Taiwan!

Taiwan is a great place. It’s actually my new

favorite country. We’ll see how South Korea goes... Everyone is very nice. They all want to help out. You can do what you want as long as you don’t step on any toes. They might drive extremely crazy, but there’s no road rage! Not as many rules. Maybe this is not always the case, but I see it since I’m a foreigner.

The people of Taiwan look at us like we’re famous or something. No joke. Of coarse we look very different than them. They don’t have as much

diversity as we do in the States. They ask to have their picture taken with us and want to talk to us.

After talking to some of the girls, I concluded that they have this crazy impression of us based on what they see on TV and in movies. I guess that’s cool with me. It’s better than being hated.

We landed in Taipei at about 11 p.m. Taiwan time. This was after 18 hours of travel time. It’s not a short commute. I was so excited to be there that my smiling muscles were sore! We took a bus and taxi to get to our hostel. The taxi driver didn’t know any English, so he just pointed at where we needed to get out. We didn’t see the hostel. All we saw were miles of apartments. We wondered around asking, “Do you speak English? Do you know where this is?” No one knew. The guy at 7 11 was nice enough to leave the store and walk around with us trying to find it. After an hour and a half of being lost we found a small sign that pointed us in the right direction. Time to sleep. I had been up for two and a half days just taking naps.

It’s not easy at first to find your way around a foreign country. It’s amazing though how quickly you learn! After 10 days in Taiwan, I feel like I could find anything with out too much problem.

Cameron and I spent a few days in Taipei. We were told not to go to Southern Taiwan because of a typhoon that hit the country right before we arrived. Taipei was fine. The typhoon had stopped most forms of transportation. The news was covered with stories of buildings floating down rivers and people loosing their homes. The wind was not the problem; it was the quantity of rain. In the three days of the storm, Taiwan beat their records for the most amount of rain. The Taiwanese people feel that the government has not done enough to help with the disaster. Sounds familiar? The U.S. brought in helicopters to aid with the disaster. One guy thanked us profusely for our assistance, like Cameron and I had anything to do with it.

The first thing that we toured was Tower 101, which was the tallest building in the world. I’m not sure what building is now. The view was amazing. We saw some temples, museums, Club Wax, etc. We only saw maybe two bars! The Taiwanese don’t have a culture of drinking as much as we do. They find other things to do. We’d have a beer at a restaurant and realize that we are the only ones drinking! Not to say they don’t drink.

There are many hot springs in Taiwan. Cameron and I got yelled at by about 20 old men. Cameron was in the hot pool. He got a little hot so decided to sit on the edge. He got yelled at and he didn’t know why. They politely pulled him into the water. We found a sign that said, “Don’t dangle feet in the water, creates bad circulation. Very dangerous for health.” Whatever. Then I splashed some water on my face. They all were pissed. I guess it’s unhealthy to have your head in contact with the water. I infected the water. Whatever.

Lots of people wear masks. Even out in the country. The women even have fancy designer masks. It’s very strange to me. They are very scared for their health and the health of others. I’m not a doctor, but I doubt that a moist mask on your face filled with germs is a good thing.

Our next destination was Green Island. The trains were back to full service the day we had to go south. The train ride was a long 6 hours through the night. There were more people on the train than there were seats. We had one guy sleeping behind our seats on the floor for a couple of hours. Very strange. We arrived in Taitung and didn’t know where to go from there. We were told someone would meet us there and take us to the boat for Green Island. No one was there, no one knew English, and we were out in the countryside. We lucked out though. This very nice couple, Eric and Wienie helped us out. Eric spoke English very well. He spoke with some people and got everything figured out. He even got some money back for us! Thanks Eric!

We got to Green Island and soon realized that there were no ATM’s on the island. The internet cable lines were destroyed by the typhoon. Cameron was scared they’d break our knee caps and we would starve. We didn’t have any money for the hotel. Ha! Not the case. The owner of the hotel said, “No problem! How much money do you want?” He was our Taiwanese father. Whenever we needed money, we just asked. He gave us the license plate number of one of his friends that lived on mainland Taiwan. When we got off the boat, we found the taxi with the right license plate number, and got a ride with a guy to an ATM to pay our bill. I want to say they are extremely trusting people, which they are, but who knows who was watching us. $600 American dollars ($300 each) got us about $100 bucks in spending money, two scooters, two days of SCUBA diving for me and 1 day of snorkeling for Cameron, breakfast on our first day, 3 nights in the hotel, two boat rides, a one hour taxi ride, and his wife did our laundry by hand! Wow, what a deal. They were all very nice too.

SCUBA diving and snorkeling was awesome. I could spend a whole week watching the fish. One fish was very interested in me. He kept swimming to the back of my head where I couldn’t see him. He bit my ear! It didn’t hurt, but it sure scared me. He followed me around for a while. I also saw a deadly snake in the ocean. It swam past me and didn’t care that I was there.

To top things off, we woke up one morning on the island to an earthquake. It lasted about 15 seconds, nothing to cry about. I thought it was cool! Never experienced one.

Many people that live out in the country chew on beetle nuts. “Taiwanese peanut” as our taxi driver put it. It can be bought anywhere for really cheap. It messes up your teeth. It makes your teeth turn black and red. You see red stains on the ground everywhere from people spitting red. I asked the taxi driver if I could try one. It didn’t burn or taste like anything special at first. Then when I stood up, I got this crazy blood rush and high. Woah! I’ll never do that again. I see why people get addicted to it. They smoke it too. They dip their cigarettes in it to get a buzz.

Finally the day came to leave Taiwan. Very sad. We got to the airport and found out that we could not get to our extra bags. We traveled Taiwan with backpacks. We had left our luggage at the airport. They had already loaded the luggage on the plane to South Korea. We needed to transfer some things that we had in our backpacks to the check-in luggage. It wasn’t going to happen. We had to give our bad things to the airport security. It was pretty embarrassing. I had found numchucks on the beach, Cameron had a knife, and I had a bottle of whiskey. The numchucks really freaked out the Taiwanese security. We had a hard time telling them that we were not intending to bring them on the plane. Funny s**t. They let Cameron keep his knife and check it in. The whisky and numchucks… I hope they found a good home. On to Korea…