The meeting in Taiwan started on Monday and most people traveled on that day but for those of us from Cambodia, it was necessary to travel on Sunday in order to arrive before the meeting started. Here is how Sunday developed:
On the way to the 10:00 AM mass at St. Joseph Church, I saw this big formal ceremony in the park outside Wat Botum. It looked like a cremation of some high-ranking person but I did not hear of a death of a prominent person.
From the mass I hurried home, picked up my suitcase, and then Keat Sokly, our DDP co-director, drove me to the airport. He is now studying in Hong Kong and just arrived back in Hong Kong last night for a brief visit, so this was the only time we had to meet. At 2:15 PM I flew Vietnam Airlines to Ho Chi Minh City. This is a view of the waterways of southern Vietnam as we approached the former Saigon.
This is Ho Chi Minh City as we made our final approach into the airport. It is a large, bustling, modern city, much different from Phnom Penh.
Arriving in Taipei, there was a very long line waiting to go through passport control. Probably a good part of the crowd was due to two Chinese holidays on October 1 (Chinese National Day) and October 6 (the Mid Autumn Festival) when many people are traveling. It took me 41 minutes to get through immigration, the longest I have ever had to wait.
From Ho Chi Minh City, it was another 3:45 hours flight to Taipei. The meeting hotel was fully booked for today and we could not arrive there a day early, so we went to the Maryknoll house in Taipei, a $37 taxi ride away. This is the entrance to the Maryknoll center there.