Taiwan Part 1 — Departure, Arrival, and Sunday
Hi everyone,
Figured it was time for an update, and a rather big one at that!
One thing I’ve always been meaning to try and never really had the balls to do was to travel. I’ve always been worried that it’s not exactly “responsible” (in my head, not necessarily fact), that I should be focusing on my career and life success, and that travelling was too large of an expense to warrant spending. Furthermore, I was worried about the immediate ramifications of taking this trip, since I am on medical leave right now from work to deal with the anxiety and dysthymic mood I’ve had lately. Lastly, I was worried about the normal fears everyone has of travelling: the communication barrier, getting lost, something atrociously bad happening, getting back into the States (applicable anxiety in my case because I have a work visa), etc etc…
Well, regardless of these worries, I went to Taiwan with my friend Jeff. I’ll get into the details of the trip in later paragraphs, however I’d first like to rationalize (for my own sake) why I decided to do it regardless of the concerns.
The most obvious reason was to simply overcome the initial worries of travelling — to learn that communication barriers don’t really exist (there are always ways to communicate even if you don’t verbally communicate identically), that things never go as bad as they might seem or that even if it goes bad something good can still come of it, and generally travelling isn’t that hard.
Second, my therapist (if I haven’t mentioned before, I’m seeing a therapist — seems like everyone has one, though) said it’d probably be better for me than any therapy could ever be for me, since it’s been a contributing factor to my anxiety (that I’m not interesting enough to people, that I’m not living life fully enough, that I’m not doing enough fun young things and when I am older I’d regret it, etc). She also said that even if I am on medical leave, it could be very reasonably argued that this would help me get back to work sooner rather than later, since it should mitigate some of the stress and problems I’ve been having lately with my life. I think she is at least partially right, but more on that later.
Third, it was to show to me that there’s more to life than just my career and financial stability / growth. My definition of what makes my life successful is too naive — having these experiences is not only valuable to my self-esteem, but just to my life in general. I think the trip has taught me a lot more about myself than any job possibly could, simply in showing to me that life could be a lot different, a lot harder, and that I am capable of more than I give myself credit.
On those notes, let’s talk about the trip! I’ll try to keep this chronologically as accurate as possible, but I will also talk in generalities as I see it fit.
First, let’s talk about the flights and airports. As usual, Seattle airport was dull, so I’ll skip that. The first leg of the trip, which was from Seattle to Japan, was pretty good. I was surprised by how limited United Airlines is when it comes to international flights — I would think that they’d offer the same major services as their shorter flights, like proper in-seat entertainment and nicer seats — bit of a disappointment considering how much I had heard of Air Canada’s really nice international flights (haven’t been on any), and pretty much every other non-American airline. I was happy that I’d be given food for free, for once, but it wasn’t spectacular (especially considering other flights I’ve heard about from Jeff).
I will say, though, it’s nice to have unlimited beer and wine on a plane. Mmmm. (Even if it’s shitty beer/wine, it’s better to have the option).
Also, I will give a plug for Amazon’s Kindle. I love you, Amazon. You make trips not long at all. (FYI: I was reading The Brothers Karamazov, and am now 30% of the way through — it is a weird read, but good)
With that said, we arrived at the Japanese airport, Narita. Not as exciting as I pictured, but then we realized that it was because we were in the Star Alliance wing of the airport, and we chose not to go outside of it for time purposes. I would have loved to have seen a bit of Tokyo, or even a glimpse of the rest of the airport, but at least I still got the Japanese feeling when I went to shops in the airport. Also, their ramen and sushi, even at the airport, were pretty good (salmon sashimi, however, is still better in Vancouver and even more in Richmond, BC).
The next flight, from Narita to the Taiwanese airport (don’t remember its name), was quite a bit nicer than the last one — it at least had the in-seat entertainment options. Not that it mattered, as I slept, so I can’t really give much detail on this leg.
Okay, okay, enough about flights — we arrive in Taiwan! And shit, it’s a bit scary. “Dear god I hope the rest of the trip isn’t like this”, I thought to myself a few times. I’m sure I showed that visually on my face, too, but I won’t speculate on that. There were a few things that you might consider odd and frightening (for instance, why we were being checked for radiation (see: Narita airport), and the other scannings, or the fact that a lot of signs were in Chinese mostly), but these weren’t the major problems. Signs, albeit in Mandarin, were mostly intuitive via images (hooray for standard images!). Why it actually felt scary was that I already immediately had to start speaking to people who didn’t understand English that well. Also, immigration was wondering why the hell my passport was damp (damn you Washing Machine Incident #2), in MANDARIN.
Shit. Well, anyway, we got through that. We were going to get to Jeff’s friends’ place (for convenience, their names are Megan and Evan, who are awesome and I’ll repeatedly say this throughout this post) via bus and local transportation (which was awesome, by the way), so we wanted to get cash before getting on either. Frack! (I’ve been watching BSG recently, thumbs up eh?) The ATMs at the bus terminal were no longer accepting international debit cards (apparently, these particular ATMs stopped exchanging with other currencies after a certain time, which seems really odd considering it’s *an airport*). Okay, what next? Well, we decided to try buying the bus tickets via credit card.
Apparently showing people a piece of paper sort-of-saying where we wanted to go works. We tried to say it, and we pointed to the directions our fearless leader Jeff had written out, and voila, it worked! The guy at the bus terminal who was there to help people on their way (who I don’t think spoke anything but Mandarin, oddly enough) directed us to the proper bus counter. Okay! Next step, buying tickets.
We said “Taipei Main Station”. They understood. Payment time! Jeff hands a credit card (sorry Jeff, I sort of hesitated and let you take the reins — after all, you have travel experience!) to the woman in a paper mouth-mask (which I thought was odd when I arrived, but I learned later how smart Taiwanese people and eastern Asian cultures are with this custom). Not accepted. What? But you said credit cards work… okay, try this one? Oh, that one worked. I guess Jeff’s credit card payment wasn’t completed on that particular credit card. Well, whatever, it worked! We had tickets and… OH CRAP, THE BUS IS LEAVING NOW? Rush, rush, rush. We got on, whew!
Alright, bus goes for an hour, and we’re constantly wondering “When are we supposed to get off?”. Jeff seemed to know though, even though I didn’t. Turns out he was right — Taipei Main Station is huge and obvious. Well, duh, I should have figured that out.
Okay, next, let’s see if we can get cash. We see the same ATM from before and try it — nope!
Alright, let’s see if we can buy the tickets with a credit card. We arrive and… they have 3 forms of trains? Wait, what? Which one are we supposed to go on? (We had this written down) — okay, let’s go that way. We start paying, and then, oops, we realize we’re at the wrong train ticketing booth. We don’t want to go out of Taipei!
Okay, so we find the right train, and voila, an ATM that works. See, things turn out well! Nothing to worry about. This turned out even better, since the MRT (the local subway system of Taipei, and later as we found out, Kaoshung) ticket machines don’t take credit cards. So we both get cash (for your wisdom, 1 US dollar got us roughly 30 NT, which is the Taiwanese currency) — 10 * 100NT, so 30 dollars. Seems reasonable for now.
We buy… tokens?… for the MRT. The machine spat out little blue tokens for each of us. The actual purchase was pretty simple, and the MRT map was very intuitive in terms of which tokens to buy, even without knowing Mandarin. However, blue tokens? What?
We now have these tokens, and then we arrive to machines to let us get to the trains. What are we supposed to do with these tokens? There’s no slot for them… we look at other people and see they’re just putting them on a flat part of the machine that looks like a card reader. We look at it and, hey wait, look, there’s a spot for blue tokens on this same flat part. We place the tokens on this flat part and it reads. COOL! That was my original thought. We keep the tokens, apparently, until we get off (that makes sense).
We get on the MRT. Again, very intuitive system to read — we knew exactly which train to take and got on without any problems. I will note here that there were a LOT of people, even at 10pm, at the station and on the trains, which I already find extremely commendable and admire. I will also mention that I *truly* felt like a foreigner, despite having gone to University of Waterloo and living in Vancouver in the past — I found immediate excitement in seeing another white person because of just how rare it was. Also, very smooth ride, and the signs and automated voice announcements had English as well, so it was straightforward to know when to get off.
We get off at the Jiantan station, and now we try to recall what Google Maps said. I made it confusing, my bad. Oh well, not a big deal, we figure out where to go — next step, meet Jeff’s friends, Evan and Megan.
I will admit I was nervous about this rendezvous at first. I know I can be pretty open to people and seem very friendly and approachable, as many people have told me. Most people don’t realize that I’m rather shy with new folks — I guess I fake it well enough. Anyway, turns out it was fine and they are pretty rad people and I’d like to hang out with em more in the future. Both very funny people! They also helped us out considerably in getting around, in chasing down a 7-11 (more on 7-11 later) to get cash for a ferry because I was stupid, for teaching me some Mandarin (fun language to learn considering every word has 4 tones, all meaning something different), and just super laid back about having me there. Was definitely a pleasure to meet them!
Went up to their apartment, and was rather surprised by how big it was. I always pictured apartments in eastern Asian countries to be really really small, but this was actually rather spacious — I mean, you couldn’t fit a second bed in it with the furniture the two already had, but for a studio it was big enough to have Jeff and I sleep with quite a bit of space along with their belongings.
We arrived at the apartment at about 11, 11:15 pm Taiwanese time. Neither Jeff nor I slept much on the planes, and the trip was more than 12 hours long (with layover time included). So we’re both exhausted (well, I was), but we still went out that night. The first thing we did was to go eat at the Shilin Night Market, Taiwan’s largest. Night markets, as I came to find, are very common around Taipei, and have a variety of foods (or food items if you’re not sure what it was exactly). Also, Taiwanese people love fried chicken, apparently (they seem to have a number of KFCs), and that was my first piece of food that day! (Not KFC, but fried chicken at the night market) I wish we had fried chicken like the Taiwanese do, because it’s really good.
Anyway, we walked around the Shilin Night Market and browsed the wares. Note that they had stores open, and it was midnight. That’s freaking awesome. They also really love old-school carnival games, which was weird to see beside the equivalent of a “GAP” in Canada/US, but fun nonetheless to see. (They also had shirts of Mickey Mouse and Pikachu duking it out with boxing gloves to “Be the one”-subtitled shirts. Engrish was prevalent and hilarious. Therefore, conclusion of night market: super awesome.)
Okay, so, that was the first night in a nutshell (a rather large nut). I guess the only other thing I wanted to comment on here was just how overwhelmed with “Wow this place is different” thoughts I was, in a good way. All the Mandarin signage, the weird mascot characters that laced the booths / shops, the plethora of very different foods (but all very good), the bountiful number of stray dogs and cats, the density of the markets and city, and just how lively the place felt, at least compared to Seattle, Vancouver, Waterloo, and Ottawa. Really cool altogether.
The next day was our trip to Ulai (not sure if there’s an apostrophe missing there or not), which comprises mostly of native aboriginals of Taiwan. Evan very aptly pointed out how similar it seems countries sort of place-to-the-side their aboriginals — Ulai felt sort of distant from Taipei and had a very different feel to it. Best analogy I can think of is how Ottawa is to Toronto in terms of feel (Ottawa being more quaint and town-like while Toronto is clearly metropolitan). Food there was similar, though, and the streets were laced with sausage grills, corn grills/whatevers, bubble tea, little snack stands, mochi and other sugary goods, and so forth. It was just tinier in scale.
We ate, and then trekked forward on a small train (which felt like a mix between roller coaster and one of the kid’s trains you see at malls sometimes) towards the trails of Ulai, with promise of hot springs later in the day. Pretty fun hike, got to see a 3-tiered waterfall. I got completely soaked, but didn’t mind (this was the *only* day it rained for us, a vast difference from the Pacific Northwest) it so much. We saw a ton of frogs, which explained why the trail mascots were frogs. Pretty easy hike, mostly stairs, and nice views, but sadly very grey and misty outside, so didn’t get the views the area likely deserves.
On our way back to the Ulai from the trails and further back to Taipei we stopped by the naturally-occurring hot springs along with some Taiwanese beer (very light beer, FYI), which really hit the spot. It was rather entertaining to try and “make” a decent hot spring; we had to enclose an area of the hot springs by walling in the water with rocks. Eventually we got it, made rock tables, and relaxed — very good to do when your feet are sore and you’re drenched.
For dinner that night we went to Din Tai Fong, which started in Taiwan and is world-renowned for its dumplings. My friends in Seattle specifically asked me to go here; they wanted me to find out if it was similar to the one in Bellevue that just opened. Turns out they’re pretty similar, which makes sense since the original one has ranked consistently high on worldwide restaurant polls and they’d want to match that elsewhere. So, FYI, people of Seattle — Din Tai Fong in Bellevue is pretty much the same as the Din Tai Fong in Taiwan, and it’s good so you should go.
Okay, so that was the first Saturday and Sunday. I am typing a lot here. I’m going to cut this post here so whoever reads these can take it in chunks (rather large ones). Sorry for the brick wall of story.
