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Staffless transfer counter in Taipei

First short leg of the journey complete and I'm now sitting in Taipei airport at 5.25am wondering why I feel so awake but then remembering it is 8.25am back in Australia. So what travel wisdom can I impart from my ten hour flight from Sydney to Taipei.....

1) Flying at night is awesome and not from some crazy poetic reason about souring majestically through the night sky (I really have to slow up on the West Wing references). I have never left Sydney as late as I did last night (10pm) and I also have never slept well on a plane. This flight I got on, programmed some music and watched one episode of Glee and ate some "food" (more on that later) and then I slept fairly consistantly for the next five or so hours, woke up played some suduko, more sleep, eat more "food" and fell asleep again while watching Juno. I slept for around eight hours of the flight which is more than I sleep at home so flying at night gets a big tick from me.

2) Security checks are weird. At Sydney, I was randomly selected for an additional security check where they tested me and my carry on bags for explosives and then frisked me. The additional check was voluntary but all I could think was "voluntary? what does they do to you if you say 'no'?"

3) Beware of China Airlines if you are of Chinese appearance and do not speak Mandarin. I was sitting next to a guy and his two sons who would have been about 5 and 7. I heard them speaking when I got on and established that while the father was likely from Taiwan, the kids had Australian accents so had either been born there or lived there most of their lives. Despite the fact the plane was flying out of the Sydney, the default language of the cabin crew was Mandarin and they only switched to English for people not of Chinese appearance. These poor young boys were therefore only spoken to in Mandarin and it was very clear that while the elder one spoke some of the language, the younger one clearly spoke next to none of it. I kept thinking if this is so obvious to me why can't the cabin crew pick up on it when the kid isn't answering their questions and is instead staring blankly at his dad.

4) Someone had China Airlines has a thing for Leonardo di Caprio. There were six....that's right SIX ...films starring him on the entertainment options. Which was a pretty massive chunk, considering there were only about 25 films on offer in total. Unfortunately for me, Gilbert Grape which I vaguely felt like watching wasn't one of them nor was Romeo and Juliet. I didn't see anyone doing it but I think there is something profoundly wrong with anyone who wants to combine the pain of air travel with the torture of Titanic....

5) URG most digusting plane food EVER! I'll begrudgingly admit that my mother was right. I should have confirmed things with the airline before leaving. Somehow me being a vego got lost in their computer system....which meant I was asked if I wanted chicken or fish and when I told them that clealy there'd been an error and I didn't eat either I got vegan food. Now vegan food when prepared well can be tasty but vegan airplane food is like a weird hell combo of badness. Weird smells, wacky textures, dryness, and the meanness of getting a super dry museli bar when everyone else had Tim Tams....urggg! I complained and got a Tim Tam at least but I was starving so had to eat some of the vegan hell food and now don't feel that good.

Anyhow that's all from me for now....Next stop London....

I visit dead people or why to visit Bournemouth in the winter

So I've decided that the week of All Souls Day and Día de los Muertos is the perfect week for my first travel related blog. Why you may ask, well it's because one of the places I like to visit on my travels is cemeteries. Now this may make you think that I'm some kind of closet goth or just bizarrely death obsessed. I may own more than one Nick Cave album, like vampire tales that don't involve glitter paint and the occasional bit of B grade horror, own many a black t-shirt and black nail polish, and be writing a thesis on a novel about the death of the human race. However those who know me know that a closet goth I am not- My Nick Cave albums are matched by Polyphonic Spree albums, my vampires and B Grade horror are matched with 80s teen comedies and the occasional classic romance, my black t-shirt have crazy designs on them and I also own pink nail polish (the thesis I can't defend but everyone needs some death focus on occasion).

So why the cemeteries? Well in another life with a different PhD thesis, I'd be a social historian and I think that the way people bury their dead tells us a lot about how they live their lives. I recently read a fascinating history of London called Necropolis: London and its Dead and it was compelling to see the plans for how to house the dead of a growing metropolis and the people enacting these plans. There were tales of graves diggers, plague pits, the recycling of burial plots, crazy ploys to solve the lack of burial space and people, like Mrs Isabella Holmes, who fought for the beautification of London's cemeteries. It's totally worth the read and totally reinforced my plans to see many a cemetery on my upcoming trip overseas.

You'll notice I use the word cemetery not graveyard. As the minister at my church reminds us at every event held in the church's cemetery, cemetery (which came into common use in the late 12th or early 13th century- yes I did my research- thank you dictionary.com) comes from the Greek word koimētḗrion which means resting place. I think that whatever your religious belief there is something beautifully poetic about the notion of a resting place for the dead. Graveyard, which was coined in the 18th century, means pretty much what you think it means- a yard full of dead things- and there is little poetry there.

Cemeteries tell you how people thought about death and what religions people followed and what group/military affiliations people held. From cemeteries you can also infer how people thought about the elderly, the sick, the outsider and children. You can see whether they feared death or embraced it as part of life and see the amount of respect they have for their dead or alternatively the amount of fear they have of the perceived ghosts of their dead. They can be beautiful monuments to the lives of people from hundreds of years ago and can tell stories of great pathos and great love. The same goes for the cemeteries that contain no dead- military cemeteries to the soldiers who died in foreign wars tells you about the place and concept of war, and monuments such as the small one in Thames Embankment Garden in the London which is devoted to the "fallen" women who took their lives in London's rivers in the late 19th century tell you about the romanticism that people can associate with tragedy. Pausing at the graves of those you admire can allow you to catch a moment and remember their contribution to the world- this allowed a brief pause of reflection in an otherwise miserable winter trip I once took to Bournemouth as I stood at the grave of Mary Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft. Even looking down as you pass a cemetery can unveil hidden historical treasures- the photo that comes with this blog is of a footpath made of headstones in the town of Chester on the English side of the northern end of the English/Welsh border, during the Victorian era people pulled up the headstones because they thought them morbid and instead of wasting the stone used it to make a cheerful path- you can make your own call on the spooky vibe that comes from walking on headstones but personally I think the path is more morbid than the cemetery must have been.

I don't advocate the constant memorialising of our dead to the point of near ancestor worship but visiting a cemetery, even one that contains no people you know or know of, can be a window into another time, and it can allow for a brief reflection both on the shortness of our lives in this world and where we think that shortness ends. So do yourself a favour when you next fare out into the big bad world, stop by a cemetery and pause a moment in thought.