We’ve arrived. We left Tainan around noon, a taxi to the HSR and then a train ride to Taoyuan. It was the usual one and a half hour, which seems to be the journey time in Taiwan, regardless of where one is going. At the station we were met by the Boddhisattva and the Woodland Creature, who had come down from Taipei for the day. We found lockers to stow our suitcases and we went off, first to find coffee and cake. We found cake, which was adequate, and pleasant chats, and then strolled on to what appeared to be a park on Google Maps but, on arriving, turned out to be a large art+technology centre (the plus sign says it all) set amidst concreted-over plazas and a vast newly-constructed parking garage which had once, perhaps, been a park. Disappointing, to say the least. Dinner was at a Hakka restaurant, and then we returned to the HSR station to catch the MRT and begin our air travels in the time of coronavirus.
It was rather sad to say farewell to the Boddisattva and the Woodland Creature. I didn’t enjoy living with them, any more than I would enjoy living with anyone, but they are a lovely and thoughtful and interesting pair and often force me to look at the world in a way which is very different from my own.
At the airport we confronted the usual bank of cancelled flights – I wonder why they still keep them on, presumably they have been cancelled for months. The airport itself had that strange grimy otherworldly feel of an airport late at night, though it was still only early evening. The stalls and shops in the concourse were mostly closed, the check-in counters vacant. Lights had been dimmed in many under-used areas. Of course, there were very few people there. Everyone wore masks, of course, but some also wore face shields and goggles and one business class couple on our flight showed up in full PPE suits. There was a separate area set aside for migrant workers and they all wore PPE, all in blue, clearly issued to them. Taiwan is better to its migrant workers than many, but it was a stark depiction of the place of these workers in their host society: their services needed enough to bring over in a pandemic, but treated as carriers of a deadly disease.
We finally found our own check-in counter – it was hidden behind a labyrinth of scaffolding and closed up kiosks – and were surprised to find it quite full. Well, it’s the first flight from Taiwan to Turkey, and we can’t be the only ones with rapidly expiring visas. Most of those in the queue were non-Taiwanese, mostly European and a few Israeli. It was striking again how different the body language is after living in Taiwan for so long – it looked unrestrained, taking up space. Several of the young European men wore their masks with noses exposed, which sent the GF into a slight fury, but I suppose one had best get used to this form of rule breaking.
With the flights restarting after months, the staff were all clearly new, and perhaps borrowed from other airlines, as the woman checking us in didn’t know we had visa-free entry to Turkey and it took a while to clear that up. Again, it made me rather sad to leave Taiwan, as it was an interaction that seemed rather typical: polite and willing to accept and confirm correction without losing dignity.
On the flight itself, the only signs of the pandemic were the masks, of course, the row of empty seats in each set of three, a little gift bag containing hand sanitiser, and the outrageously terrible meal, of a sandwich in a cardboard box. The GF, who had requested a vegetarian meal, received a chicken sandwich like everyone else. The toilet was not noticeably cleaner, nor was there much evidence of monitoring of the protocols by the airline staff.
We arrived in Istanbul around 4.30 in the morning, and got through customs etc very quickly, again with little difference from pre-COVID times. The airport was bare and empty of course, and we filled out COVID-19 forms, but that was about it. I am told we walked through a temperature detector. Then the first hurdle of the journey and of arrival in Turkey generally particularly after SE Asia: the annoyance, expense and difficulty of getting a mobile phone connection and of logging on to the internet. Eventually we sucked up and paid for one highly overpriced SIM card and I managed to connect to the airport wifi long enough to call an Uber, and we arrived at our flat two hours earlier than we were supposed to. And now, here we are in Istanbul which, despite the unpromising start at the airport, truly feels a magical place.