Random musings about Taiwan

As a Westerner in Taiwan I feel like a mini celebrity most days. I don't know why it is but there are barely any tourists here, which makes me an oddity. Most days (particularly outside Taipei), we'll go the whole day without seeing another Westerner. If you do see one, it's such an odd sight that even I've started pointing at them and shouting "Waiguoren! Waiguoren!" ("Foreigner! Foreigner!").


I really love Paul's neighbour who we call ayi (Aunty), although she is no actual relation. Apparently my name literally means "cat food" in Taiwanese. Ayi said last time we were here all here other neighbours thought she must have gotten a cat because she kept calling "cat food, cat food" all the time! Ayi is famous for her pineapple cakes which she makes from scratch. I was hoping to steal her secret recipe while I was in Taiwan.


The other day I got my chance. Paul and Charles went on a day trip to Kenting. Since I was still tired from Yushan I decided to stay home. I asked Paul's mum whether she thought ayi would be making pineapple cakes that day. An hour later I was over in ayi's kitchen helping her make 40 of the cakes which she told me were all going to be for me! It was awesome. Unfortunately I think that some of the ingredients aren't available in Australia. Also, half way through the session I realised I was reading the measurements off the Taiwanese measurement scale instead of the metric one....hmmmmmmm....perhaps I wasn't as successful in stealing the recipe as I thought.

Oh yeah, we experienced our first earthquake the other day. It only lasted for a few seconds but it was enough to make me rush over to Paul shouting "An earthquake, shield me, shield me!". According to him, it was just a strong wind. I mantain it was an earthquake (the rest of Paul's family back me up).

Taiwan - Taipei / Kaohsiung

We have now made it down to Kaohsiung after spending a few days in Taipei. The weather since we have been here has been scorching and humid which really makes it quite uncomfortable to go sightseeing in the middle of the day. Nevertheless we managed to pack in quite a bit during our time in Taipei.

We stayed at Holo Family House in the middle of Taipei near Taipei Main Station. It was a very friendly hostel with a great location but it was by far the most expensive place we have stayed so far in Asia. I think the times of US$10/night hotels are over for us on this trip - darn it!

We had a nice time catching up with Paul's friends Glenn and Aki for dinner one night. It was quite funny - since Glenn and Aki have lived in Taipei for about 1 year Paul thought that they would know somewhere nice to go for dinner. Glenn and Aki thought Paul would know because he was from Taiwan!! In the end we ate at a dumpling restaurant that Glenn and Aki picked which was very nice. We also caught up with Paul's friends Bonny and Sonny, his cousin Shing-yi (Sandy) and his friend Chia-heng (Hans) and his girlfriend.

Most days we headed out to see some of the sights around the city and at night we always ended up at one of the night markets. We managed to see the National Palace museum again (yes, we lined up for another view of the jade cabbage), checked out the 2/28 Peace Park and Museum, spent a day shopping for electronics (it's Taiwan - it's what you do), trawled Taipei 101 for a few hours and checked out one of the parks in the suburbs. We also spent a day shopping for outdoor gear as we are freaking out that we are going to freeze in either Mongolia, Tibet or Nepal. At night we saw Shilin night market, Yong-he night market (near Shing-yi's house), Shida night market and on one night we rode the train all the way to Miaokou night market at Jilong. Because Jilong is a port there is tonnes of seafood in the night market. We loaded up on takeaway crabs then ordered rice and veg at another stall and ate the lot.

I really can't say enough about Taipei's MRT system which allowed us to get all around the city without any problems. Although there are heaps of different lines, they are all colour coded and they have English translations for everything so the couple of times I had to use the MRT by myself I didn't have any problems. The whole time we were in Taipei I don't think we waited more than two or three minutes for a train and the air conditioning in the trains was pure bliss. There are MRT stations near most of the major sights and where there isn't there's always a connection that's really easy to work out (a free shuttle to Taipei 101 and connecting buses to the National Palace Museum for example). Even when we wanted to visit a park which was a little way from the MRT station the station staff told us to get on a free shuttle to a hospital that was right across the road! The fares for most of the trips we took were around NT$20 (less than AU$1). It really is the only way to get around in Taipei.

While we were in Taipei we visited a travel agency to try to see whether we could book a train ticket to Mongolia to solve our irritating onward ticket problem. It turns out that you can't book the ticket from here but the travel agent suggested that she just do up a fake ticket for us to show the airline - sweet! Hopefully that solves that problem.

After Taipei we went back to Ilan for another few days (during which we managed to fit in another few banquets). We tried to ride all the way to the sea with one of Paul's cousins but unfortunately it started storming - thwarted again! Paul's cousin had this really cool folding bike. They are everywhere here and I am very taken with them. They fold up quite small and you can fit them into a bag which you just put in the boot of the car or in the luggage compartment on the train. Very nifty.

We've been in Kaohsiung for a few days during which we have attended another four banquets. I can literally feel myself expanding from day to day. As I am usually the "honoured guest" I have to eat first and everyone keeps giving me food until I can barely stand. It is such a mean tradition in country of people who never seem to put on any weight. Seriously - have you ever seen a 45kg girl sit down and eat a bowl of noodles bigger than her head? I have.

In a couple of days we are heading up into the mountains to climb Yushan (Taiwan's highest mountain). I really, really wanted to climb Yushan this time and I was initially very excited to do it. Now though I don't know how I am going get up! We are going with a mountain climbing club so they will probably be really fit. I feel like our last two weeks in Thailand (which were basically spent laying either on the beach or on the deck of a boat) and the 9 or 10 banquets I've been force fed in the last 2 - 3 weeks have not exactly increased my fitness levels. Hmmmmm....

Experiencing a little problem with Picasa at the moment but more photos should be up as soon as I can resolve that.

Taiwan - Wujie / Taipei

We spent our last few days in Thailand being rained on in Krabi. Rock climbing turned out to be quite expensive and considering that the last time I went rock climbing I only managed to get about 1 metre off the ground before panicking, we opted for another snorkelling trip instead. Unfortunately, as Paul mentioned, we were rained on for most of the day and the trip ended up being cut short. We weren't too disappointed though - by the time the trip was over we had already seen enough to know that the snorkelling wasn't going to be anywhere near as good as either Ko Tao or Ko Phi Phi.

We flew out from Krabi to KL on the 13th and spent the night in a hotel right near the LCCT (low cost carrier terminal) which we were quite happy with as it meant we got to eat three meals in the airport food court - kind of like a last Malaysian supper. By now we have our packing down to a fine art and we lumped our bag onto the scale at check-in the next morning happy to see them come to exactly 30.0kg (the limit). There was another strange safety demo from Air Asia on the way to Taipei (referring to the plane as a "spaceship" throughout - they actually got applause at the end of the demo!). We surreptitiously ate the sandwiches we picked up from the airport foodcourt onboard (you are supposed to buy overpriced meals from the airline if you are hungry).

After four hours we touched down in Taipei. Paul decided to enter on his Taiwanese passport - 5 minutes later he was through immigration, leaving me in a line of foreigners snaking for what seemed like a kilometre being served by only four immigration officers. Almost an hour later I finally made it through....

Paul's mum and dad were waiting for us outside and they were very happy to see us. Their first words to Paul were to tell him how dark and skinny he had become - ha ha! We were whisked back to his Dad's home town of Wujie on the east coast, which only took about 90 mins thanks to a new highway which has been built since the last time we were here.

We spent a relaxing few days hanging around Wujie. The town is in Ilan county which is wedged in between the coast and a mountain chain that runs halfway down the length of the country. It is very pretty with lots of rice fields around the houses and the mountains rising up in the background. Wujie is about 5km from the sea and you can smell the sea breeze when you go outside. You can ride a bike through the rice fields and on a bike path by the river all the way to the sea. We caught the tail end of a typhoon while we were there so we didn't get to go all the way to the sea. We are heading back there after Taipei and I plan to make it to the sea then. We also spent a day cooling off at some cold springs at Suao. The springs are 22 degrees year round but it was too cold for me to go right in - I ended up just soaking my feet for most of the day!

In the traditional Taiwanese fashion, Paul's relatives in Wujie were all clamouring to take him out to banquets. We had banquets on three of the four nights we were there. My favourite one had about a gazillion course all coming one after the other - from a huge plate of fresh sashimi complete with an ice sculpture (!) to a plate of fresh lobster, chicken soup with a whole chicken, a whole steamed fish, crab and noodle soup with tonnes of crab in it, crab balls both braised and deep fried, plates of squid, plates of abalone - the courses went on and on and on. I think I have probably stacked on a few kilos over the four days and Paul has most likely gained nothing!

We have a few things that we need to sort out in Taipei to organise the next few months of the trip. Weighing most heavily on our mind at the moment is the fact that we don't have an onward ticket for China. We plan to take the train to Mongolia and then exit overland to Nepal so we won't have a flight booked. I doubt it will be a problem with Chinese immigration as we have the correct visa and it is difficult to get train tickets outside the country. But we have found that the problem is generally not with immigration but with actually getting to the country in the first place - Air Asia always asks to check you onward ticket where it is a technical requirement to have one. Hmmmmmm - so frustrating. At this stage we are looking at either getting a fully refundable ticket out of China and refunding it later, or getting a travel agency here to book us a ticket on the Trans-Mongolian so that we can show that (this is probably a good option as you need to book a bit in advance anyway). It all depends on the price...... This is the type of situation where you start wishing you were a package tourist (almost....)!