I can’t remember how this trip started already (side note, there are a lot of things that I don’t remember these days, sigh). I did block off this period for a sort of short trip coz I still have leave days to utilize, and choices were either a two week December trip somewhere (but eat into my 2023 leave quota) or a short trip somewhere near-ish. Since I decided to give myself more time to redeem my dream suites flight so settled for a short trip instead, and for a change, decided to get family onboard. 

We haven’t had a family trip to somewhere not named Bangkok in ages - the last one was Melbourne in 2008 for the sister’s graduation (and our 世纪大和解 lol) and I do think chances are slim going forward, so now’s a good time. And Taiwan is somewhere my mum said she missed which is kinda rare so yep. Wanted Deepavali weekend initially but the sister is also going for a company retreat that week so we moved it a couple of weeks early (coz a couple of weeks later would mean school holidays and exuberant ticket prices, and maybe too cold). 

RB doesn’t fly to Taipei daily so the flight schedule meant that the family booked only a 4 night trip from Sunday to Thursday - mum wasn’t keen on anything longer anyways coz she was always paranoid about people robbing an empty house. But to me - I thought it was a complete waste to not take an extra Friday off so I duly extend my trip and the plus side is of course I get a few days of solo trip which I can never complain about. Plan was to meet them in Taipei so I settled tickets on my own, and flew Starlux for the first time - which was awesome. 

Trip details to follow but in short - I enjoyed this trip, very much! Won’t lie, I headed into the trip feeling a bit tentative. Maybe I overthink but I thought some argument may come out of it, parents may not enjoy it, maybe someone will fall sick or something but all’s good in the end. There’s no language barrier, we pretty much Uber-ed everywhere because I really don’t expect dad to be able to walk much or long, so I also kept our itinerary to a minimum, like about 2 places each day. It was a slow pace (which I found that I really enjoyed!) but even then I think he hit his limit and was sort of glad when the trip ended. Everybody ate well, hotel room was comfortable, and no arguments though we bickered as usual. 

Then the solo trip portion - 8 days turned out to be just enough for the slow pace I had throughout. I had plenty of time to chill at cafes, process thoughts, people watch, detour, eat (a lot), drink (a lot of) BBT, revisit old haunts, explore new places and so on - although I think there are still a couple of reads that I didn’t manage to finish. It did help that I got approval for the CMM paper that I was tabling on the Friday before the trip, without queries even, so there really wasn’t any work related worries throughout the trip.  

So I came home refreshed (a colleague I met the next day at work said I was practically glowing and asked me if I met the love of my life lol). But travel season for this year has wrapped up and I guess I’ll just enjoy the next couple of traditionally chill months, hopefully. Though even as I typed this, SQ ran a massive sale and I got started on my bookings for next year…lol. 

Till the next one!