The flight from Manila to Taipei was uneventful. I flew due north, dodging a couple of volcanoes, then across the straight between Taipei and the Philippines. Even though it was a medium long hop, I was seldom beyond sight of land, with small islands dotting the sea between the two islands. Taipei is all the way to the north of Taiwan and is very much a modern city.
Taiwan was a sleepy little fishing island until Mao threw out Chiang Kai Shek and his followers. By the way, just in case you think Mao threw out the democrats to install the Communist dictatorship, nope, he threw out a pro-western dictatorship to install a pro-Russian dictatorship. Had Mao been pro-western dictator throwing out a pro-Russian dictator he would have been an all right guy. And don't think the Russians liked him because he was a commie rat bastard working for the proletariat. Nope, they hated him. The Russian commies and the Chinese commies have had little wars along their border numerous times in the last fifty years. They just never talked about it to the west. Best of friends as their tanks duked in out over a river bank. Such is the world in real politic.
As soon as I landed and checked into my hotel, I called my bank at a special 24 hour number they had. Yes, someone else tried to use the old password and wire money the next day. They stopped the transaction. I thanked them. I looked at the rest of my itinerary, Japan, then back onto US soil. I wondered if I might have to land in Russia. I would be flying next to Russia for a long period and an emergency was always possible. I had already found that out. I set up another one time password, just in case. I instructed the bank they should only use it once and only to wire funds to Russia.
That done, I felt a whole lot more relaxed. I was still a bit pissed about the shakedown in the Philippines. It seemed like a lot of money. In truth, it was only five fill-ups of my gas tank on the plane. I was spending a hell of a lot more than that on gas alone to make this trip. Once I put it into perspective, I got a little less mad. But it still rankled and it does to this day. I sometimes wish I had strafed that bastard’s police station. If I had been able to know for sure I would have killed the rat bastard police chief, I think I would have strafed his fucking station.
I wandered around the city and found a nice hole in the wall Chinese restaurant. They didn’t speak a word of English and I didn’t speak a word of Chinese, if you can call those twittering sounds as words. Yeah, I know they are, but to my poor ears they don’t sound like words. I’m a barbarian I guess. Anyway, the girl understood it when I mimed, bring on the food, the best you have. She also got it when I ordered a beer.
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Copyright Rod O'Steele © 2008