It's been 15 years.

About 15 years ago late night stopovers in Taipei were normal. The once a year trip home usually included a plane change in Taiwan and such stops usually coincided with fairly inconvenient times. Usually it was a 5am arrival from the US. Nothing was open, the airport was empty, and I am fairly certain my sister and I were not wonderful traveling companions so early in the morning for my parents (and usually just my mum). The trip from America back to Indonesia at the end of every summer usually started in Los Angeles. My sister and I, and likely many other expat families doing the same thing, slept on luggage, sat on carts and waited in sunny CA to check in our two bags each, 80 pounds a piece (oh how times have changed....hoarding Americans can no longer travel like snails with everything we own in tow). After checking in, and eating one last meal of American fat and grease (I seem to remember Pizza Hut personal pan pizzas having a special place in my heart) we were off to drape ourselves over chairs and sometimes sleep on the floor until our plane left for Taipei at the convenient hour of one or two am. Sometimes the plane took off an hour later than planned because the tailwinds were so favorable that we would have arrived in Taipei before the airport opened. I loved airplane rides back then. I was still small enough and Asia was still untrendy enough of a travel destination (again how times have changed) that rows of seats were often empty. I just spread myself across a couple of seats and I was good. Now I am taller, empty seats are a rarity, and as I'm a human rights lawyer without cash flow the airlines I fly on do NOT give passengers extra legroom. They charge you for that now. If you want economy class legroom in 2009, you now must pay extra for "super economy" tickets. The regular economy tickets should really be called "not for people over 5'10"" tickets.

15 years ago seems like a long time. There were times even farther back than that where a friend of mine and I built a fort in first class by hanging blankets from the overhead compartments and we pretended we were living on a desert island. Outraged as you may be that I partook in such an activity in first class, I offer two qualifications for making it less of a big deal. #1: It was a Garuda Indonesia flight on an ancient plane and there very well might not have been a single other person in first class besides my family and my friend, and #2: this was back in the day where there was still a "smoking section" on the plane portioned off by only a curtain (so smoke wafted underneath the curtain and into our section), so really my extra blanket hanging from above was shielding my small lungs from 15 hours of second-hand smoke. There was another time when I was older that another friend and I convinced a poor unassuming stewardess on Eva air that we were diabetic and therefore needed an extra piece of chocolate cake. Ha, we'd have needed a doctor after that cake if what we told her was true.

I still love flying. I love airports; there always seems to be positive and electric energy. Usually people are going to wonderful places or have come from somewhere that was a happiness-maker. And in the event that it's sad travel, in Asia that solved by buying your way through duty free --> retail therapy. Never have I seen so many luxury stores in airports or so many trollys filled with shopping bags than here in Asia (the two carry-on limit seems to be malleable if 9 of your extra carry-ons are Ferraga, Bvlgari, and Fendi bags).

15 years ago I'd lived in Indonesia for almost four years, I was an old pro at the around the world travel (or at least I thought so). Back then virtually no one I talked to in America knew what or where Indonesia was. For all they knew, Indonesia was in Africa. Times are different now; the world is becoming more aware of itself and technology has made it smaller. Global travel is common, if not required for business. I wonder what I would see if I came back for a late night stopover in Taipei in another 15 years...what memories would come back? What elements of the exciting plane travel I grew to love as a child would remain?