D is for Dangerous

September 16, 2008.

After a night in a border town which vaguely resembled the South East Asian version of small town USA, we crossed the border into Laos, and embarked on a 2 day trip down the Mekong to Luang Prabang, where we spent 6 days jumping off waterfalls, missing sunsets, drinking Lao Lao whisky, and adopting local wildlife, notably a pink plastic swan named Hans whom I felt it necessary to carry under my arm everywhere we went. We met some new friends on the boat, and picked up a few more at Spicy Laos, the hostel we stayed at in LP. The 7 of us headed by nauseating minivan to Vang Vieng two days ago, on a dirt road which wound its way through the most majestic scenery I have ever seen, stopping only briefly in a village endearingly named "The 3 Next Clean Village." It is here, in Vang Vieng, where we encountered our first, and hopefully last, near death experience of the trip.

Vang Vieng, Laos

Fun and sun seekers flock to Vang Vieng for the tubing experience. You get your tube, lifejacket optional, and float down the river. Sounds easy. Without stopping, the lazy ride should take about an hour. We managed to cover about 15 minutes of this said hour in about 6 - this is because every 20 feet, a little Lao man is waiting to fish you out of the river with a long stick and lure you to his makeshift bar and fill your soul with whisky out of a bucket. There are makeshift ziplines, volleyball courts, opportunity at every corner to mudfight with friends old and new, and if you were lucky enough, someone would create lewd art using your body as a canvas.

By the time it occurred to us that maybe we should head on, dusk was setting in, and it was starting to rain. "It wasn't pitch black out yet," Steph recalls. "Just dark navy." Dusk turned to dark, and rain turned to lightning and thunder, which turned into power outage along the banks of the river, the lights of which were our only guide. We were wasted - there is no sugar coating the state of our irresponsible intoxication. We floated down the river, no idea where to go, or how to get out. The current was strong, and it was cold. Someone told me once that it's not safe to be in the water during a thunderstorm. We held each others' extremities and stuck as close together as we could, some exhibiting more fear than others (guess who?) About 4 or 5 people die on that river every year, or so I've been told, and that's a lot in my books. "Over here!" we heard, suddenly, out of nowhere. Two fellow tubers appeared, and they had done this the day before, they said. It was all going to be ok, as long as we could swim. "Now!" one of them shouted, and we all jumped out of our tubes and swam furiously for the riverbed, clawing at the muddy earth and hoisting our scared asses to safety. 

And then they were gone. "Our tubing angels," one of my travel mates suggested. We didn't know their names, and we hadn't seen their faces. The power shut off for good at this point; so as we ran barefoot through the streets to our guesthouse, happy to be alive and able to drink more Beerlao, I couldn't help but wonder if they really were. 

Oh My Buddha!

September 6, 2008.

I came up to Chiang Mai, in the heart of Northern Thailand via 13 hour bus - the trains have stopped running due to the worsening civil unrest. The bus driver assured me that once the vehicle was running, the bathroom would be unlocked - I've never believed in magic, and have endured many an Asian bus ride on busses with locked toilets, avoiding laughter and sometimes conversation entirely, clutching my explosive bladder for dear life, so I don't know why I thought this would be any different. Lies. House of lies. The door was locked but about an hour into the trip, the bus started halting to a stop every hundred metres, and I figured that the driver was either distributing our backpacks to needy people on the side of the superhighway, or stopping to relieve himself (I was no fool, I'd seen the empty cans of Singha accumulating under his seat) but luckily for me he was indeed resolving the bathroom dilemma and the rest of the ride was a breeze. 

I'm teamed up with Steph again, and while we haven't been robbed or scratched by stray dogs this time around, so far we have seen a Muay Thai boxing show, the highlight of which was the "Special Show", consisting of blindfolded teenagers going at each other and also at the ref. We've taken a trip out to an organic farm and learned how to cook tasty Thai dishes, but our most noteworthy adventure as of yet has certainly been our "eco" trek through the Thai jungle - we rode an elephant named Bountia, who refused to move forward unless fed a banana every twenty seven seconds, and endured a rigorous 4 hour climb up a giant mountain. We camped out for the night with the Lahu village tribe and met Jack, local funny man, who showed us many games, most of which involved rubbing the charcoal from the bottom of a dirty wok all over our faces.  

Bountia

Jack Sparrow

In the morning we hiked down to a waterfall. "No ploblem!" our guide, Moonshine, had told us the night before. "Tomorrow easy. All downhill!" Oh my Buddha. I spent the morning with my eyes glued to my crappy Puma sneakers and tried not to fall. "Too SLOW!" Moonshine's brother, Good, told me, and dragged me screaming through the mud behind him. I rinsed the mud out of my crevices in the waterfall, and then followed the stream to the starting point of my next adventure - whitewater rafting, which, for the record, rocks, even if all normal safety measures aren't necessarily in place. 

In short, Thailand is pretty cool. Tourism is a mixed blessing here, and I feel a lot of sadness towards the hungry baby elephants that they force to walk around the streets in order to extort money from rich white people, and am still processing my feelings about visiting the hill tribe - it's amazing how our money serves to both preserve and completely destroy their culture, at the same time. So far Steph and I have avoided evils such as leeches, dengue fever, and obnoxious British law students, but tomorrow we head towards Laos, and it is a whole new day. 

And I thought Taiwan was overpopulated.

August 27, 2008: Asia, Round Two

When our plane arrived at Hong Kong on Saturday, the airport was closed, the result of heavy traffic due to typhoon-induced delays, and complete insanity. We were re-routed to Taipei, the last place I thought I'd see again so soon. I left Canada looking for something on this trip, though I can't tell you what it was, and as I watched the sparkling lights of Taiwan's East coast grow nearer, I couldn't help but think that maybe I'd already found it. 

We spent 7 hours in the Taipei airport. Rachel argued with immigration for a while before finally being allowed to remain in Taiwan rather than endure a pointless commute to Hong Kong and back. The trade off was that she couldn't have her bags. I landed at around midnight and found my way to my friend Dustin's apartment. He lives at the university, in a shared room with a Dane named Lars and a Sri Lankan monk whose approval of a female houseguest I was weary about, though he was genuinely pleasant to me while I was there. Lars had bedbugs, the toilet didn't work. The absence of air conditioning or a fan was troublesome, and the bed was rock hard, but after my 31 hour journey I was simply happy to be there and spent the night dreaming of cake. 

We visited Lamma island, charting our hike around the car-free islet by playing rock paper scissors and were rewarded at the end by a dip in the ocean. We had to work our way through a pile of garbage and Dustin swears he saw floating poo, but it felt too good to be enveloped in the waters of the South China Sea again. The next day I chose to check out Mongkok, Kowloon, and got a stunning view of the city from Victoria Peak. I spent some quality time with myself in Hong Kong Park, a lush oasis of green goodness in the middle of overwhelming urbanity. I made friends with a woman and her teddy bear and with a girl who was photographing a delicate porcelain doll in various poses around the park. I met Dustin and some of his local friends at a karaoke bar which played music videos featuring Dustin and by this point was feeling Hong Kong-ed out. Hong Kong is a fascinating, albeit overwhelming place.

I caught the ferry to Macau this morning and made friends with a Filipino man named Robert who assisted me in finding my way to the airport without having to pay. I found my hostel on Soi Rambutri with ease, and am unsure as to how to describe my first impressions of Bangkok. I don't think I can make any fair judgments yet, because I'm exhausted and all I can think about is that all of the backpackers look the same (although I'm sure by tomorrow I will be equally decked out in beach bum gear) and how great it is that I can get pad thai on the side of the road for a dollar. Part of me wants to go wild on Kho San road tonight drinking alcohol out of a bucket, but another part of me feels kind of old and realizes that I've entered a different realm of life. I think I will save my energy for when it counts. 

Whoops.

I guess you could say I am what they call a false beginner. At the rate I'm going, it'll be forever before that long awaited best-seller finally hits the shelves...

Off we go. 

In a nutshell.

I was confronted last night with an important question.

"Why do you like to travel so much?" Hmm. 

I like to travel. Everyone knows that. I've been around the world in eighty days, and then some. Ok, maybe not eighty days. But why? I like to learn new languages, and I'm good at it. I like to stare at strange people and strange things, which, as it turns out, I do quite well in my own country as well. I like to have interesting experiences. My boyfriend asked me the other day what exactly it was that I wanted to do with my life, space camp not being a suitable enough answer. I couldn't really answer him. I want to be interesting, I said. I want to do interesting things.  

As I was retelling one of the more infamous stories from my most recent foray into the unknown, it occurred to me that I like telling the tall tales of my enterprises almost as much, if not more, as I like having them. (Everything just seems a lot funnier when you're not staring death in the face.) 

I went to Asia. I came home. I went back again, came back again. Having said everything that I've just said, and faced with the strong likelihood that I will return to the East just one more time, I thought it was due time that I wrote something on here about my ten weeks traveling through Indochina - a land full of monks, motorcycles and Mekong-related misadventures.

Things to do in Bangkok when you're Bored.

...and stuck in the city due to mass anti-government protests.

-Shop.
-Gorge on street food.
-Visit temples.
-Make friends with Israelis, because there are arguably more Israelis in Thailand than Thai people.
-Visit some more temples.
-Swim in the pool at a hotel that is not yours.
-Sweat.
-Drink ice cold alcohol out of buckets, despite warnings about ice in tropical countries. Damned Hepatitis.
-Wander around the city on the public bus, which is free for unknown reasons.
-Reconcile with your best friend.
-Sweat some more.

For more information about what's going on in Thailand right now, check out the following link, or be un-lazy and check the news yourself.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7590357.stm

I may have forgotten to mention that I was going to Thailand. I'm in Thailand. The end.

Spring Scream 2008: On beaches, shade and music.

April 6, 2008.

On music: This weekend was a long weekend in honor of Tomb Sweeping Day, otherwise known as Taiwanese spring break, otherwise known as Spring Scream, Taiwan's biggest (only) outdoor music festival, which is marked by the descent of Taiwanese and foreign youth alike upon Kenting and its surroundings in a frenzy of music, alcohol, drugs and not very much clothing. I had hoped for body paint, but was disappointed. Unlike Coachella, which I attended in California last year at about this time, I was not at Spring Scream to see any band in particular, except for my friend Chris' band, which I missed, because I got there too late and didn't know that his band was playing under a different name because they didn't have a performance visa and would have been deported if they had played under their own name. How the name swap makes a difference is beyond me, but in any case, we made it to one whole evening of the three day festival because we were preoccupied with the beach (see below) and saw some cool bands whose names we will never remember. I love music. I love live music. I love live music when it's outdoors and it's beautiful and when there are sparkly masks and butterfly wings involved. 

On shade: I got to Kenting on Thursday afternoon and got a bed at the dive center, for no reason other than that I was too lazy to pitch my tent. I spent the afternoon on the beach and made friends with some amicable Americans who bought me beer all night despite the fact that it was blatantly clear that neither of them stood a chance of sleeping with me. Chivalry is not dead after all, it seems. On Friday I hung out with them and allowed them to feed me beer as of 10 am (it's beer o'clock somewhere, they insisted) until Renata, Roisin, Rachel, Jimmy and Scott arrived in the early afternoon. We set up camp on a gorgeous, empty beach (kind of empty - I think technically it belongs to a resort but we were pretty far away from it), made a campfire, and proceeded to get too drunk to get our timing right and ended up missing all of the shows. We did manage to wander into town for a bit and Jimmy and Scott attempted to see Rza at a resort, but Rza was a no-show - who would have thought that southern Taiwan wouldn't be on his itinerary? (Fat Joe was subsequently a no-show the following night as well) We agreed to preserve our energy and go big or go home on Saturday and went to bed at 2:30, not realizing how soon we would be rising from our peaceful slumbers. Our beach was paradise; arguably the nicest place I've ever camped  - the bluest of blue waters, soft white sand and not a soul, save for maybe a fisherman with a glow in the dark fishing rod, in sight. But there was no shade. Not even a little bit. Nowhere to run if it got too hot. Which it did. So when the sun started ferociously beating down on our tents at 6 a.m., there was no escape and we were up for the day. So word to the wise - when selecting a campsite, make sure there is some shade-facilitating shrubbery and save the saunas for after the gym. 

On beaches: Many of my most important memories, good and bad, have taken place on the beach. Last night was one of the best nights I have had in Taiwan and it took place on Dawan beach in Kenting. After the shows wrapped up at 2, the girls went to bed and the boys and I headed to the beach. It was chaos. There were people everywhere, fireworks being set off dangerously close to people's faces, and more substance abuse than humanly necessary. Also ugly white guys making out with beautiful Taiwanese girls. Jimmy went off and did his thing, and Scott and I decided that it was friends-making time. We laced our way through groups of party-goers exchanging greetings in poorly-toned Chinese until we found ourselves a taker, settling down with a rowdy group of Taiwanese twenty-somethings who took turns taking pictures of us, told Scott he was handsome, told me I was beautiful, and gave us beer. We didn't understand each other but we didn't let that get in the way of what sounded like many good jokes. We made friends with two big guys from Ghana who were both named Larry, and put sand in the pockets of a French dude who was passed out in the sand. At 5 the DJs started setting up and by 530 the beach was bumping; it was surreal. Scott and I made the semi-conscious decision to leave at about 6, in order to feign an attempt at some sleep, but it was a touch choice. We wanted to leave before our bodies started to hurt and get tired and we didn't want to be there anymore, but as we drove down the road which should have been quiet, people were still streaming towards the beach. We had a hard time locating our campsite, because we were still unnecessarily intoxicated. Once we found it, it was unquestionably morning - we had a good laugh and went to bed. I got about 45 minutes of sleep in before the sauna-like conditions started closing in on me, at which point I took my sarong outside of the tent and passed out face first in the sand, using the shadow of the tent as my shade. It didn't work, and I didn't sleep, but I'm pretty sure it was worth it. 

Dawan circa 5 a.m. The author is torn between her desire to live a normal, productive and meaningful life and her desire to hang out on the beach forever. 

On being home.

I called my best friend yesterday and asked her if she'd like to join me for dinner and some early evening shopping. "How do you plan on shopping," she said, "stores here close at 5!" This notion confused me, as do many other things about being home, such as the fact that I can drink the tap water and flush the TP. 

I've been home for roughly a week. It's cold here, both literally and figuratively. I am overwhelmed by the variety of white people, black people, Indian people, and generally non-Taiwanese people. I am experiencing serious aural overload - I've become so used to being surrounded by the Chinese chatter that I learned to block out that having to process the noise pollution that comes from the plethora of conversations being held on the subway in a multitude of languages that I can understand is simply mind-boggling. Worse even is the fact that not only can I understand what other people are saying all the time, they can understand me. This can be problematic when calling people fat ugly cows with bad fake orange tans when they're sitting at the table next to you. I'm so getting beat up this summer. 

Despite the fact that deep down I know that leaving Taiwan when I did was the right decision, I miss it dearly already. Things that I miss include, but are not limited to:

-danbing

-my danbing lady who let me hold her baby while she prepared my breakfast

-beer, cigarettes and food which are so cheap that they're pretty much giving them away

-my proximity to the beach and my permatan

-KTV

-typhoons, earthquakes, and holding Rachel's hand during earthquakes

-the wide array of men that made for extremely bizarre dating experiences

-my kids (not all of them, but the cute ones, for sure)

-having a forum in which to use my limited Chinese vocabulary which includes words and phrases such as "turn right", "cold beer", "I am an english teacher", "I think papaya tastes disgusting", and "I don't understand." 

-my wonderful and amazing if slightly insane friends

Having said this, it should be noted that it's been excellent to see my wonderful and amazing if slightly less insane friends from home, as well as my family. I've been welcomed back into the fold with open arms and it's reassuring to know that I have people in my life who I can be separated from for weeks, months and years at a time and nothing changes other than maybe our hair colors (and even then, not really) and every so often, our boyfriends, and really, that's just me. It might take some time for me to get used to certain Canadian idiosyncrasies, like the existence of traffic regulations, but as far as people go - it's like I never left. 

You say hello, I say Bye Bye

Guilted by Alan's accusation that I haven't updated my blog in eons, (justifiably, because he's likely the only one who reads it anyway) I have decided to try and cram my last five months in Taiwan into as few words as possible and am committing the next few days of my glorious unemployment to this task, or at least the next few minutes. I arrived back in Canada about three days ago and am currently experiencing symptoms of introspection, detoxification, and severe reverse culture shock. 

The Taiwan era has ended, as short-lived as it was. I decided that rather than spend my last weekend at the bar, I would fit in one last adventure, so on Friday night Rachel, Roisin, Durgham, Scott and I boarded a ferry at 11 pm en route to the Penghu Islands. We had third class outdoor seating, but like on the Titanic, us commoners have more fun anyway. At around 3 am we realized that we had misunderstood our tickets and actually had reclining seats in the air-conditioned indoor cabins, so Roisin and Rachel headed there, and the boys and I tried to find unoccupied berths in the people-who-like-to-pay-more-s0-they-can-lie-down section. Durgham found one and peaced out right away, and Scott and I found a room with two beds but were informed via hand signals that one of them was taken by a boozehound who was still out consuming pijo, so being the gentleman that I am, I let Scott take the bed and went to find the girls, only to not find them at all, or my seat. I found an empty seat and dozed off with people eating chicken feet all around me. I woke up about 40 minutes later to discover that the girls had slept on the floor on the deck outside, it was 6 am, and we still weren't there. 

Upon arrival in Penghu we wandered the streets until we found breakfast, a hotel, and a scooter rental shop that would rent us scooters without licenses. Penghu is a chain of islands connected by the Great Penghu Bridge, not to be confused with the Not-So-Spectacular Penghu Bridge, and we spent the rest of the weekend zipping along, finding new beaches to swim at, jellyfish to sting us, and children to throw mud at. As I sat on the back of Scott's scooter with the wind blowing through my hair and Scott's back sweat spreading onto the front of my shirt, I took in the skittle-green hills and the blue-raspberry-gatorade-colored waters and started to wonder if I was going to regret leaving...

It was a nice send-off; I have incredible friends. I probably will. 

Chinese New Year 2008

We decided last week to take advantage of our Chinese New Year holiday to explore some of the sights of Taiwan. I'll try to summarize best I can but this might be a longish post that you might not finish, but I'm going to write it anyway because I know there are at least 1 or 2 that will. For those who do make it to the end, I will reveal to you the meaning of life.

Part 1: Taipei

We left Kaohsiung on Saturday and bussed it to Taipei, sharing the back row of the Ubus with a Taiwanese dude whose sleeping arrangement of preference was resting comfortably on Roisin's chest, but who sensed that this wasn't working out for her and kindly moved away after a while. We got to Taipei at 3 and after circling Main Station 3 or 4 times found Renata and subsequently our hotel. We spent the afternoon wandering around 2/28 Peace Park (it was peaceful) and bumping into people we knew from KHH. We got dumplings from the angry dumpling lady, had some chills in our hotel and then headed out to get insatiably lost in search for dinner, ending up at a pub called the Brass Monkey where we befriended our Hongkongese waiter Gary who gave us free magnets and sorted out the rest of our evening for us (i.e., wrote down the addy of the club we were going to in Chinese so as to avoid further getting-lost-age) We made it to Room 18, a swank club in the basement of a shopping mall, and it was kind of a scene out of The City Mouse and the Country Mouse - we felt a little like bumkins, coming to Taipei from Kaohsiung, but we loved every minute of it, from the surprisingly great looking Taiwanese men to the slutty underage girls. We abandoned ship at the point where it became so crowded that we couldn't walk 5 feet without being separated, stood around in the rain outside the 7/11 for a while, talked to a really drunk girl who told us that we sucked, hopped in a cab and continued our party in our room.

The next day we headed to the National Palace Museum, the highlight of which was definitely the true-to-life-form jade carving of a stalk of bokchoy cabbage, got a bus to Yangmingcheng National Park for some freezing cold hiking (it was 12 degrees - the travesty!) and formed the "I Hate Rachel Hoffman Fan Club", of which I am president. That was all.

Part 2: Hualien/Taroko

On Monday we caught the train to Hualien where we were greeted by the lovely Yan-Cheng who escorted us to our hostel, which was a gem even though our room didn't have real walls and it sometimes smelled like cat litter in the morning. It was raining, for the third day in a row, and of course I hadn't packed my $120 MEC raincoat, so I purchased a child-sized yellow poncho from the 7/11 and braved the weather in style. Found some curry fried rice and a temple, and called it a day. That night we hit up the "All Star Live House", a.k.a. the Only Bar in Town, for some dirty pub food and live music - little did we know that this would be our first of three nights there. The last night they gave us glowsticks to thank us for our devotion.

On Tuesday we rode the bus up to Tiansiang with the home-schooled polygamist family that was staying in our hostel. The bus smelled faintly of sausages and I had to pee the whole time but the view was spectacular so I couldn't complain. We hiked Taroko Gorge for about 5 hours and hitched down when we were ready to leave. Robyn and I were picked up by 4 very nice Taiwanese people in a sweet SUV who kept saying , "Yilan, Yilan!", which is a town in Hualien county that we had bypassed on our journey. I thought that they were suggesting that we visit Yilan, and even went so far as to draw them a map of Taiwan in the air, tracing out our itinerary with my finger and assuring them that while I was sure that Yilan was very beautiful, we weren't going to make it there this time around. Upon the realization that what they really meant was that they were GOING to Yilan, now, I got them to drop us in Taroko proper, because we didn't want to go to Yilan with them, and got an expensive taxi back to Hualien.

Our last night in Hualien was Chinese New Year. Everything was closed, and the town was pretty quiet. We made our own fun. It must be noted that having a firecracker set off under your ass does not feel very good.

Part 3 - Kenting

After all this we took the train to Fongliao and then headed down to Kenting for some sun, beer, food, campfires, meat on sticks, street games, and banana boating. It was glorious. There were copious amounts of young Taiwanese couples wearing matching outfits and families of 6 riding around on scooters. We had a serious sand-burying session and we let Taiwanese tourists construct sand breasts with firecracker nipples for Rachel and then take pictures of her in exchange for snacks. Kenting is always awesome, but the highlight of this trip there was definately running into my neighbor from third year on the beach. He lives here too. It's a small freaking world.

Back in Kaohsiung, we arrived home to find that our cat had gained five pounds and desperately needed to be neutered and that we had to go back to work. This was less fun than frolicking around our beautiful island. Life is back to normal now, busy, and wonderful. My parents arrived a few days ago for a two week visit - a whole new kind of adventure for me. More soon.

Because I'm too lazy to post pictures from the trip up here, please do check out the following links:

http://carletoncanada.facebook.com/album.php?aid=14655&l=8c3af&id=510248077

http://carletoncanada.facebook.com/album.php?aid=14668&l=357f5&id=510248077

Oh...and the meaning of life is, obviously, cookies.

Teacher Joanna

At the risk of sounding like a big block of cheese - perhaps of the brie variety; baked even, by Jane Park maybe... - I think yesterday may have been the day that I became a good teacher. I don't know why and I don't know how, but I thought that I should record the sentiment before it is lost and I go back to screaming at children.

The Taiwan Ex-Pat Mitzvah Moment.

What would you do if you found a stranger sleeping on a mat outside a bar? First, you'd probably try and put him in a cab. Upon realization that said stranger had no money, no identification, and no idea where he lived or was staying, would you feed him to the wolves?

In most cases, the answer would be yes. My mother taught me never to talk to strangers. In North American culture we have been conditioned to be afraid of the unfamiliar. In Taiwan, if the unfamiliar speaks your language, that's sometimes be good enough for you. The ex-pat community here is pretty tight and goes to great lengths to help each other out in many ways. 

"Can I call you Tina Fey?" the guy sitting next to me asked, "because you're funny, you're hot, and you look like a secretary I want to have sex with." What a winner. I graciously ignored this half-assed attempt at flattery. He wandered off into the night, to slur his words in someone else's direction, I assumed. An hour or so later, I got a tap on the shoulder. "Is that your friend in the striped shirt?" Of course not. "Because he's passed out on the ground outside." Shit.

He had been abandoned by his friends and when we brought him inside to try and figure things out, the only responses he could give to our questions were, "I like apples," and "stop treating me like an immigrant!" We paper-scissor-stoned who got to take him home and put him up for the night. Nathaniel lost. After changing his mind about having an overnight guest, Rachel and I took this poor bloke from Saskatchewan and put him on our couch. When I emerged from my room at 2 the next afternoon, he was gone. Our TV and all other expensive household items were still there. We'll never see this kid again, and it was probably a pretty stupid idea to bring him home in the first place, but I'd like to think that someone out there would do the same thing for me if I were ever to allow myself to be put in such a situation, which I would never, of course. (Hi, mom.)

In any case, I think I've done my good deed for the week. Some would call it a mistake, some would call it a mitzvah. I think Mike, Rachel, Henry, Nathaniel and I are entitled to some good karma come our way soon.

Christmas

Christmas has always been a strange time of year for me. Being that I'm Jewish, when I was a kid and even my Jewish best friend got to celebrate Christmas with her mom's side of the family, I always found December 25th cold, lonely, and boring. It was like a happy made for tv movie; everyone around me was starring in it, and I was the production assistant who brought sandwiches and cookies to the director and the crew and then went to get them coffee and got locked out of the studio. This is no longer the case - I am definitely a big part of Christmas now, and Christmas is a big part of me. I look forward to going to Andrea and Darin's house every year to exchange gifts, avoid eating sauerkraut, and be witness to how good Anna and Aidan are becoming at serving John beer.

Last year I started to become fascinated with how Christmas might be celebrated in other parts of the world - a strange fixation for the little Jewish girl from Montreal to adopt, I know. In Vanuatu it's surely very different, I thought, because it's much much too warm there for Santa to wear that big red suit. Do they even know who Santa is? Do the children believe in him? The Hallmark holiday that it has become in North America, do they exchange gifts, or maybe just pigs? Where do they buy their cards if all that is sold at the co-op is canned vegetables, rice, and individual Peter Jackson cigarettes? These are all things I hope to find out one day.

In Taiwan, Christmas isn't a holiday. Technically December 25th is "Constitution Day" (also, yet to find out what this means) and it used to be a statutory holiday but it is no longer. Buxibans such as mine have the option of giving their teachers a day off. My students are all very well trained to sing carols such as "We Wish you a Merry Christmas" and "Jingle Bells", but none of them know what the words mean. They came to class on the 24th all decked out in red and green and white and sparkles, but in all essence the 25th is a regular day for them. They go to school, they go home, they don't get presents and they don't have big meals with their families.

We, on the other hand, celebrated Christmas as if it was our job. On Christmas eve we gathered at my friend Sara's house with turkeys and stuffing and mashed potatoes and wine and vodka and presents. We stuffed our faces with Christmas goodness and exchanged silly gifts - I received a giant ceramic monkey bank. We had a big sleepover and no one woke up alone on Christmas morning. We moved our party over to another friend's house where we spent the day continuing to stuff our faces, this time with brunch food and champagne, and sitting out in the sun on the roof enjoying the view of the Kaohsiung harbor. I know that we were all missing our families, and the snow, a little bit, but getting to spend this day with our Taiwan family was a damn good second prize.

Tell Santa what you want for Christmas.

Hanging out on the roof.

Christmas sunset.

An Ode to my Cell Phone

Oh, how I miss you, my pretty pink phone,
Without you by my side I'm so very alone.
I never intended for you to get hurt when you were in the back pocket
Of my very small skirt.
It took me a minute to know you were gone
When I emerged from the taxi and it was past dawn.
No alarm clock, no stopwatch, no texting, no calls.
No one to talk with, I'm climbing the walls.
A week without contact can make one go crazy;
Or, even worse - antisocial and lazy.
Now I've paid to replace you and it wasn't so cheap
And I'll pray to the cell phone gods that this one I'll keep.
My new phone has GPS, it's fancy, it's black -
But I'll always long my first pink phone back!

***

In a drunken fit last weekend, I got so caught up in trying to distinguish "turn right" from "turn left" in a taxi that I was not aware that I left my phone in the backseat when I got out. Or at least I think that's what happened. In any case, it was a devastating experience and I thought I would try my hand at poetry as a medium of expressing my feelings about the loss of dear Motorola. I'm not very good.

Important answers to Important questions.

Answers to some questions about my life courtesy of my Auntie Margie. Feel free to add questions, and I will try and come up with mildly interesting answers.

1. Have you made a Taiwanese friend?

Most of my friends are Canadian - there are so many Canadians in Taiwan and I think the majority of them congregate in Kaohsiung. There's even a neighborhood called Little Canada. Having said this, I have some American, British, and South African friends as well, and also some Taiwanese friends. One of my close friends is Rose, a Taiwanese woman in her early forties who doubles as my Chinese teacher and who can party like it's 1999. She is the best thing to have happened to foreigners in this city in a long time because without even having to ask her she will help you with anything you could possibly need. I think she reads minds. My other Taiwanese friends include Casey, a rocking chick who works at another big English school, and Lulu, a travel agent slash waitress who works at my favorite bar. My school consists of half foreign teachers, and half Chinese teachers, but we don't really kick it after hours because they're very Christian, and I don't want to go to baptisms, even if they are on the beach.

The lovely Rose Sullivan.

2. What is the content of your classes?

I teach a wide range of students; my babies are about 4 years old and still don't know how to ask to go to the bathroom, and I have 17 year olds in my highest level class. I teach all sorts of things. The curriculum is standardized by the language school I work for but I have some degree of flexibility. In the lower levels we teach a lot of vocabulary, phonics and sentence patterns: "What is it? It is a blablabla..." In my higher level classes we get to cover some interesting topics and I've chatted with them about everything from sex to politics to reggae music. Last week we covered character adjectives and they described me as "outgoing, sociable, strict (pfft!), disorganized, and absent-minded. They are smart little fuckers.

Some of my kids on Halloween.

3. What do you eat if not stinky tofu?

There are many interesting things to eat here. Not eating meat or seafood can be problematic at times and the rest of the time it just makes me feel pretty stodgy. The coolest things I have seen people eat here include, but are not limited to, fish eyeballs, cuttlefish on a stick, jellyfish, and "sea tongue" flavored empanadas. You can get most of these things at the night markets. My diet consists largely of beer and fried things - rice, noodles, vegetables, eggs, and cheese, and in the three months that I have been here I have lost ten pounds.

On one of our first nights here, Ben, Rachel and I ate at Lai Lai, this quasi outdoor eatery near my school that has become a regular hangout. They insisted that instead of having the friendly wait staff barbecue their food for them, they would do it themselves. The chicken was dead when we put it on the grill. The shrimp was not.



4. What kind of bed do you have?

Perhaps you are all imagining me sleeping on the ground, Japanese style - that would be pretty cool, but sadly there isn't much of interest to say about my bedroom. It consists of a twin bed (which is small even for me, but for the most part I am sleeping in it alone so I put up with it) a desk, an air conditioner, and a closet. We had quite a bit of trouble buying sheets because despite the fact we have Ikea, Ikea is still in Chinese, so we both bought two top sheets. I cut one of mine up to make my Halloween costume.

5. What is the weather like at this time of year?

Funny story. Our friend Robyn, who just arrived in Taiwan two weeks ago, was eager to take a trip to Kenting (see earlier post) this weekend - and when she mentioned it to us, everyone told her that she best wait until the "cold spell" passes, because the beach is nicer when it's warmer out. Today, it was a solid 24 degrees out. Sometimes it's chilly at night. The other day, I had to wear socks and shoes - insert horrified face here - and a hoodie at night. This is as bad as it gets.

A note about pictures.

So, in case we hadn't figured this out already, I am almost, if not completely, computer illiterate. I am trying to find a way to integrate pictures into my posts in a cohesive kind of way but am not quite there yet. I can't even figure out how to insert a photo into my profile. So, having said this, if anyone wants to help me, you know where I am.

This post is supposed to mildly excuse why my posts don't look as pretty as I do.

Scooter Blues.

I cannot drive a scooter yet. This is lame.

I don't know how to ride a bike. This is also lame. Last but not least, my car driving abilities leave something to be desired, and while I do have my boating license, that isn't going to help me much here. The chosen mode of transportation is the zippy little scooter. I am terrified of it. Everything about it makes me ache inside. I am horrified of what I might do to myself or, more importantly, to society as a whole, whilst driving one of those things. Sadly, what this has meant for me thus far is a slight restriction of my freedom, considering that I have been condemned to walk or taxi everywhere or to be at the mercy of my roomate or any other person who might wish to give me a ride. Sometimes while I walk, and I am the only one walking, I look around me at the hoards of people flying by on their scooters and they look like little ants. I feel like an outcast.

These are but a few of the things that have or could happen to a person on a scooter. I'm not saying that I have done all of these things, only some.

1. One could, while trying to learn how to ride it, crash it into a row of parked scooters and knock them all over. Also into a parked car. Oops.
2. One could drive into a wall. This was not me. This was Rachel.
3. One could ride with a very cute but not sober enough boy, turn the corner, and wipe out, ending up crushed underneath his scooter.
4. One could only but mildly avert a collision with a stray black dog (ironically, the name of my favorite bar here...) only to slam on one's brakes and be thrown off, losing multiple chunks of skin in the process. Also Rachel.
5. One could come face to face with the side of a giant truck that turned the corner when it didn't have the right of way and didn't care that your little self was in the way.
6. After said encounter with giant scary truck one could run out of gas on the side of the road and have to walk one's scooter to the nearest gas station, crossing through an incredibly large and frightening intersection.
7. All jokes aside, serious things can happen. Riding a scooter can be dangerous if you're not careful and don't have your wits about you. 

With regards to number 6: Rachel's gas gage is f**d, despite the fact that she got it fixed, or so she thought. She has run out of gas while driving three times, which is no fun if you don't know where a gas station is and don't speak chinese well enough to ask for one. The other night, on our way home from the movies, we again heard the "put..put..put.....shiiiit" sound with which we had become too familiar. Not knowing where to find a gas station, we did what any other sensible girl would do: we walked to a nearby bar where our friends were congregated, had a few beers and a caesar salad, bought a water bottle, and Rachel had a friend give her a lift to a gas station where she filled the bottle up with petrol and then rode back to her bike and filled it up while I stayed at the bar and chatted with a cute boy. Everything works out in the end, doesn't it?

I never thought, in a million years, that I would miss OC Transpo and the STCUM the way I do now.

I wear my sunglasses at night.

Kenting, November 2007.

We work 6 days a week. This might sound horrifying, but in all essence, it's not that bad, save for the fact that it makes exploring Taiwan a wee bit difficult. For the most part, one needs a few days to really make a little trip worth it - the word "express" in "express bus" is often deceiving.

This being the case, we decided anyway to head to Kenting (pronounced KenDING) after work last weekend. At 6:05 we were out the door of Kojen and headed to the bus station. At 6:20 we had boarded what we were assured was the express bus and eagerly anticipating a solid 24 hours of beachy goodness. We had several Taiwan beers in our bags and were just about to crack them in celebration of a day off work when we discovered that the bathroom on the bus was indeed locked and therefore this might not be the greatest idea. Almost three hours later it didn't matter if we had have consumed those beers or not...as the bus jolted to a stop every ten feet to let one or two people on or off, I was sure I was going to pee all over myself, or perhaps Rachel.

The bladder control project was worth it though - Kenting is Taiwan's resort town, on the southernmost tip of the island, and it is beautiful. We arrived at around 930 pm and headed straight to meet the rest of our friends at our hostel, otherwise known as the Kenting Dive Center, and then for dinner and drinks. We took a brief break from glorious overconsumption of all goods to purchase silly sunglasses, which we wore all night - from the restaurant, to the German owned pub where we were served by the cute Taiwanese surfer dude who played his Roxette CD for us to our hearts' contents, to the beach, where we sat until the wee hours of the morning singing girly campfire songs designed to accompany our illicit campfire. I don't think we were supposed to be on the beach period, and we were especially not supposed to be lighting fires next to flammable nature, but we feigned ignorance when the floral-shirt-clad security guard came to tell us to move our fire closer to the water. ("No Chinese," we insisted, even though we had Alfie and Lars, two of our Taiwanese friends, with us.)

Sara and Rachel

Lyndsey and Me - his dog wore shades too.

After hitting the hay around 5 am, I was abruptly awakened at 630 am by my friend's puppy eating my face, but fell quickly back into my peaceful slumber. We woke up later and lazily wandered down to South Bay Beach after a traditional American breakfast of toast, eggs, and daiquiris, and spent the day making new friends, exploring, and being pelted by sand. After the most delicious Thai meal I'd ever had, we reluctantly got back on the bus to head back to reality and back to Kaohsiung. I like Kaohsiung, don't get me wrong, but it is nothing compared to the turquoise waters and fresh air and kitschy tourism of Kenting. I can't wait to go back.

Nanwan.

Normal is Relative, anyway.

Saturday, October 6, 2007 – I don’t know what Day it is anymore – time to stop counting.

So much for my commitment of writing every day. Things have drastically improved in Kaohsiung – it’s amazing how much of a difference a solid group of friends and a new apartment can make in one’s life. We now live with a Costa Rican named Keylor in a brand new apartment at the corner of MeiShu 2nd E. Road and MeiShu 3rd Street. Or something. It is spacious and clean, with a gorgeous view of the Love River, the downtown city core, and Monkey Mountain. We only pay $140 CAD a month. Golden. Rachel has a scooter – I am still looking. I have started teaching; thankfully I am not as awkward at it as I am at most other things in life (pool, bowling, scooter-riding, etc.) I don’t want to go home when I wake up in the morning.

It’s strange how quickly one accepts certain normalcies (my Macbook is telling me that this isn’t a word…let’s roll with it anyway) Going to bed at 3 am and getting up at 1…normal. Chocolate and strawberry flavored cheese, eggs soaked in tea, smoking in bars, riding a scooter to work, saying “Neehao!” to my doorman (I have a doorman!) every night, sending absurd amounts of text messages because it’s cheaper than calling, all normal. Typhoons: normal. I was terrified that I wouldn’t ever adapt to life here, but in so many ways it’s really just like home, but the people are Asian and the writing on all the signs is all in Chinese. I saw a woman on the MRT in Taipei who reminded me of Auntee Judy. We have Subway, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Ikea, and Costco. Everything here is very modern and efficient; I am amazed every day at how many things make so much more sense here than at home, except for the movie theaters – we went to see Evan Almighty the other night and had to wait in line for almost ten minutes to buy tickets, and there was only one person in front of us. The ticket counter was the same as the concession stand which was on a different floor than the theater itself, and we had assigned seats in a nearly empty viewing room – I guess not too many Taiwanese people feel the need to see Steve Carrell as Noah in a language that they don’t speak.

Last night we found out that today Taiwan was going to be hit with a “Super Typhoon”, so all of our classes were canceled. We went out and spent the money we would have made getting stupendously drunk (that’s a lie…it was $9 for an all you can drink entrance ticket, and we lost precisely $120 today by not working…eesh. Time for me to start getting paid…) so today has been a cozy, rainy day. I don’t think Rachel has emerged from her room yet, and I have been relaxing, writing, reading, and enjoying being inside while the wind rages outside. It’s raining horizontally, if that’s even possible. My Douglas Coupland novel has provoked me to start reveling about my life – the protagonist in the book that I’m reading is in his thirties and is what I guess you would call your typical screw-up with a lack of direction. It occurred to me that I don’t have much direction either, and while I’m thoroughly enjoying getting there, could it be possible that I will end up as one of those archetypal twenty-somethings who moves back in with their parents because they don’t know what else to do with themselves and have blown all of the money that their friends seem to have for houses and cars on things such as drugs, (not me) booze, (ok, me) and oh, I don’t know, travels throughout Central America, Asia and the Pacific?? I have no idea what I want to do with myself, but I do take pride in the fact that for the most part I live in the here and the now and don’t think too much farther ahead of what I want to do for dinner, speaking of which...I'm pretty sure I can hear a large plate of fried rice and koh shing tsai (tasty green veggies to you) calling my name...

September 26, 2007

I suppose it’s a good thing that I haven’t written anything in three days, even though I plan to practice writing every day while I’m here. It means I have had other things to do. We have been apartment hunting and trying to get ourselves in order. We still need phones, and scooters, but are close-ish to apartmental success. We may move into Tye and Antoinette’s apartment in the north – it seems like our best bet at the moment. I need to feel comfortable here, and the other places we have seen don’t work for me, and if they do, don’t work for Rachel. They have to work for both of us. I will feel so much happier once we are more settled, even if it means I have to walk 45 minutes to work because I can’t make a scooter go straight.

Yesterday was Moon Festival, a celebration of the Autumn equinox (I think) so we had the day off, and Rach, Brieanna, Jon and I took off for the day to Little Liouchiou Island. We caught a
bus to Donggang and then a ferry to the island, on which we were given the VIP treatment and allowed to sit in the captain’s quarters, even if this meant nearly losing our McDonald’s breakfasts all over the floor.When we got to the island we were immediately overwhelmed by tiny little Chinese women trying to get us to rent scooters from them, to which we eventually ceded because one of them chased us down so persistently that we managed to haggle her down to 350 NT for two scooters for the day, which is
a pretty solid deal.

The island is tiny, and we were able to get around it on the scooters in
about 30 minutes. It was beautiful, the pollution and noise and crowds of the city left behind, I felt like I was in South East Asia at last. We weren’t too far though – you can still see the 85 building and Monkey Mountain in Kaohsiung from the north coast of the island, and there was still KTV; I guess there is KTV everywhere. Jon gave us scooter lessons, at which Rachel excelled, and I failed miserably. I’m a little worried I’m not going to get the hang of it and will be doomed to a year of walking and cabbing and inconvenience, but I’m going to try a 50 instead of a 125 and hopefully things will go better. If not, I’m already prepared to write the email entitled “death by scooter” – it should be a good one.







I haven’t been sleeping well, but after 2 nights of non-sleep and a full day of activity, I was ready for it. Ben came by to watch a movie and left after thanking us for propping him up during it, because we both passed out hard and my body was finally afforded the good night’s rest it deserves.