First, let me say that Eva Air does food right. I never thought I would be excited about airline food. But pepper beef over rice, fresh fruit, real silverware, and a delicious bun for dessert? OH, YES! It looked and tasted like actual restaurant food – nothing like what we all expect from an airline meal. I don’t even remember what the Western option was, all three of us chose the Asian dinner.
They also served breakfast. Ken ordered the congee (I have trauma, so that’s a hard no lol), I had the bacon and spinach frittata, and Harry chose to sleep through the meal entirely. The frittata was delicious, and Ken raved about the congee.
We don’t really do upgraded seats, so we sat in coach — which is normally fine. I’m 5’1″ if I’m lucky, so I’ve never had much to complain about in economy. But Ken was worried we might be forced to accept Grab scooters to the Airbnb and didn’t want anything too difficult to carry, so we packed two backpacks each instead of carry-ons. With one shoved under the seat in front of me, I had nowhere to put my legs, so by the end of the first flight my knees were absolute toast. Even for the short girl. I can’t imagine how Harry or Ken must have felt.
We had a 4.5 hour layover in Taipei, which wasn’t a huge deal – I had heard that TPE is a great international airport, so I was excited to check it out. First thing we wanted to do was find the gate so we would know where to go at boarding time. Our gate happened to be right next to a Sanrio store, who actually SPONSORED OUR GATE!!! It was so cute! Hello Kitty, Keroppi, Badtz Maru, Pochacco, Pekkle, My Melody, Kuromi… they were all there! Skipper would have loved it, so of course I got a little video to show her later.
American international airports are… okay? Like I never thought about how boring they were until we got to Taipei. American airports just feel like a place you have to be until your flight leaves. But TPE was gorgeous, like they actually want you to enjoy yourself while you’re there. The food court looked like a little piece of Asia dropped into the middle of the terminal – with Asian styling everywhere. There were even tables designed to look like the carts you see towed behind bicycles! We ate custard pies, udon, and Korean fried chicken, and everything was far more delicious than the fast food and pizza we’re used to getting at airports.
We spent a couple of hours figuring out Wise (a payment platform that is supposed to make international spending easier). Ken’s Android phone didn’t cooperate, so we ended up setting up a Wise credit card in my Apple wallet. We thought we needed to convert money to New Taiwanese Dollars, but it turns out USD through the card worked fine. We browsed a few shops on the way back to the gate and spotted a Kuromi luggage set that Skipper would love, so I took a picture to show her later.
Boarded the second flight from Taipei to Da Nang International. After stretching our very grateful legs, the 2-hour flight was almost nothing — the worst part was not finishing the last 10 minutes of my movie before we landed. Besides, none of us were thinking about legroom anymore. Da Nang was waiting.
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