Drinking tea in Taipei

And maintaining long-distance friendships

27 Jun 2025 — 2 min read

Taiwan has always been on my “someday” list in the vague way that many places are, but I recently prioritized it because my friend Bessie moved to Taipei.

She was salty when I didn't tack a visit onto last year’s Japan trip, so I was pretty sure she would block my number if I did that two years in a row.

Our IG exchange last year, basically:

Me: *Uploading stories from Okinawa*

Her: are you fucking kidding me I can practically see you from here

Going to Taipei was not exactly a hardship, though. Especially when I learned two other friends would be there around the same time.

Their dates were less flexible than mine, so I agreed to move up my trip, even though it meant an extra flight back to Japan.

And it was worth it!

Max and I have been friends for ten years now, but we’ve only met six or seven times. We spent half of those years working together remotely, and now fill the gaps with near-daily Snapchats and an annual Zoom catch-up.

It works, even if it’s not what I thought long-lasting friendships would look like as an adult. And isn’t that a moving target?

I used to think things would “settle” at some point in adulthood. Like, doesn’t everyone eventually buy a house and have kids and more or less keep the same friends for the rest of their lives?

Turns out, no.

You don’t always get to know the minutia of your friends’ daily lives, or even talk to them regularly, much less see them in person. (Especially when most of them live in other countries.)

You can’t set a cadence for voice notes, Zoom calls, or IRL meetups and call it a day. You have to take it a season of life at a time.

And, occasionally, you have to take the slightly inconvenient flight because it means spending two full days catching up with friends that you probably won’t get to see for another two years.