Taipei: First Impressions

Finally! I’ve been here a grand total of 8 hours and finally feel a little bit less dizzy, so I’m able to write something up about the short adventure thus far and I have a few first impressions. Sadly, there are no photos just yet. I’m pretty bad about that. I tend to take in too much with my eyes and use nothing to document it for others.

But a couple things:

1) The Taiwanese are really okay with small spaces. Truly. Our hostel room, while very clean and cozy, is ity bity. It’s about 12×8 at the most, if I had to eyeball it. But it has a bunk bed with leopard spot sheets and covers, which remind me of my sister, Bethany. Not only that, but everything is tight when you walk around the streets. The shops are reminiscent of my closets: everything packed in very tightly, with just enough room to grab what you need.

2) They love scooters. I was already told that there would be a lot of scooters, but when I heard/read that, it wasn’t emphasized enough. There may as well be a scooter show on every street. They crowd the streets and are much, much more plentiful than cars, buses, trucks, and bicycles. But they don’t stop at the roads. Many a time I’ve been passed on the sidewalk by someone riding their scooter. No one bats an eyelash at this onslaught of scooters, which makes Dave and I stand out even more than we already do when we gawk at them. Did I mention I’ve only seen one other non-Asian person since we’ve been here?

3) They can sleep anywhere. On our flight over, Dave and I struggled to fall asleep in our seats. At best, we had sporadic sleep, certainly never reaching the REM cycle. But all the other Asian passengers seemed to fall asleep instantaneously, some of them sleeping while sitting up very straight. While exploring our neighbourhood, I spotted a man on his parked scooter with his feet on the handlebars and leaned back, sleeping.

4) They are very friendly. While they are thus far not super eager to talk to us as foreigners, I suspect it might be because of their lack of English. Those who can speak English smile and say hello, and are very appreciative of any Mandarin we can muster (mostly, it’s been “thank-you” so far).

5) Stuff can be quite cheap. We found a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant for lunch called Milky, which served breakfast type dishes and tea. We paid for two iced green teas and two dishes (mine was a strange but cool meal: spaghetti in some sort of sauce with pepper and corn wrapped in scrambled egg, served with a couple potatoes), and the total came to about $3.25 CAD. Afterward, we stopped at the corner store and got 1 giant bottle of water, 2 big bottles of Chinese beer, one small container of milk tea (which tastes like Earl Grey tea with lots of sugar and milk), and a big bottle of fruit juice, all which came to around $4.00 CAD. Also, our transportation total from the airport (bus to bullet train to taxi) came to $16.50 CAD for the two of us. It’s nice to be in a city that is budget-traveller-friendly.

As for myself, I’m doing quite well and so is Dave. Both of us are jetlagged, dehydrated, and a bit assaulted by the air pollution, which, as one can imagine, is much stronger here than in Halifax, the closest city to us in Canada. But it’s nothing a good night’s sleep can’t cure.

Until next time! (And I will have photos.)

Stopover in LA

I want to make this a quick post today. I don’t feel like sitting around on the computer all day: I was staring at nothing but screens of some kind for five hours yesterday on our flight from Boston to LAX. When we arrived at our hotel – L.A. Adventurer Hotel – I was exhausted, but a trip to the bar fixed that. And let me just say, for the record, while it’s a bit cheesy, this hotel is extremely charming and clean. Trip Advisor was wrong, for once. I think it’s just a bit more relaxed for some people’s tastes.

We’re just trying to find something to do before we go to Project Blowed tonight, which doesn’t start until 10:00 this evening. Having not paid attention to our calendar, we forgot that today is Remembrance Day (Veteran’s Day in the U.S.), so there are very few places open, anyway. Oh well. A time to rest up and remember our vets.

image from carynmirriamgoldberg.wordpress.com

 

In the meantime, here is a hilarious, witty story that I found today. Hope you’ll enjoy:

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Cookies by Douglas Adams (author: “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”)

This actually did happen to a real person, and the real person was me. I had gone to catch a train. This was April 1976, in Cambridge, U.K. I was a bit early for the train. I’d gotten the time of the train wrong.

I went to get myself a newspaper to do the crossword, and a cup of coffee and a packet of cookies. I went and sat at a table.

I want you to picture the scene. It’s very important that you get this very clear in your mind.

Here’s the table, newspaper, cup of coffee, packet of cookies. There’s a guy sitting opposite me, perfectly ordinary-looking guy wearing a business suit, carrying a briefcase.

It didn’t look like he was going to do anything weird. What he did was this: he suddenly leaned across, picked up the packet of cookies, tore it open, took one out, and ate it.

Now this, I have to say, is the sort of thing the British are very bad at dealing with. There’s nothing in our background, upbringing, or education that teaches you how to deal with someone who in broad daylight has just stolen your cookies.

You know what would happen if this had been South Central Los Angeles. There would have very quickly been gunfire, helicopters coming in, CNN, you know. . . But in the end, I did what any red-blooded Englishman would do: I ignored it. And I stared at the newspaper, took a sip of coffee, tried to do a clue in the newspaper, couldn’t do anything, and thought, what am I going to do?

In the end I thought, nothing for it, I’ll just have to go for it, and I tried very hard not to notice the fact that the packet was already mysteriously opened. I took out a cookie for myself. I thought, that settled him. But it hadn’t because a moment or two later he did it again. He took another cookie.

Having not mentioned it the first time, it was somehow even harder to raise the subject the second time around. “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but notice . . .” I mean, it doesn’t really work.

We went through the whole packet like this. When I say the whole packet, I mean there were only about eight cookies, but it felt like a lifetime. He took one, I took one, he took one, I took one. Finally, when we got to the end, he stood up and walked away.

Well, we exchanged meaningful looks, then he walked away, and I breathed a sigh of relief and sat back. A moment or two later the train was coming in, so I tossed back the rest of my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper, and underneath the newspaper were my cookies.

The thing I like particularly about this story is the sensation that somewhere in England there has been wandering around for the last quarter-century a perfectly ordinary guy who’s had the same exact story, only he doesn’t have the punch line.

(Excerpted from “The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time” by Douglas Adams)

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Our Itinerary

Wow, it has been a long time! To be fair, I’ve been working for the past few months on a show called Uncertain for which I had another blog to be managing. But now that show has had both its debut and its remount, so now it’s time to focus on other things – mainly planning this trip of mine.

The other night I was looking up the ticket prices to fly to Taiwan and I was floored at how cheap they were. I think it’s a combination of two things: the time of year Dave and I are travelling and also, the website we are using. I will take this moment now to promote said website: www.cheapoair.com. Honestly, my family and I have used this site just about every time we’ve had to travel by air and I haven’t found anything cheaper. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that they don’t spend nearly as much on advertising as bigger online booking companies like Priceline and Expedia. But that’s just a personal theory. I promise they aren’t paying me to say this. That would be VERY cheap and probably useless advertising.

In any case, here is our itinerary:

November 5: Leave to go to Maine via bus

Here, we are staying with my family. Won’t be seeing them for a long time and they are helping out with my ticket. It will be fun, and it’s Dave’s first time in Maine.

November 10: Leave Maine to go to Boston in order to fly to LAX

Another first for Dave, we’ll be staying with my grandparents in Costa Mesa for a week. I haven’t been to California since I was 16. I’m hoping for a trip to either Disneyland or Knott’s Berry Farm. Just because. And I linked the Knott’s site because it’s one of the lesser known theme parks, but one of the best. If you are ever in Southern California and think you might be too jaded for the likes of Disney, I’d give this one a try.

November 17: Leave LAX for Taipei!

This is when things really get underway. We’ll play tourist for a few weeks before finding jobs, I imagine, which is why we’re saving money like mad before we go.

But, when I happened to look up the ticket prices the other night, we accidentally saved money. We figured we would both be going on this trip for around $1200 each. Instead, we managed to get two tickets, taxes and fees included, to the tune of $1537. Altogether, my friends. My jaw was permanently dropped all night. This means we each saved around $430 from our previous estimates. Seriously people. I win.

Doesn’t mean I’m not a little nervous about Taiwan. But I’m now more excited than nervous. And that is definitely worth the price.

Until next time!