Hello from downtown Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

I had a surprisingly good flight. We had a strong tailwind and calm weather and made it in eleven hours. I even managed to sleep for a good five of them.

I'll quickly pick up from where I left off in Taipei. The lower levels of the airport consisted of nothing but the odd currency exchange and identical shops selling duty-free alcohol and tobacco, but I eventually found my way to the security gates. I went to a little currency booth and handed over $50 Australian, and was given a thousand-dollar note with Sun Yat-Sen on it and a handful of smaller notes and coins, I went to a noodle bar and ordered a random item off the menu, which turned out to be a beef noodle soup (extremely spicy, but I think it knocked out my cold). I tried to cool down by buying a small ice-cream, which turned out to have the consistency of concrete. At least language wasn't much of an issue - the place seemed practically bilingual. I even heard Chinese-speakers switching from Chinese to English and back again.

That said, the Taoyuan Airport does have free Internet terminals and water fountains, both of which redeemed the Nationalist Chinese in my eyes for confiscating my toothpaste and not feeding me enough on the flight. About half of the Chinese people where wearing surgical masks to guard against a Swine Flu outbreak, which did creep me out a little, though.

The outgoing flight was packed. I'm surprised that there are that many people who wanted to fly from Taipei to Vancouver in the middle of the night. They seemed to include half the population of the Punjab, plus some Taiwanese, Canadians, and Taiwanese-Canadians.

As it turns out I must have been off my head when I said we were flying backwards through the sunset. Outside my own hemisphere I get north and south confused easily, and so also east and west. Perhaps it says something about how the human mind maintains its sense of direction. What happened was I got a really abbreviated May 29th the second time through.

I was grilled by immigration, but managed to find the right bus and check into the right hostel. I've got no jetlag apparently, but I can't wait to get some peace and quiet. Being in dormitory-style hostel the Middle of Vancouver next to a night club on a Friday night probably isn't ideal. But everything has gone according to plan so far.