was crazy though. And that's coming from someone who drives in Taiwan.

As the evening wore on we entered these two lane roads that were still pretty heavy with fast moving traffic, with shacks/houses and little businesses on the sides. The thing that became treacherous was that as it grew dark, there were people everywhere walking along the sides of the road! They were very difficult to see and the roads were gently rolling and turning with the buses (those silver van lookin things in first pic) stopping and starting all the way, and passing was a very large and natural part of their driving routine.
So you had drivers occasionally coming into your lane, head on as they pass someone, and you can't even move over an inch because the road is already narrow and there are people all along on the side of the road. We had to be very vigilant and I tried to make sure and call out the peds as soon as I saw them cuz a lot of them were wearing dark colors and were difficult to see.
It turned out to be quite the "adventure". So total travel time had us leaving our house in Taipei at 6:45am and arriving safely to our destination at 10pm. We stopped to eat which was just under an hour. So basically, what in your mind you write off as a quick flight and a bit of a drive, somehow turns into a 15 hour ordeal.
Though I cannot say the same about daily trials and frustrations that happen in Taipei, in this case I can say it was worth it. Thank GOODNESS.