Saturday night 8pm in Taipei! Our first Saturday on Our Big Family Adventure, and I’m already living the dream. I hear you saying…‘I bet Jennie and Dave have found a trustworthy babysitter and are enjoying an evening in a nice restaurant in town’. Nope, one load of washing spinning in a local laundrette and I’m sat in a 7-Eleven across the road waiting for the cycle to finish. So what better time to write the first proper entry to our blog.

After 6 weeks lodging with parents and siblings (thank you everyone!), Our Big Family Adventure started on Monday 23rd September. We decided 13.5 hours on a plane with children wasn’t sufficient, so we threw in a 4 hour drive from Macclesfield to London Gatwick. We packed a year of belongings into 3 cases and toys in the kids’ small rucksacks. After one unplanned change of clothes for Rory – it is proving a great time to potty train – we departed to Taipei on China Airlines. We’ve had more than a few raised eyebrows about our initial choice of airline, but after taking the flight we would definitely recommend.

Molly, Elsie and Rory were the only children on the flight. Fortunately there would have been no need for Japan Airlines style ‘where is the child sat’ functionality as all slept or entertained themselves throughout the flight. Long may this continue, a forlorn hope I imagine!

As we’re away for a year, throughout our trip we plan to stay in Airbnbs, hostels, homesteads etc. However, before we left my excuses had already kicked in. When Jennie said the kids hadn’t had a summer holiday, I quickly agreed and booked a 5 star hotel to ease the Price Family into our trip. After our final night in Taipei – unless Points can be used, or unless we find a good deal, or unless… – we will stick to our original plan (and budget).

In hindsight arrival into Taipei was smooth, however, at the time we felt under pressure to meet our airport transfer as there was a 10 minute window to meet the driver. The confirmation message received during our flight said ‘your car will be at stop 23 at 7:30pm and will wait 10 minutes, if you aren’t there at this time you will not get a refund’. However, it seems like folks who work in travel seem to know what they are doing, and 5 minutes before our pick up time we were outside, having collected our luggage, picked up a local unlimited data SIM card (which is already proving invaluable for Google Maps, not the Sport headlines (honestly Jen)) and done the typical pit stop with 3 children.

We’ve checked in to a pretty standard hotel (Caesar Park Hotel Banqiao) tailored for the business customer with a couple of nods to kids. After a few nights, the biggest observations of being in the hotel have been:

1. I’m saying the following more often than even before…’not so loud [Rory]’, ‘no, please don’t touch that’, ‘Rory stop using the water spray up your bottom in the toilet when you’ve done a wee’. Ok, the last one is new to Asia, but I’ve got a feeling we’re going to be repeating it a lot.
2. Our favourite film is Lost In Translation, similar to Bill Murray’s experience in Tokyo, the shower in our bathroom was made for Elsie, not Jennie and me who are both 170cm+.
3. Conversation between Jennie and me hasn’t greatly increased yet. We’ve spent 4 nights in a room with 2 double beds. The 3 kids top-n-tailing, and Jennie and me, in the dark, quietly speaking (that’s not a euphemism) trying not wake the kids! 

I’ll share more after we’ve completed our time in Taipei. So far, Taipei has been a fascinating and enjoyable introduction to the Asia leg of our trip. The weather has been mixed – says someone who spent half their life living near Manchester. We were lulled into a false sense of security on the first day with picture postcard blue skies, but since then it’s been torrential rain from a passing typhoon…so much rain they even closed a waterfall today! Hopefully tomorrow will brighten up, because first we will still need to tick off Taipei 101 and Elephant Mountain, and second there is already a degree of trepidation about hiring a rental car and driving around Taipei…adding tropical storms to the mix increases the anxiety. More Taiwan stories to follow.