All good things must come to an end, and as the summer started to turn toward autumn and graduate classes loomed on the horizon, so too did Lauren’s grand tour wind down.
This took a bit, since the temptation to stay in Southeast Asia was strong and the intransigence of the travel company that she’d been working with made rebooking her flight home inordinately more complicated than it needed to be. They eventually refunded about half of her money for a flight that didn’t work out – a long and hard-fought battle that ended sometime in October – and Lauren found another flight to Chicago that would arrive from the west on August 26, more than ten weeks after she’d left O’Hare headed east.
She and Shai traveled from Siem Reap back to Phnom Penh and said their goodbyes, and then Lauren flew off to Taiwan where she had a fairly lengthy layover before her connecting flight. This, it turned out, was not the problem it might have been in most airports around the world as the good people of Taipei understood the assignment when it came to airports.
“Taipei airport has lapped Stockholm Arlanda” Lauren reported from the scene. “Each gate is themed, bathrooms are immaculate (heated seats, multiple kinds of bidets); food is amazing and cheap; food court is themed like a Chinese village.” On top of that the wifi was free and faster than at home and – perhaps the greatest thing of all – there were outlets pretty much everywhere. You can’t ask for much more than that out of an airport.
This took a bit, since the temptation to stay in Southeast Asia was strong and the intransigence of the travel company that she’d been working with made rebooking her flight home inordinately more complicated than it needed to be. They eventually refunded about half of her money for a flight that didn’t work out – a long and hard-fought battle that ended sometime in October – and Lauren found another flight to Chicago that would arrive from the west on August 26, more than ten weeks after she’d left O’Hare headed east.
She and Shai traveled from Siem Reap back to Phnom Penh and said their goodbyes, and then Lauren flew off to Taiwan where she had a fairly lengthy layover before her connecting flight. This, it turned out, was not the problem it might have been in most airports around the world as the good people of Taipei understood the assignment when it came to airports.
“Taipei airport has lapped Stockholm Arlanda” Lauren reported from the scene. “Each gate is themed, bathrooms are immaculate (heated seats, multiple kinds of bidets); food is amazing and cheap; food court is themed like a Chinese village.” On top of that the wifi was free and faster than at home and – perhaps the greatest thing of all – there were outlets pretty much everywhere. You can’t ask for much more than that out of an airport.
Also, for some reason, sarsaparilla is very popular in Taiwan and sold pretty much everywhere in the Taipei airport. I don’t remember the last time I saw it here in the US, but if you’ve got a hankerin’ for some, partner, the place to go for a cold, refreshing sarsaparilla is not some sepia-toned Old West saloon but a vending machine in the Departures area of Taiwan’s biggest airport. It’s a strange old world, it is.
So hats off to the Taiwanese for sticking the landing (and takeoff) here.
One of the wonders of the modern age is the fact that with a simple app on your phone you can track pretty much any flight in the world. This never fails to amaze me, particularly as a historian who spends a fair amount of time in my classes emphasizing how slowly everything moved prior to about the early 1800s. For most of human history we lived in a three mile per hour world, where nothing – not people, not goods, and not information – moved faster than that over any appreciable distance. That’s the walking speed of the average adult. That’s how fast a horse moves over long distances. That’s the speed of a sailing ship. 3mph. 5kph. That’s how it was from the first time our species evolved out of whatever preceded it right up to the invention of the steam locomotive in the early 1800s.
Now? I can pull out the tiny little computer in my pocket that masquerades as a phone even though nobody uses it as one, tap on an even tinier icon on the screen, squint a bit, and follow a traveler flying high above the Pacific Ocean at hundreds of miles per hour, and I can do it in real time.
Amazing.
If you have never picked someone up at O’Hare, it’s an experience. They do the best they can to make it work, but a) it’s one of the busiest airports in the world and there is no arrival time you can choose that will not have you grinding your way through traffic to get where you want to go, and b) everything within an hour of the airport is under construction and has been since they rebuilt the city after the Great Fire.
Nevertheless, I successfully found my way to the cell phone lot and settled in. Lauren’s flight landed. Customs were cleared and bags picked up and eventually I found her waiting outside of the Arrivals area and we headed back to Wisconsin, stopping only to get some direly unhealthy American roadside food along the way because welcome home, weary traveler!
There are a few postscripts to this story.
For one, when we asked Lauren what she wanted for her first dinner after arriving back home she immediately replied “Mexican!” and this is absolutely correct. The rest of the world beyond Mexico and its neighbors, for all of its culinary marvels, is sorely lacking in quality Mexican food whereas we here in Our Little Town have not only all of the finest chain restaurants in America but also some surprisingly good real Mexican food.
For another, now that she was back in the Land of In-Network Insurance Coverage – a uniquely and disturbingly American concept – Lauren went to the local Urgent Care to have her fingers looked at. Apparently she became the star of the Urgent Care as people there were fascinated by the story of how she ended up in this condition. It’s probably not a story they’ve heard much here in Our Little Town in Wisconsin. Her fingers continue to heal.
She also got reacquainted with the cat, who was glad to see her. Midgie is always glad to see her people.
Lauren’s flight landed almost exactly a week before her classes were scheduled to start and I sort of expected her to sleep for most of that week before heading up to campus, but it is easy to forget the recuperative powers of the young when you are no longer part of that demographic and she went back to campus after only a couple of days. Not long after that Arden came to visit and they had a good time together rattling around Main Campus University. They also came down to see us and share a meal and we got to hear more of the stories that way. It was a lovely evening.
And finally, not long after Lauren went back to her apartment near campus, I went up as well and we did a major Costco resupply run since groceries were probably not something that she’d had much time to acquire in those intervening days. On the way back to her apartment we decided to stop for lunch at a Thai restaurant, and it turns out that the owners are from Chang Mai so they had a good time talking with Lauren and hearing her experiences in their hometown. It was really good food, too.
The world is a big and exciting place but it can be very small and welcoming as well.
It is good to travel, to see and experience new things. It is good to come home. It will be good to travel again.
Welcome home, Lauren.
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