The Surreal-Ness Of It All

“If there is no struggle, there is no progress."
~Frederick Douglass, American abolitionist, author and orator

Today is yet another travel day. There have been so many of them in the last decade, I’ve lost count - years ago! Chris used to make an exercise of writing down on a sheet of paper the places we’d been over the past thirty days – and by the time he was done, the sheet would be entirely full and our minds were swimming with what our bodies had accomplished!

It’s moments like this one at the customs and immigration area at Taipei Airport that make me pinch myself to make sure it’s really happening and not part of some long, surreal dream. We’ve traveled so much, these custom halls have started to blur, becoming almost interchangeable with one another. Today it’s not that this particular moment is noteworthy or necessarily worth remembering; it’s one of many just like it, but it’s where the “surreal-ness” of our life kicked in for me today. So when this happens, I make myself stop, “check in” and consciously register what’s happening in an effort to keep it all from slipping into one long blur at the back of my memory.

This area is not very unlike all the others we come across, although places like Hong Kong, New York, Detroit and Tokyo have carefully constructed and winding “corrals” that travelers feed through. Much to our surprise, the customs area here in Taipei relied upon the courtesy of those standing in line to cue up and wait their turn – risky business given our experiences in China, I thought! But I was happily surprised to see the rag-tag lines were basically organized and remained that way as we made our way toward the front.

The “surreal” part of all this was finding ourselves once again in a “Non-Citizen” line at an unfamiliar airport, standing behind what appeared to be large groups of tourists from China traveling during their week-long National Day holiday. I’m not sure why it hit me all of a sudden today; perhaps because we were supposed to be arriving in the Maldives for our own vacation this week (which would have been a wonderful chapter in this long, surreal dream), but work called Chris to Taiwan. So here we were instead in Taipei’s loud, noisy and crowded immigration hall waiting our turn to be allowed entry into the country. Surreal.

In truth, I’m happy to be visiting Taiwan - after all these years, I’ve never visited here, and I’m excited to explore the differences between Taiwan and its “big brother” across the straights. As with every Asian country, there will be distinct differences in the culture, and I’m interested to see what I’ll take away from my visit this week. So far, judging from this customs hall where the chaos seemed relatively controlled, Taiwan may be surprisingly “civilized” compared to what we’re used to - and that certainly bodes well for week ahead!

I took this shot because it sums up so much of what you see while racing through airports on this side of the world: People of all Asian nationalities, many of them traveling in large groups behind a leader holding up a colorful flag, students studying maps and filling out entry forms, families carrying small children (almost always traveling without strollers), young couples worrying about visas and if they have the correct travel papers. Today there were a few Western faces in the crowd, always visible because of their height, and a monk was wandering quietly through the lines, his bald head dipped in concentration as he studied his folders.

The only point of focus was the “Non-Citizen” signs we all slowly made our way toward. The woman behind the counter scrutinized me as she held up my passport, trying to make sure I was, in fact, who I clamed to be. I often joke with Chris that, to them, Westerners probably all look alike – with the time she took deciding if it was really me in the photo, perhaps I’m not too far off! She asked several questions, flipping through my passport over and over, finally deciding I was OK to move past her counter, the literal entry into Taiwan.

And so we embark on yet another leg of the journey, this time into a new place holding all kinds of new and different experiences and hopefully a few adventures. Chris will be working hard for the next week, so I’ll have lots of time on my hands to explore Taichung. I know I’m going to have many "out-of-body" moments and dream-like feelings this week as a “Non-Citizen” of Taiwan, so my goal will be to capture some of it, small pieces of the dream, so I can forever remember the surreal-ness of it all!