The Tubes of Foubs

Septoplasty post-surgery

Hey everyone,

So, as you may have seen, I had a septoplasty on Wednesday, hence that weird picture of a white mustache under my nose. The surgery itself was successful! The days since have been interesting… here’s a take on what happens after the surgery, if anybody I know ever considers doing the same in the future.

WARNING: If you find blood and mucus gross subjects, STOP READING! You have been warned.

For the record, I am now on day 3/4 post-surgery (not sure whether to include day of surgery). 

Feeling a lot better than the first day. First day’s sleep was only manageable with painkillers. I wouldn’t say I ever felt any sort of sharp pain, but rather it felt like I had been punched in the face repeatedly and then had to sleep after the pummeling (throbbing pain). I can’t think of any other analogy other than being punched in the face repeatedly, so I apologize if you’ve never felt that and therefore cannot relate. You can probably imagine how that’d feel.

My nose was bleeding a lot and I kept spitting out hunks of saliva with blood. All perfectly normal — your nose should be draining fluids into your mouth to some extent the first day, and it won’t be completely cauterized the first night.

The next day I got the “packing” out of my nose. The “packing” is an assortment of cauterizing agents / pads that are meant to soak in blood and mucus while the nose is healing for that first day. Anyway, what a fucking relief. At this point the pain basically vanished, and for a couple of hours I was like “Holy shit I can breathe”.

I fell asleep as soon as I got home. I still had to wear a white gauze under my nose, so that was awkward, but falling asleep without an issue was a really positive sign. 

Anyway, I think falling asleep may have been a mistake, because after that I woke up and my nose was crusted like crazy. Inside and out. Bloody crusts, too. What’s worse is that I’m not supposed to try to take out anything out there with a kleenex or anything, only a moisturizing nasal spray (saline spray). For a while this was fine, and seemed to work okay. That night I slept fine and all but I’ll get to why this part kind of sucks.

That night I slept pretty decently. Got about 6 or 7 hours of sleep in with no interruptions. I woke up with a stream of dry blood on my face — I looked like I had murdered somebody in my slumber. Epic.

Washed that off. Okay, feel better about that.

Days go by, and all I’m doing is spraying and falling asleep every now and then. Kind of nice to get a “break”, though not really much of one. I don’t think I’m spraying often enough though because the congestion is just getting worse, nose is getting crustier and crustier. Annoying as hell.

Next night (i.e.: last night) I could barely sleep. I felt like I couldn’t breathe at all. I learned I’m not as much of a mouth breather as I thought I was — was fucking hard to fall asleep without a nose from which to breathe. Constantly thought my face would be the next Dexter crime scene.

I must say, though, that my doctor has been extremely patient. I’ve called him twice now at times that I probably shouldn’t have (I have his personal number because he made the unfortunate mistake of calling me on his personal phone). 11 pm the first day and then 7 am this morning. I feel worse about the 7 am rather than the 11. I’ve gotta make it up to him somehow.

Anyway, he gave me a few suggestions for how to deal with it. I got a Neti Pot / Nasal Sinus Rinse bottle thing. What a quirky thing to have. Used tap water. An hour later my roommate told me he read an article last week about how some brain-eating bacteria killed two people in Louisiana after they used tap water in their Neti Pot. This was in Louisiana. And apparently a ton of people use tap water. But still, great to hear that I could end up dead in 12 days because I used tap water. Go go paranoia!

Ah well, it probably won’t happen (I mean, people’ve been using it for years with tap water) and I’ll make sure to boil the water before I use the bottle. Hell, my dad uses a Neti Pot as far as I know and I’m sure he uses tap water. If he had a distiller I’d be surprised.

So, yeah, life’s grand right now. Oh, on top of that, I think I have some other problem now in a different spot that might end up needing surgery too. Hell yes! Go life. I have no idea why it happened. Going to give it some time as it’s not causing any major issues. I bet once I walk around again it should go away, but if not, looking at the likely problem I’ll be fine.

Lesson learned: Sure, life sucks right now, but it could be a helluva lot worse and it will very very likely get better soon.

Looking forward to Monday when I get the stents out (these keep the septum stable while it heals, or something along those lines). Doctor’s also going to clean my nose out, hopefully thoroughly.

Catch 22

Today I expressed my frustration with some friends about how I feel like either I always have to invite people to do anything with them, or I only really get invited if they see me physically in person, or if the invitation is strictly to the same group that that person knows (so, I would not get invited by a given person if there were people that I did not know). In the latter case, it makes me wonder if I would have ever heard about it had the physical encounter not happened.

But then, complaining about it makes people not want to send the invitation in the first place. I want to get invited more, but I don’t want to bring it up, but then not bringing it up doesn’t change the circumstances.

I realize by posting this I am committing the same act, and probably sound like I am complaining (I am frustrated, certainly).

I don’t like Catch 22s.

I also know it’s not *never*, it’s just rare. Or it might seem like they invited me, but in reality I prompted it.

How flipping annoying. Bleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeargh.

Septoplasty

Yelp

Looks like I may need to get a septoplasty. For the curious, that’s an operation to realign the septum of my nose.

For the longest time I can remember, I’ve been a mouth breather. I think I now know why — my septum is deviated so far left that there is barely an opening from which to breathe in or out of my left nostril.

Granted, I may also just have a severe case of chronic sinusitis that’s also impacting these cavities. However, that won’t change the fact that the septum is so far to the left. The doc said it’s one of the worst cases of deviated septum he’s ever seen.

That said, there are benefits to it. One, obviously, is that I’ll be able to breathe properly. Perhaps less gum issues.

Second, potentially, is that my voice will be less nasally. I know a lot of people have said it sounds kind of nasally. That might not be as much of a problem after the operation.

Not sure when it’ll be. Probably late June, if at all (still very likely)

Looking at all the complications and post-operative procedures, I’m a bit nervous. I don’t want to end up with meningitis!

Battlestar Galactica Finale

Finally finished watching Battlestar Galactica. Well, I stopped the very last episode about 15 minutes in, since I swear to god I thought they had met Avatar people at the end.

And seriously, for the second last episode to end on its own note and then 5 minutes into the last one Galen Tyrol does that and it’s all like “Oh, now everything’s okay!”. I originally jumped past the opening credits to the point where this had already all happened and I thought “What the frack?”. Had to rewind to realize the ridiculous shit that had just happened.

Glad I didn’t watch the rest of the episode, perhaps that would have ruined the entire show (as people have told me it did for them)

Taiwan Finale - The last day and final thoughts

Our last day was noticeably more laid back than any of the other days in Taipei. I think we were just exhausted by all of the travelling we had done in 4 days, and wanted to be somewhat rested for the plane ride back (that’s 8-9 forms of transportation in 6 days) to the west (even though the plane would be heading east, ironically though sensibly).

We had agreed that for the last day we would head over to Megan’s school and see where she works. Megan’s been working as an English teacher for a European school board established for teaching English in eastern Asian countries. All of the classes, minus Mandarin itself, are taught in English. The schoolchildren of Taiwan are all highly encouraged and pushed to learn English, and are often convinced by their parents to go speak to foreigners when around.

In fact, that reminds me of one of my MRT rides. When Jeff and I were heading back from Danshui to meet up with Evan and Megan, we happened to sit near a mother and her child, who I’d say was between 4-6 years old. As I sat there, the mother had told her son to come speak with me. I didn’t notice him at first as I was looking at the transit map, but when I looked forward I saw the kid standing there staring at me. I was surprised. “Hello!”, he muttered excitedly. Immediately I smiled — I was having my first experience of what Megan had been telling me before of having to help a kid learn his English. I played along happily. I started to ask him some basic questions, making sure to speak slowly. Pretty funny experience to see him walk over to his mother to get a translation of what I asked, only to walk on back to answer. Eventually he started to speak Mandarin (I guess when I told his mother I knew a very little bit she had assumed I knew as much as her kid, which was far from the truth) and I got lost. His mother started to ask me the questions in English and I’d answer back in English to the kid. It was a heartwarming experience to talk with them.

Detraction ending, we bussed (oh, there’s another form of transportation in 6 days — 10) over to Megan’s school’s neighborhood, which was up in some hills/mountains. Nice area. We went to a kung pao chicken restaurant that Megan very much enjoyed. I got beef noodles and stole some of her chicken. It was actually very good, and definitely one of the best kung pao chicken’s I’ve had. The beef noodles were alright but I regret not ordering the chicken.

Anywho, we went to a nearby park to hang out and look at the scenery. Nice place. I was pretty dead tired (as pictures will demonstrate) and wanted to get rid of the backpack I had been lugging around for Jeff (though I did put some stuff in it). We saw a flower clock and a lot of trees and water. That’s how excited I am about the park. It was nice, but whatever, I had seen so much already at this point it wasn’t really a highlight. Sorry park.

Megan’s classes ended not long after, so we went back to see the inside of her school. It looked like a pretty standard school, though the class sizes were much smaller (a very good thing, I think). The discussion topic had somehow veered towards how to say the word “corollary” — Americans say it with more “e” sounds than the British saying. They thought I was screwed up. We pulled out Oxford dictionaries, both American and British. Each pronunciation was corroborated equally, though of course my American friends state theirs is more “correct”. Pffft. It’s “zed”, too, by the way, not “zee”.

Anywho… we walked around the school. I met another teacher, Monsieur Beaupre, who hailed from Ottawa! We didn’t talk long. Kind of awkward. He also had an apparently more notable Canadian accent than I did. Pffft, I say! Before heading out, we saw the senior students’ art projects. Cool stuff! Some really nice pieces in there.

That previous paragraph is sort of rushed because I don’t have a lot more to say. I’ve been typing a lot these past few days. Sorry.

Our last dinner of the trip had us arriving at a place called Sweet Dynasty. Again, we ordered a ton of food and had a lot of puddings for dessert. All very tasty.

After dinner we went around the city. We went to another bakery and got some baked goods for our trip back to the States the next morning (Evan, likewise, was joining us on the trip back as he had a wedding to which to attend as well as some interviews — I learned that I need to make a good friend in the airline business, as he flew business for as cheap a price as our tickets and got to go home in luxury). The purchase was also an attempt to rid ourselves of Taiwanese money, which was more or less a success.

Eventually, we headed over to Sun Yat Sen Memorial again to get a nice view of Taipei 101 at night. The lit city views were good. We took some pictures of the group as our final set of photos, before heading back. We bid goodbye to Dylan (who then offered his services if I ever find myself in New Zealand — I really need to take advantage of that!) and trained back to Evan and Megan’s. After one final trip around the Shilin Night Market (first and last place we visited), we went to bed.

That is essentially the end of the trip. We cabbed to the airport and flew back home. The only other notable experience was when we arrived at Narita and tried to find a WiFi location. We saw signs for them, but couldn’t figure out how to get proper access. Seeing as how I just came from Taiwan where I had to communicate to foreigners, I felt way more at ease to just ask people using it how to do it. People are generally super helpful, I found — I asked one person and then another person joined in independently to help. Pretty cool stuff.

So, that’s the end of the story. I really enjoyed my trip to Taiwan, as I hope you can see from my writing. It was definitely an eye opener, both in culture and in changing my perspective of the world and life. I really miss being in Taiwan, to be honest. I miss the vivacity of the city, the weather, the way food is handled (stands and night markets being prevalent) and the cuisine itself, the eagerness of the natives to help and learn, the exploration and appreciation of a very foreign land, the prominent use of public transportation, the absurdities, the nature, and a whole slew of other things. Most importantly, I miss the adventure of the trip and the people I met. I met some pretty fantastic people on the trip, both native and non-native.

I arrived back in Seattle and immediately felt awkward. It’s pretty sprawled here, and people actually seem more distant — perhaps that’s because of sprawl. I walked outside to a dreary grey sky and a bit of drizzle. I also remember arriving and wondering where the light rail system was, but then remembered the North American reliance on personal transportation.

I remember going to a coffee shop later on, and it felt so odd. A whole building dedicated just to coffee rather than just a tiny stand operated by a family or 1 person. I remember feeling weird spending 3 bucks on an americano. I also remember seeing other people entering the coffee shop and their attitudes just felt so much less eager or excited, and actually a bit pompous (I’m being pompous about talking about other people’s pompousness, I realize). Travel is both odd and cool that way, I guess. 

It also made me admire some things of Seattle I didn’t see before. I actually really like that people make an effort to stay outside when it’s sunny, and people walk everywhere (due to bad public transportation, I guess) rather than use scooters. I also very much appreciated the ease it was to communicate (which equally made me appreciate just how much easier it was to appreciate how easy it is to communicate with people in general despite language differences). It also made me appreciate my sense of trying to be nice to people, since it seems to resonate well everywhere, and that I’m really not that bad at making people smile (at least, I think so).

I think I’ll end this off by how I felt it’s helped or not helped. As I stated, my therapist said the trip would help me out far more than therapy ever could. I mostly agree with this statement. I definitely feel far more privileged living here, having a good job that would even let me experience this trip, and having a nice place to live. I don’t feel like what I construe as failures are really all that bad — I could be living on a lot less than I do now as demonstrated by many people in Taiwan, but I don’t and shouldn’t take it for granted. That’s not to say I am going to live on less, but rather that I appreciate what I do have even more, and that if circumstances have me having to go back home to Ottawa for whatever reason that it’s not a big deal. Things happen, but things could be a heck of a lot harder than that. So, I definitely feel like a burden has been lifted.

However, as soon as I arrived in Seattle, the immediacy of my circumstances returned almost immediately, and a bit of stress and angst returned. Not as bad, though, since it made me want to focus again, like days of yore.

Though, admittedly, it also made me want to go travel somewhere else, too :)

Taiwan Part 7 - Kiaoshung, Beer, and The Road Home

The ferry ride back to Taidong was notably the smoothest ride of all three boat rides. We acquired a very nice group seating area with a table for us to use as both an eating platform as well as a card playing area. Miniature garbage bags were far more conveniently locatable, as they were hung from above for each row of the boat (feel free to very easily guess what purpose these served).

It was the final leg of bracing ourselves and gorging on snack foods. We played more cards. We continued our streak. Not much more to be said, other than this ferry ride was as smooth as a baby’s behind. I don’t think anybody on the boat vomited, which was a very welcome surprise. Megan was the happiest I had ever seen her after a ferry ride.

Having prepped ourselves earlier by calling our trusted taxi driver from days prior, we arrived in Taidong and scuffled ourselves into a nice taxi van. He drove us to the train station, whereupon we found out the train Evan, Megan, Jeff, and I wanted to board was leaving in 2 minutes. I hurriedly paid for us and bid Jenny and Dylan adieu, the former as a final farewell (for now) while the latter we’d be seeing Tuesday for dinner. We rushed to the train and made it in the nick of time.

The train ride was a welcome break from transportation nerves, as we swiveled two chairs to form a nice communal seating area from which to converse. I won a game of hearts (I crushed them, seriously), followed by losing a game of hearts miserably (though, I did not come in last!). Eventually, I fell asleep. Mmmm, sleep.

I woke up shortly before we arrived in Kiaoshung. Kiaoshung is Taiwan’s second largest city, and has its own MRT system, along with being the southern most stop on the high speed rail. We would be experiencing that wonder later in the night, but first we were going to have dinner with Evan and Megan’s friend, Morgan, who’s studying to be a doctor. I never asked him if that meant he was going to stay in Taiwan to remain as a doctor, but I purport now that he likely is as I doubt his medical degree would be accepted in North America — a shame — so he will likely remain in a foreign land. Not really a problem, however, considering his amazing fluency in Mandarin. Apparently, locals become extremely surprised when either Evan or Morgan actually speak, much to their amusement.

We arrived at the Kiaoshung station. Upon arrival I noticed a “Coffee Bun” stand. My desire for one came immediately, and I purchased this unknown, potentially-caffeinated food item. It most certainly satiated by appetite for both food and caffeine.

Anyway, we find Morgan and head out of the train station. Palm trees laced the environs, much to my surprise then. In retrospect, it makes a lot of sense, since Kiaoshung is actually within the tropics and is close to the equator. Jeff took a bunch of photos as Jeff and I learned about Morgan’s history here in Taiwan. I am also drilled to repeat all the Mandarin I had learned (there are a few more sayings I didn’t provide earlier — “Gi Ro”, “Neyo Ro”, “Hun Hao”, “Hun Hao Ni Na”, “Hun Hao Chir”, “Hun Hao He”, being chicken, beef, I’m good, I’m good and you?, That food was delicious, and That drink was delicious, respectively — I’m probably forgetting some, but those are the other important ones, along with Pi-eh-jo (pronunciation), which is beer). Morgan pointed out I probably learned as much Mandarin as Megan had in two years. Proving grounds established, Megan displayed she knew more. Oh well, I still feel good by how much I have retained in 10 days.

We walked around for a little bit, noticing how flourished Kiaoshung appears. We arrived at the restaurant by which we’d be entertained for the night. I forget the name.

Anyway, once it opened (about 5 minutes later), we sat ourselves down on the patio — it was a fantastic, sunny day, by the way — and looked over the menu. Engrish was prevalent, as we delighted ourselves over sayings like “Sea urchin stabs the body”. I have, to this day, no idea how they couldn’t get a proper translation — they have more than enough bilingual speakers in Taiwan to properly translate that menu. Some of them, like the aforementioned, do not provide any inclination as to what the option actually is.

En tout cas, we also observed that they had a special today — 4 1L bottles of Asahi for 150NT. 17 large bottles of beer (we won a free one) and about 11 plates of delicious food (all for the price of about 400NT each, i.e.: 12 US dollars) is the feat we accomplished. We spoke of… I don’t remember, there was a lot of beer involved that night. It was funny stuff, I assure you, and it was definitely a good time with everybody being at least well buzzed. Good conversation with good friends over good food and drink. For what else could one ask? Also, the beer girl was really good looking and had a really cute face. Thumbs up.

For some reason, Jeff insisted we drink that crap deer liqueur, and without permission poured some into all of the men’s drinks. As a result of this deception, Jeff is no longer allowed to be near beer and crap liqueurs, since he is also the slowest drinker on the planet and therefore doesn’t actually experience the pain of drinking his potions of death. After having tasted this atrocity, I pulled the switcheroo on Megan when she least suspected. After a strange turn of events, somehow my drink ended up in Morgan’s hands, who had threw out his disgusting batch for a fresh batch of beer (and only beer). So it ended up that Megan and I had only beer while the other three had the weird concoctions. Megan and I high fived in victory over our luck. Good times.

Side note, I will admit today that the restaurant’s bathroom was a little odd — the male and female bathrooms were not distinctly separated, but rather you had to follow a sign to which side of the bathroom belonged to your gender. I told them all at the time I understood it, which I definitely did with no problem, but I will admit that it’s strange (I don’t remember if I agreed on its strangeness then). 

Anyway, we paid our large sums of money (hah!) at the cash (they didn’t accept cards — seriously?) and headed out. We got bubble tea (definitely what I drank most in Taiwan) before saying bye to Morgan and cabbing back to the train station.

After that, there wasn’t a whole lot more to note. The high speed rail ride took an hour and a half from Kiaoshung to Taipei, which is from one end of the island to the other. 300 km/h is pretty fast, folks. It was super smooth, and we all fell asleep at one point or another (though not all simultaneously). Very cool form of transportation. I wish North America would learn to build one of these in various areas, because they kick a lot of ass.

Also, count it: 7 forms of transportation since we left Taipei on Thursday. MRT (Subway), train, cab, bike, ferry, scooter, high speed rail. 8 if you count walking. Score.

We arrived back in Taipei, and very happily all collapsed in our respective beds / cot.

Taiwan Part 6 - The Case of the Lost Ticket. And Green Island (I already spoiled it)

Oh no, the weekend is ending!

So, we got to the ferry on Orchid Island to head over to Green Island, and I realized that I don’t have any of my ferry tickets. Furthermore, we couldn’t find the receipt for the tickets to prove that we had bought 6, so as to claim that I was the 6th passenger. I felt I should have noted my skin colour (meaning the chances that I live on the island are pretty slim considering its population size), that I knew very little Mandarin, and that I had to have a ticket to even get to Orchid Island, but I refrained knowing logic doesn’t work usually.

So, once we had found out that my tickets had vanished, we decided to try bargaining with the ferry people. Thankfully, the ticket dude at the ferry was nice enough to Jenny to let me on. Success! I don’t know what Jenny said, but it worked! (It’s magic)

The ferry ride to Green Island was straightforward and unexciting compared to our first ride. We played more cards, and Evan and I successfully continued our attempt at a world record losing streak in Euchre. Sigh.

I also forgot my towel on the ferry. Whoops. (That’s probably how I also lost my tickets — Me 0 Boat 2)

We arrive on Green Island to find an old woman with the strongest desire to sell I had ever met. She was trying to get us to rent her scooters for 300NT each. Jenny told her no (in Mandarin), while the rest of us laughed (in English). Then, the lady said “Okay, come to my office and we can discuss”. So, on the hope that this meant a bargain, we did. We got to her empire of scooters, just to be offered the same deal of 300NT. After time had been wasted by this crazy coot, we continued on, only to have the old woman stalk us — oh, maybe she’ll give us a lower offer?

“300NT!!!!”

Sigh.

She continued following us belching out offers and recommendations in Mandarin. Eventually, she pointed out a hostel to us and told us how nice it was. I felt like she probably, somehow, owned the hostel. I digress, however, since we ended up in that hostel. It turned out to be nice, prices were reasonable, and was situated fairly close to the ferry we’d have to catch at 11AM the next day. Fine, old lady 1 Us 1

We dumped our luggage and headed over to another scooter rental store whose owner was willing to provide us scooters for 150NT each for a day — perfect! (On a side note, Dylan really wanted to rub it in that old lady’s face that we had gotten scooters at 150NT, but we didn’t get a chance). Us 2 Scooter Coot 1. Game over!

We scooted over to the island’s lighthouse at lightning speed in order to get pictures of the water, lighthouse, and sunset combined. It was a very nice area altogether, and we get some really nice group photos. Afterwards, we headed over to a restaurant and had a seafood feast (and local deer) at a locally well-known restaurant. Very tasty, and I learned how to properly peel a whole shrimp! Learning is fun. The restaurant also had some fantastic fried octopus, better than the Danshui roasted octopus we had earlier in the week, so it earned top points! (Though the flying fish was ridiculously bony, I found)

Afterwards, we drove to an official hot springs resort to try out some natural hot springs and hot tubs. Note to everyone: If it’s night time, don’t drive on a scooter in a bathing suit; it’s not warm. Anyway, we arrived and found out that towels were not provided for free, and that in order to use the hot tubs we had to have swimming caps. We should probably have come to this conclusion before, as it was known among our group that public swimming pools and hot tubs in Taiwan require a swimming cap. Thankfully, we could still go use the natural hot springs on the beach without them, so we head inside without buying into this farce (they charged 3 bucks for rental towels — frack that!).

After people changed into proper water-lounging attire, we ran down to the beach and jumped into the hot springs. They weren’t very hot, more like lukewarm; we weren’t impressed, comparing them to the Wulai hot springs. Regardless, we stayed in the hot springs for a while, noting both the darkness inside the pool (I could barely see other people in the same hot spring) and the abundantly speckled night sky. I think this was the first time during the trip that I actually noticed more than 4 stars in the sky; Taipei and Taroko Gorge both were highly polluted by light (and on the Orchid Island we were just so busy that I forgot to look up). During this time, Megan keeps telling me how all of the other white folks are Canadian. I dismiss these as funny American jokes.

Eventually, the group decides the hot springs lack the luster and heat required to amuse us, so we took a chance by heading up to the hot tubs without swim caps. We jump into a hot tub where all of its current occupants are wearing swim caps. “We absolutely don’t stand out at all”, I thought, “we’re totally not super white and all of us have black hair” (Except Jenny).

After about 10 minutes, as expected, one of the resident guards (yes, guards) hobbles over to our pool to see how amused people are. He points directly to me and then points to his head. “Well, guess it’s over”, I thought to myself (again). I tell the rest of the group about it and decide, for the best, to get out. Only Evan agreed, as we headed out of the pool to dry off (in the cold) just outside of the hot tub.

This decision turned out to be wise for two reasons:

1. Neither of us had towels and required drying off, which we did by the time we left, and
2. We didn’t have the guard call in the troops on us

We chill out until the rest of the gang joins us. We didn’t get in trouble, oddly enough. We head on back after Jenny returns Evan’s shoes (she wanted bigger feet and wanted them for herself). I also realized that the white folk to whom Megan was referring were definitely Canadian based on how they were constantly saying “Oh really?” with very thick distinctly-Canadian drawls. I also very clearly came to this conclusion when one of them had mentioned Quebec City, noting to myself that only Canadians would ever really go to Quebec City and mention it outside of Canada. So, as logic dictates, I yell out at them that I was from Canada too. Found out they were all from Saskatchewan. Oddly enough, once I found that out, the conversation awkwardly ended — I don’t really know why — between me and my fellow citizens. Megan spoke with them about Taipei and found out what they were all doing, but I stopped. How strange.

Then we went back to the hostel and got some shuteye.

The next morning we all get up and get a decent breakfast for about 200NT each (for the record, that’s roughly 6 US dollars). I’ll note that I actually like Taiwanese omelets; they stuff in a decent amount of meat, and cut the omelet up into bite size pieces that can be lifted with chopsticks. I also like Taiwanese coffee, despite it being instant coffee with cream and sugar.

After eating, we scooted around the island leisurely, stopping along the way for photos. Green Island was notably more commercial and touristy than Lanyu / Orchid Island — evidenced by the existence of a 7-11 and Starbucks (I found out that the Taiwanese 7-11s and Starbucks are owned by the same person — rich man for sure). There were some nice sights, but I think Orchid had better ones. The most fun part of this island for me was in driving my scooter, to be honest, because I had enough practice at this point that I could drive at max speed comfortably and make pretty sharp turns at will. Speeding in daylight on a scooter on mostly untouched roads is rad (hello, 70s terms).

That was more or less the Green Island trip. We returned to the ferry. Again, we had to try to convince the ferry manager to let me on. At this ferry, there were notably far more people getting on (tourists generally only go visit Green Island, so there are a lot more people). It’s at this time that Jenny becomes my knight in shining armor as she strongly urged the ferry person to let me on. She spent about 15 minutes demanding this woman to let me on. Alas, we unfortunately paid 480NT in the end just to get me on. The positive note I took from this misfortune is that Jenny is an awesome little lady and I thanked her deeply for trying. I’d love to send Jenny a gift from Seattle (she’s never been to North America) and am taking suggestions of what I should send (or perhaps Maple Syrup from Canada?!)

That’s it for Green Island. Not as exciting, to be honest, as the rest of the trip. Still nice, but nothing eventful to note other than it was a nice stopover.

Next up: getting back to Taipei, and a large amount of beer at a low price. Sometimes mixed with young deer antler before ossification.

Taiwan Part 5 - Saturday and most of Sunday! With Orchid Island.

We all get up mostly on time, and head to… 7-11. We did so to prepare ourselves for what sounded like the most treacherous boat ride of our lives, and therefore equipped ourselves with salty foods, carbonated beverages, water, and a delicious hot dog. I should have got money at this point, but I didn’t. I will suffer in a future paragraph (explicit foreshadowing). 

We head to the ferry and wait for Jenny and Dylan (more specifically Jenny in this case as she was the one who got the tickets organized on Friday, but you know, we wanted Dylan too of course). I then realize as they are getting the tickets I have barely no cash, if any at all.

Thus begins the scramble for money. Evan and I run back to the 7-11 (we have 15 minutes), and it takes us about 7 minutes to get there. I am apparently not in good running shape, or perhaps the clothes I have on (jeans, a sweater) are not conducive to running, but either way I’m breathing heavily and sweating like a dog. Evan basically prancied his way there in comparison. It’s like comparing a gazelle to a gorilla. Woe is me.

We get there, and I try my card in the ATM. Doesn’t work, wtf? Okay, well, Evan to the rescue! He gets me 5K NT. (Turns out I was just being a noob and totally could have got money). Okay, money acquired! We run back. Frack.

Alright, we get back and… everybody’s already boarded except Megan. And my ticket is with them. More running! With luggage! Fuck yes!

We make it on time and Jenny has my tickets. She *gives them to me*. I put stars around this because I actually don’t know if I got them later on, and can’t seem to prove that she did give them to me. She very likely did, considering how many things I left behind during our island trip. Either way, this becomes a pinnacle event to the ventures back to Green Island and Taidong, which should be chronicled in its own miniseries of books and sold for millions. I’ll call it The Case of the Lost Taiwanese Tickets.

Anyway, we’re on the ferry that has been dreaded by Megan since Friday. Dylan, being resourceful as he is, actually has seasickness prevention pills. So, we all take one for fear of disruptive intestinal tracts and upheaval. The journey begins and… yeah, it’s pretty rocky. I’ve been on whale watching boats that were equally bad though so I turn out to be fine with it. Not so true for other passengers, as we could tell by the gurgling sounds I heard. Pleasant!

We kept ourselves distracted with snacks and carbonated beverages, and card games. Evan and I lost every Euchre game. Neither of us suck, but apparently we are not a good team. Hmph. We also play hearts, where I end up third. Seriously? Weird.

Time flies, and we arrive at Orchid Island. No upheavals! “Hooray!”, most of us exclaim, particularly Megan.

We get off the boat, and Jenny works her magic to get 4 scooters, a van for our luggage, and a guide back to our hostel. I had never driven a scooter but insisted I have my own — I am very happy I made this decision, as scooters are flippin’ sweet. At first it was a little awkward; my scooter didn’t like turning on easily and I was pretty shaky on it. Eventually I got it to go properly (and eventually I started speeding irresponsibly). We gas up, and then scoot our way to the other side of Orchid Island. The weather wasn’t particularly nice, yet we still got to see the island’s landscapes and coastlines clearly. Was really fun to drive through the little towns scattered around the island and seeing pigs, roosters, dogs, cats, and folks trotting along. We arrive at the hostel after a half an hour to an hour of scooting. Nice hostel! Really friendly people there, and for 100NT a person they’d make us dinner. Schwing! We totally take up on that offer — who in their right mind would reject local, home-cooked authentic Taiwanese food?

Once we put our stuff away, we were off! We scooted too and fro. The first spot was the weather station at the top of the island. During our scooting, Jeff fell off his bike after making a sharp turn. He seemed okay until we got to an intersection to stop and look at where to go. Upon walking towards us he just collapses. It was a total “Holy crap, shit just got real” moment. Within a few seconds he opens his eyes. He also humorously indicates he’s the only person who knows first aid. Yeah, not good!

It all turned out okay thankfully. We got him some water and bandaged up some parts. For a while we had him be passenger for a bit, particularly going up the hill to the weather station. The drive up for me was particularly fun considering it was the first day I had ever driven a scooter. I was totally up for the challenge (it looked pretty ridiculous, and it was). At the VERY END of the drive I drove into a barrier, thankfully very slowly and I didn’t get hurt at all. Bit of damage to the scooter but nothing noticeable. Probably the most fun drive I’ve ever done, and it makes me want to own a motorcycle.

We got to the top, and basically all I can say is “what a view!”. You could see the whole island from up there. We took a lot of pictures, and attempted jumping photos at Megan’s request. I think we ended up with something around 15 attempts at jumping shots before we got one of her jumping.

Again, I can’t really describe the view. It was pretty awe-inspiring. I’ll defer to Facebook photos here (when they become available). Either way, if you ever find yourself in Taiwan, I would recommend going to Orchid even just for this view.

Once we’re done here, we continue to scoot around the island, stopping and going for various picture opportunities. We saw a purple crab with green eyes and stopped for this crab for about 30 minutes as we watched it walk upside down along a cliff. Seriously, it was purple and had neon green eyes, and walked like a spider. Oh, and that cliff was pretty remarkable too.

Keep going, and we eventually stop at the 5 Holes of Heaven or something. Basically a cave with 5 enormous holes in it. Jeff, Evan and I decide to climb on top of it — whooooa man I want to climb more. The climbing alone was fun, even if it was simple. And I’m not too shabby at it apparently! We get on top where I have the best urination of my life — peeing while looking at enormous mountains and valleys is a pleasure one cannot describe effectively in a blog. We continue up, and apparently find out that wind is far stronger up above, which makes for some really good flight-boy pictures and equally amazing views of the coast. I hope Megan still has that shot of me as I peer down below from the top of the cave… goooood tiiiimes maaaan. 

Anyway, we finish with this and continue driving around on our scooters (at this point I am extremely addicted to my scooter and start speeding and trying to do sharper turns as if I was in a moto GP race or something— exhilarating when you have wind blowing in your face at 40 km/h).  We stop by an aboriginal town where we see a bunch of hand made canoes, very intricately detailed and flourished with black feathers, which were pretty neat to see. We meet with a native shopkeeper who sells handmade necklaces and knick-knacks. I buy one (250 NT — so, about 7 bucks), since I felt I wanted to get a memento of the trip and give it to my brother when I go back to Ottawa. It’s his birthday present from me, so again I refrain from saying what it is, but I think he’ll like it. When I post a picture of the scroll I’ll also post a picture of the necklace.

Eventually we have traveled the entire island. Really fascinating views all around, and very relaxing altogether, even spiritual in a sense. I felt very at ease during this part of the trip, and at the same time it felt adventurous — exactly what I wanted (and it wasn’t over!).

We headed back to the hostel, and enjoyed a cornucopia of local food. Some of the dishes we had were a bitter melon melange (bitter melon being a very popular fruit in Taiwan, as indicated by its presence in all of the local stands and night markets in Taipei), a seaweed vegetable dish, another local green vegetable dish, a noodle dish with chicken or pork, some really good noodle soup, a bunch of stir fries with local meats and vegetables, and, of course, rice. I was really impressed by the meal, and would call it the most memorable of the whole trip and one of the tastiest (hard to say any of them were really the tastiest, as all of the food was fun to eat and tasty). I was also just so impressed by the hospitality of the hostel owners. Actually, since we were a big group we ate separately, but other visitors ate with the hostel owners and other individuals staying at the hostel. It had a very homey feel to it, which I really appreciated and found rather endearing. The people were just so friendly and inviting.

One of the visitors was a native to the area who came back for a bit, and wanted to give us a guide to the islands owls. We had learned from the shopkeep earlier than one of the most prized inhabitants of the island were its owls, which are known to be the smallest on the planet. So, of course, we agreed. We scooted over and we got to have a pretty fun night adventure searching for super tiny owls. It sort of had a Blair Witch feel to it — pitch dark and in a forest with only one flashlight and a camera — but amusing because our guide, Penny (who was amazing to meet), kept “talking their language” (i.e.: hooting) and asking them to show themselves. Cute, you could say. Anyway, we end up actually seeing a few, and holy shit they’re tiny! We saw a bunch throughout the trip, took pictures, hooted, videotaped them, etc. Good times with owls.

Then realized we were lost in the forest. Huzzah!

We see another group of people coming into the forest (I guess it’s a tourist attraction) along with another woman staying at our hostel and a French guy living in Taipei that we had seen earlier. They decide to join us to get on our way back to the hostel. After about 15 minutes and the help of Evan’s phone’s compass, we find our way back to the scooters. Adventure is fun!

The next immediate adventure I had was in taking that second guide back on my scooter as a passenger. Given that it was my first day using a scooter, she was, understandably, a bit worried about my wobbliness (which I purport was due to the additional weight on the scooter). She kept telling me how scared she was for her life, followed by laughing. I didn’t know whether she was joking, or laughing to sort of downplay how scared she was for her life. I assured her I wanted to drive because I wanted to practice. We spoke about Canada, and how scary my driving was. That woman was a pleasure to meet, seriously (you’ll find out why), but being told “I’m going to die” (essentially) does not make driving easier, lady.

We get back to the hostel (I let her drive the scooter up the steep hill, because I didn’t want her having a heart attack — and yes, she was better driving scooters than I was) and hang out outside, chatting with Penny, the French guy, and the woman on my scooter. I found out that I actually do look Canadian, even though prior to our owl adventure I was told I look American (and Evan apparently looks German, or might be Native American).

Anyway, the conversation led to basically a Mandarin lesson. That woman forced me to learn 1 through 10 in mandarin, and how to do basic addition in Mandarin. I feared for my health had I not done it successfully (or at least not going to bed any time soon). She would not leave me alone. I don’t despise her at all for this, it was very entertaining and I enjoyed the conversation/drilling immensely. I also found out, while being drilled with math questions, that Penny went to the University of Calgary, and that she doesn’t like taxes. Eventually I was barraged with comments and super impressed faces because of how much Mandarin I knew after having been in Taiwan for only a week or so. I made a conscious effort to learn as much as I could on the trip, so I was happy to see these reactions.

Also, Mandarin girls can talk in really endearing ways — I’m not sure what Penny was saying exactly, but every time I told her a fact she’d respond with a sort of Mandarin “Eeeeeeeh?” kind of question, which I found very amusing. I’m curious to find out what it was she was saying, exactly.

Afterwards, we headed up to our room (Evan, Megan, Jeff and I shared a room while Jenny and Dylan got another). This is where we proceeded to drink a lot of sake, vodka, and some really gross liqueurs. One of the liqueurs we bought apparently translated to “Young deer antlers before ossification”. There was also a picture of a deer on the bottle, so I think the translation was accurate. At first it tasted okay, but then it tasted awful, even in shot form. I now know to avoid deer antlers, especially before they’ve ossified. 

Went to sleep at around 1 or 2 am. We had “agreed” to be up for sunrise, which was at 5:30. I got up at 5 and waited outside for others to wake up. At 7:30, I decided nobody was waking up on time and tried to go back to bed. 15 minutes later, we are all up (though not necessarily happy about it, in one particular person’s case) and we head out for breakfast!

I got coffee, which in Taiwan is instant coffee with milk and sugar. It still tasted good, surprisingly, and now I was “awake”. Then we ate a lot of really delicious food (Taro bun for breakfast!), and paid maybe 5 bucks for it all each. I dunno, something ridiculously cheap.

As we left, I got the impression the head lady at the counter wasn’t too happy with us, but I don’t know why. I think she thought we were weird.

The last part of the trip before the ferry ride back involved a hike up to Crater Lake. Crater lake is in a crater (who could have guessed?). This was an amusing hike as there were parts where we actually used rope and “climbed” up (though there were steps along with the rope, so it was more guided). Eventually we get to the lake, and it was really cool to see, but at the same time rather destitute. Nobody really tried swimming since we all though it was chemically dangerous (there was no life in the water, and all the trees in or slightly close to it were dead). Good times.

At this time I got to talk to Jenny quite a bit more and learn her background. She seems like a really fantastic lady, and I had a really nice conversation with her while everyone else was prodding the lake to see if, essentially, the stick would burn or die immediately or something.

A few of us ended up walking into the water to see what would happen. It felt like sponges on the bottom. It was a little weird. Anyway, good photo ops!

Dylan had suggested we head back to see if we could go snorkeling (well, he could go snorkeling, as he had equipment). So we marched on. Climbing back down the giant cliff was actually more fun than going up I found, FYI. We continued on, and I ended up spraining my ankle (still sprained to this day, hooray).

No matter! We continue and find a nice corral area to put our feet into water and let Dylan explore snorkeling opportunities. We chilled out and chatted, and times were good.

And then we headed back to the ferry to venture forth to Green Island!

Oh, and I lost my “given to me” ticket. Uh oh. *Cliffhanger*

Tune in for the next part, where we figure out how to get me off each of the respective islands! (I have been typing all of this in a cafe, and want to go home now, so that I can go work on the photos at Jeff’s place)

Taiwan Part 4 — FRIDAY, Taidong and The Day the Plan Crumbles into Another Plan

You know you gotta get down on Friday.

So, after our exquisite stay at The Silks, we get a personal cab, provided again by our generous hotel hosts, to drive us about an hour to 1.5 hours to Hualien for 1000NT (30 bucks for a 1+ hour trip — seriously, way cheaper than NA). 

While we waited for the train to arrive, we got some snacks and drinks at a 7-11. Now, I should inform you that 7-11 is probably the equivalent to Northwest Pacific’s Starbucks, or New York McDonalds, or Eastern Canada Tim Hortons. They are fracking everywhere in Taiwan. This is a side note from the trip, but during the trip we went one block and walked by two 7-11s. Weird, right?

Evan and Megan told us about a drinking game concocted in Taiwan involving 7-11s. Basically, you have to drink a beer while walking before you walk into another 7-11. If you walk into another 7-11, you have to have another beer. Apparently in some areas it is impossible to stop drinking because 7-11 is just that prevalent in the area.

Oh, and you may be wondering “You can drink alcohol publicly in Taiwan?”. Yep, you can! The only place you cannot have food or drink is on the MRT itself. Anywhere else is A-OK. We took liberty of this on occasion.

Anyway, we got a couple of 40 NT refrigerated lattes and coffees (which is about a buck) and 30NT buns from 7-11. The selection at these 7-11s is actually highly desirable; 7-11s aren’t full of junk food in Taiwan, and they actually have decent hot dogs there.

Eventually, we get on the train and meet up with Evan, Megan, Jenny, and Dylan. I already mentioned the latter two, but I’ll give a bit more detail. Jenny is actually Taiwanese, born from Taipei, and works as a councilor at Megan’s school. She lived in New Zealand for 15 years, and just came back to live in Taipei. She was truly my savior at one point during the trip, but I’ll get to that when we get there. Very funny gal and had really good English and Mandarin, so she became our official speaker of the group, a role she took very gracefully and for which we offer her many, many thanks.

Dylan, her boyfriend, also works at Megan’s school as an IT teacher. He’s originally from New Zealand, and therefore I had fun listening to his accent and hearing him say “Eh?” and making comparisons to my own “Eh?”. They are apparently different. Nice chap, and was really hoping that we’d go snorkeling. That didn’t happen sadly, but basically he’s an avid water dude.

Anyway, they were also both very fun people to be around and I’d love to see them again. Dylan said if I ever go to New Zealand to ring him up. I’ll take that offer at some point :)

With that brief introduction done, we train it up to Taidong. Again, nice views along the way. We get to Taidong, get a cab (hooray for cabs) and have a really nice, talkative cab driver humor Evan, Jeff and I. He offers his business card — score! 

We get to the ferry terminal and, lo and behold, no ferries are going to Orchid Island. Whoops! Their site was uninformative, since we did not know about this until we arrived. Gulp. Well, we concoct a new plan based on this information + Megan and Dylan requiring being back in Taipei for Tuesday class:

1. Stay in Taidong for Friday
2. Get up for the 8 am ferry to Orchid Island on Saturday, stay there one night
3. Take a ferry from Orchid Island to Green Island at 4 pm on Saturday, stay there one night
4. Take an 11 am ferry from Green Island back to Taidong, take a train to Kiaoshung, hang out with Morgan for the evening, then high speed train it back to Taipei (which, going from south to north of the Island takes an hour and a half), thus technically travelling the whole of mainland Taiwan

Waaaay moooore complicated, but we all agree.

So, Taidong. We actually didn’t go to downtown Taidong. We stayed near the ferry, and enjoyed the local food (we got to see pig ear up close and personal, which looked a little odd but still looked tasty by my books) and find a place to stay. We found a nice place surrounded by roosters, much to Dylan’s chagrin. Nice lady.

The day was mostly spent eating and loitering about like ruffians. We went to the gate of a military base from which we heard planes taking off a lot, we ran into more angry stray dogs, found some coconuts and destroyed them along with their ant ecosystems, and then ate again. Went to a Thai place owned by a really nice Chinese / Thai woman. We were her only customers, so we got to talk to her a bunch which was cool. Good food too! Remarkably tastier than most of the Thai places I’ve been in Seattle. 

The six of us had some Taiwan brewskis and chatted a bunch. Then we headed back to the hostel and got some shut-eye.

Were you expecting a long post? Well, too bad.

Taiwan Part 3 — Taroko Gorge Thursday

I wonder which seat I should be in…

Anyway, we continue with the fantastical trip to the Taroko Gorge. Jeff and I saw some really amazing pictures of this place in some tour guides (of course they’d be amazing if they were in tour guides, those advertising jerks), and had decided we had to go to this gorge.

So, early Thursday morning, we venture off to Taipei Main Station on the first of 7 or 8 different forms of transportation we’d be taking on this trip that wasn’t the MRT — a cab. Turns out MRT isn’t open at 5:30am…

Cabs, by the way, do not operate like they do in the US. I mean, sure, there’s a fare and everything, but there are a few key differences:

• You can bargain with cab drivers. When we went to Wulai (note, I spelled it incorrectly originally, as I called it Ulai before), the cab ride was supposed to be 600 NT. Evan, our most excellent translator, also bargained that ride down to 400 NT without a fault. Therefore, I love cab drivers in Taiwan.
• They don’t really follow road rules and are far more aggressive than cab drivers here, which made driving a super radical experience (seriously)
• Their cars don’t have seat belts, which made the above point a little more frightening, but still fun
• They love chewing tobacco (or something akin to that) that made their teeth red and, as Megan emphasized, disgusting
• They were friendly and initiated conversation (which to me seems like a major difference, since they were *all* super friendly)

Anyway, with that in mind, we took a cab to Taipei Main Station to get our very complicated train route and tickets sorted out. The plan for the weekend trip was as follows:

1. Thursday (today’s post), Jeff and I would go to Taroko Gorge by ourselves to a very ritzy hotel called The Silks and trek through the valleys and ridges belonging there via a normal train
2. Friday, we’d all leave for Taidong, and we had to orchestrate it in such a way that Jeff and I were in Hualien by 9:00 am to catch the same train as Evan, Megan, Jenny, and Dylan (friends of Evan and Megan, who both work at the same school as Megan) — we had to get a cab from Tsinchiang to Hualien at 7:30.
3. From Taidong, we’d ferry over to Orchid Island / Luyan on what is supposedly the most nauseating boat on the planet with a 90% probability of vomit (9 in 10 people vomited the last time they took this ferry)
4. On Monday, we’d take a train to Kaoshiung to meet up with Morgan and hang out there until evening, and then take a bullet train back to Taipei

Note: That was the plan.  

Anyway, with everything sorted out with the trains, we board for Taroko and are witness to some nice scenery on the train ride to Sincheng, the closest city to the gorge. We get there utterly confused about how to get to the Taroko National Park. We see some cabs, and therefore choose to cab it again (did I also say how awesome cabs are? Well, they’re awesome in Taiwan). Talking with the cab driver was amusing — “Taroko Park? *points to map* Taroko? Yes?” “Yes, Taroko… want Tsinchang?” “No, Taroko” “Okay, you sure?” “Yes, Taroko” “Okay, Taroko”. We get there “Taroko Park?” “Yes, perfect” “It’s over there” “Oh okay go there” “Okay”. He drops us off “Xie xie!!!!” 

Now at the Taroko National Park, we have a fun time figuring out our next mode of transport: the bus to Tsinchiang. We enter the visitor booth and are pleased to find somebody who we can speak with reasonably (though, admittedly, I wished I could speak Mandarin instead, as I always felt guilty making the locals speak English due to our incompetence in their language — thankfully, they didn’t mind and some enjoyed practicing). We found a sign that mentioned the next bus to Tsinchiang, which was in the middle of the gorge and home to the hotel at which we’d be staying for the night. 

While we waited for the bus to arrive, we venture up a rather steep climb while sporting 60 pounds on our backs respectively. Nice views, but holy crap much harder when you have a duffel bag with a bunch of your clothes around your torso.

Eventually we get on the bus and head to Tsinchiang. Really fantastic views, all the more exciting with the prospect of getting bikes to ride around the entire gorge. We met a guy named Serban from France who works in Singapore, nice fellow. I asked him a lot of questions about France, and I think that’s the next place I’d like to go after talking with him, specifically Nice.

Anyway, the gorge! We arrive at the hotel, or rather resort. It was pretty spritzed up, and I thought “Shit, this is going to be expensive”. Oh well, we had it booked and so we brought our luggage in — the room was right by the gorge’s river, which was awesome. They also had bike rentals (for a cost), so we rented them and biked back along the road from which the bus took us. Got a lot of amazing sights and pictures. We also got on a little silver cart thing that you could use to zipline to just above the raging river below — it looked pretty makeshift but I ended up trying it anyway. Reaction: Hooooly frack, that was amazing. Adrenaline rush? Yup.

Continuing on, we get a lot of nice views along the gorge, and the biking was a lot of fun going on the way back to the national park (where we caught the bus). I really enjoyed seeing how much of a mammoth the gorge felt and that I was just a tiny speck inside of it. I also enjoyed all of the traffic jams we were able to get around because we were on bikes, and watching enormous tour buses trying to get by. 

We get to the end of the bike ride to see this temple and waterfall combo. The bike ride was really enjoyable, and I was happy to get to the temple — 18km from the hotel. I can’t explain it as well as photos would, so I will defer the entire description to the album when we get it posted.

The ride back wasn’t as enjoyable. I haven’t rode on a bike for long distances on inclines for quite some time, so I was stupid and tried biking uphill on the way back on a pretty high gear. Suffice to say, I fried my legs and got extremely tired. On top of that, we hadn’t eaten for quite some time, and I hadn’t hydrated myself properly before the biking. Eventually I started to gasp for breath as dehydration and hunger started to kick in, on top of other excrements starting to come out in sickly fashion (eeeeew, you’d say here). On top of these problems, we didn’t bring any water (I thought Jeff had some but he actually didn’t — whoops). So, to be on the safe side, we called the hotel to see if they could pick us up — we weren’t too far from the hotel but I really didn’t want to risk seriously hurting myself due to lack of hydration. I am very grateful to the folks of that hotel for picking us up and bringing water. That part of the trip taught me two extremely important lessons:

1. Life, as it is, is pretty good, and worse things could definitely happen to me
2. People are generally genuinely good

The bus ride back to the hotel comprised me mostly saying “Dwei bu chi” and “Xie xie” numerous times to the folks of the hotel. Some of the kindest people I’ve ever met (though, probably biased opinion since they basically saved my ass).

We get back to the resort where I treat myself to a very welcome shower. That shower was quite possibly the best I have ever had in my life. Same with the bottles of water. As usual with fancy hotels, all of the little things were provided which made it extra nice.

We then eventually went for a 10 course meal at the hotel’s restaurant for 880 NT (little less than 30 dollars). Again, really ritzy place that I figure would be about 50+ in the States for a meal of that size and fanciness. Was pretty good, but nothing stood out as spectacular.

After that, we headed up to the roof where there was one of those swimming pools designed so you can see the horizon (in this case, the horizon was a view of the gorge) and some hot tubs. Basically, that night we pampered ourselves to the max. Oddly enough, the pool didn’t really ever go that deep — about 3 feet (even though it was an in-ground pool). I was told the reason is that Taiwanese people don’t really know how to swim and are prone to drowning, hence why the pools are shallow. 

Oh well, the hot tubs, pool, and lounge chairs were awesome and much appreciated.

Then we slept on BEDS. I really appreciated having a bed at that point — cots on the ground just aren’t the same. You don’t realize what you have until you don’t have it, as they say.

Eventually we woke up (yes, that means it’s now Friday, but I figure I’ll keep hotel related stuff in one post), and went to all-you-can-eat-included-in-cost-of-rooms breakfast. Tasty stuff again (Taro buns!), but nothing spectacular.

Either way, the entire hotel cost, per person, about 2000 to 2500 NT if I recall, and that’s including the dinner and room upgrade (which was free). That’s about 50-60 bucks, and that was for a resort in an extremely secluded area. Pretty good if you ask me.

Next up, Taidong, and the day the PLAN CRUMBLES. *Dun dun dun*