Taiwan (1/2)

The first part of our trip, May 23rd-May 26th, were spent with Szu-Hua and her family at the beach in an area called Kenting in Pingtung County, which is located in the very Southern tip of Taiwan.  May 21st-22nd were a complete blur.  Suffice it to say we arrived to Szu-Hua's house 28 hours after leaving ours, and 13 hours in the future due to time changes.  Travelling for that long with a 2-year-old is exactly what it sounds like.
On May 23rd, the seven of us woke up to take a high speed train from Taipei to Kenting and stayed at Caesar Park, which is the fanciest hotel George or I have ever been to.  Our luxurious room had a private backyard with a spacious outdoor jacuzzi, and the back door opened to a beautiful swimming area.  The lush gardens that surrounded the grounds were abundant with fragrant flowers called plumeria, which made the whole place look and smell like a paradise.  Although we were still fighting jetlag, we indulged in an extravagant buffet dinner, which boasted a very large variety of dishes including all you can eat sashimi.  Pregnant women are not supposed to eat sashimi due to the possible mercury content, which just proves that some rules meant to be broken.  After the sun set, George, Drakeson and I enjoyed a night swim in the rain before soaking in the backyard jacuzzi and crashing for a very comfortable night of sleep.
We woke up the next morning to explore the gorgeous fragrant courtyards and take another swim.  Breakfast was just as extravagant as dinner had been, and we spent the rest of the morning in the lowest floor of the hotel, which had a large playroom for children and a variety of arcade games.  We walked across the street to the beach until a van arrived to take us from Caesar Park to the Yoho Beach Resort.  Coming from Caesar Park, I assumed Yoho wouldn't be nearly as impressive, but I was wrong.  It doesn't have a "pillow mist spray" to ensure a more comfortable night of sleep, but it is much more of an amusement park.  We explored the play areas, visited the beach, and swam in the kid's pool that afternoon.  The kid's pool is really an enormous splash pad with two large slides, a giant tipping bucket of water, and a water path that winds through a waterfall and a volleyball play area.  Again, it was raining, but life wasn't giving us any lemons.  Dinner was just as ridiculous as the meals offered in Caesar Park.  All you can eat sashimi again.

Caesar Park Pool

Caesar Park Pool

Caesar Park Courtyard

Caesar Park Courtyard

Caesar Park Backyard

 Drakeson & Hsin-Cheng at Caesar Park

Caesar Park Beach

 Yu-Cheng, Szu-Hua, & Lan at Caesar Park Beach

George, Ching-Lung, & Hsin-Cheng at Caesar Park Beach

Ching-Lung and Yu-Cheng at Caesar Park Beach

Yoho Beach Resort Waterfall

Yoho Beach Resort Kid's Pool 

Yoho Beach Resort Koi Pond 

Yoho Beach Resort

We woke up at 5:30 on May 25th to a very dramatic thunderstorm.  The water accumulating in the back balcony of the Yoho Resort rose above the door seal, but luckily, it didn't flood through.  We had another very large breakfast before exploring a different swimming area.  This location had two waterslides, a small lazy river loop, three covered pools, a separate diving pool, and an indoor spa park.  In the afternoon, we took a short shuttle bus ride to the National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium, which was especially exciting for Drakeson and Hsin-Cheng.  The bigger aquarium sections shared a shipwreck theme in large underwater sculptures, and in addition to stingrays, small sharks, and enormous groupers, two beautiful beluga whales ended the exhibit.  When we arrived back to the hotel, we were treated to an afternoon tea with six plates of assorted cakes.  It would have been plenty for dinner, but after an hour, we went to a "semi-buffet."  In this set up, main dishes are ordered, and a totally regular buffet is offered on the side.  There were salads, soups, fruits, desserts, and drinks, in addition to a variety of hot and cold prepared dishes like oysters, shrimp, fried noodles, and steamed buns.  By this time I felt very much like a force fed duck, but in this case, it was entirely my own fault.
The morning of May 26th marked the end of our beach vacation.  Everybody took one last swim in the lazy river pools before heading back to Taipei.  George and I made a last effort attempt to take Drakeson on the highest slide, even though he doesn't meet the height requirement.  Although the lifeguard was out of sight, he had a monitor, and managed to stop us before we reached the top of the stairs.  Oh, well.  Drakeson didn't miss too much excitement; it's actually a much gentler ride than the two from the kid's pool.

Yoho Beach Resort Pools

National Aquarium

Beluga Whale at the National Aquarium

Drakeson & Hsin-Cheng at the National Aquarium

National Aquarium

 Szu-Hua, Yu-Cheng, Ching-Lung, Hsin-Cheng, George, & Drakeson at the National Aquarium

Afternoon Tea & Cakes at Yoho Beach Resort

Yoho Beach Resort

 Drakeson & Hsin-Cheng at Yoho Beach Resort Pools

Hsin-Cheng & George at Yoho Beach Resort Pools

Puzzles on the Train

Nightmare Prologue

Taiwan Part II

Nightmare Epilogue

Nightmare Prologue: The Passport

This is the story of my passport.  It's not a very nice story, and it's not even entertaining.

On March 25th, we went to the courthouse with all my papers.  For whatever reason, they refused to process the application and insisted that we mail everything into the National Passport Center in New Hampshire, which we did that afternoon.  When we arrived home, to our horror, we realized that the second of two pages documenting my legal name change didn't make it into the envelope.  We called to find out how to send the missing page, and were told to wait for a letter with specific instructions.  Until the letter came, there was nothing we could do.  It took a month for the letter to arrive, and of course we sent the final paper immediately.  It was April 27th.

Two weeks came and went, and the situation became nerve wracking.  On May 12th, I called and paid $74.85 to expedite the process and cover overnight shipping.  During this process, I included our flight information, and explained that we needed the passport by the 20th.  By May 17th, I was calling the passport office several times a day.  Each time, I would go through a phone tree to wait on hold so that somebody could tell me that all my papers were there, my payment had come in, and there was simply nothing anybody was ever going to do about it.

I was also told a few times that due to my concern, I could make an appointment at the Houston Agency, which may or may not have any way of contacting the New Hampshire Agency.  It is 2015, and phones were invented in 1876.  In the case of a Houston appointment, I would have to fill out three separate applications because nobody knows which of the three would be appropriate.  One of these applications would claim a "missing passport," rendering the first useless.  I would also need to bring a passport photo, a birth certificate, a copy of my license, proof of travel, a check for $195, an application number, a confirmation number for making the appointment, and the name change documents that were sitting on some asshole's desk in my application.  Also, no matter which course of action I attempted, "nothing was guaranteed."  It was up to me to cancel all the effort of the previous application with little hope for Houston, which was a pretty dreary option.  I tried to schedule that appointment anyway, not having any idea of what else to do, and the first available appointment was on May 27th.

My pointless phone calls to the passport agency soon became an all consuming activity.  On the 19th, after going through this gruelling procedure yet again, I was connected with a supervisor who "sent a note" to the New Hampshire office with additional proof of travel.  Although it is impressive that some form of electronic messaging is available to these people, that attempt did absolutely nothing.  I called once more the night before we needed my passport at 21:30 Eastern Time, half an hour before the office closed.  As usual, all my papers were there, my payment had come in, and there was simply nothing anybody was ever going to do about it.  Overnight shipping won't get a package from New Hampshire to Texas on the same day.  We were doomed.

Due to sheer panic and stress, I called my piano professor, Dr. Betty Mallard, and told her that I wouldn't be able to make our lesson on the 20th.  She told the story to her husband, Dr. Harry Mallard, who thought it would be a good idea for us to look up our congress representative and ask for help.  It was such a long shot on such short notice, but George and I had nowhere else to turn.  Strangely enough, George happens to be a good friend of an Austin congressman's son-in-law, so we asked them for help very late in the evening of the 19th.  We were told to sign a release of information form, fax it to a person who works for the congressman, write the story up in an email, and hope for the best.  We did.  

The first thing in the morning of the 20th, we called the person who works for the congressman.  She had already made a few phone calls, and the New Hampshire office had told her that they "Had finished the passport, but the mail hadn't picked it up."  I can only assume that after hanging up the phone, New Hampshire actually got my passport into the system to cover themselves.  Now that my passport had been completed, we could get it printed in Houston with a special "congressional appointment."  We were in the car by 9:00, at the building by 12:00, and the passport was in our hands by 15:00.  We were home by 18:00 to start packing.  It had taken a nine hour emergency trip and an Act of Congress, but we had my passport.  Thank goodness for the Mallards.  Thank goodness that the congressman's office was so willing to help us out.  We couldn't believe it.  In Houston, we were informed that the New Hampshire office had been told to hold the first passport, which of course wasn't a problem, since they had never put it in the mail in the first place.

Taiwan Part I

Taiwan Part II

Nightmare Epilogue