BootsnAll Travel Network



Scooter craziness, Taiwanese rockers, and more bloody steps…

Well, I guess it’s been a few weeks since I’ve checked in. I’m in Hua Hin, Thailand right now, about 200Km south of Bangkok on the Gulf Coast. It’s a pretty nice town, very clean and tourist friendly. I came here specifically for the Hua Hin Jazz Festival that is happening this weekend.

I spent much of the last few weeks in Taichung hanging out with Kristen, my friend from Eugene and one of the people I traveled to Borneo with. She’s been living in Taichung and teaching English for the last year. She was awesome enough to let me crash on the floor at her place for two weeks, and it was nice to take a little break from the traveling and chill out in one spot for a while.

The first thing that struck me about Taiwan was that almost everyone drives a scooter. When I arrived in Taichung at 12:00 in the morning, Kristen came and picked me up on her scooter (me and my forty-plus pound pack). The scooters outnumber cars in Taiwan. Several times, I saw an entire family on one scooter: mom, dad, two kids, and some times a dog. It was pretty funny. But given the amount of traffic, it really makes sense, as it is much easier to get around on a scooter, and it’s much easier to park. The scariest thing I saw was the guy driving around with two large propane tanks strapped to the back of his scooter. (Just like most other Asian countries, Taiwan also has a lot of food stalls, and I imagine that all of them use gas stoves to cook on.)

Taiwan is a nasty, dirty, noisy, smelly, sticky, smoggy place. Yet it’s still possible to find some fresh (?) air. A 30-minute scooter ride from Kristen’s house got us to Dakeng Scenery Area, a large park with lots of hiking trails. My first trip up to Dakeng, I was prepared for some hiking, but Kristen hadn’t really let on about what the trails were like. It turned out to be a much more grueling hike than I was ready for, and as luck would have it, the trail was made up mostly of wooden steps. Didn’t we get enough of that at Mt. Kinabalu? To top it off, the weather was cloudy and foggy/smoggy so the views weren’t really that great. But it was nice to get out of the city and get the blood pumping, and it also made it easier to justify the evening beers.

It seems like everywhere I’ve traveled there has been some sort of food or music related event happening while I’m there. The “rave” in the park at Mt. Eden, the Bluff Oyster festival, The Mindil Beach Sunset Market, etc. Taichung was no exception. My first weekend there was the Taichung International Food Festival, an annual food and music festival put on by Compass Magazine, a local English language magazine that caters to the ex-pat and tourist crowd. The festival had 2o or so food booths with everything from Indian food to Bangers and Mash. The musical acts ranged from a blues band to a Taiwanese punk band to a Johnny Cash cover band. It was a fun time, and while we were there Kristen and I had yet another brush with fame. The Mayor of Taichung was attending the festival, and he and his wife stopped by to shake our hands and visit. Turns out he has been to Eugene, and also told us he had been to Pendleton. He said with a smile that Eugene was a lovely place, but that the people were “so-so.” It was quite funny.

After the festival on Saturday, we decided to take a day trip on Sunday and took an air-con bus down to Tainan. Tainan is a smaller, more “traditional” Taiwanese city, and we spent the day walking around the street markets and doing a self-tour using the Lonely Planet as our guide. However, the majority of the sights listed in the guidebook were Temples, and although they were very interesting, I think that once you’ve seen five or six of them, you’ve pretty much seen them all. As I understand it, each temple is a shrine to a different god, but on the surface they all pretty much look the same. Some of the other highlights of the tour were the war relics such as old gates to the city, forts, etc. We walked around Tainan for about four or five hours, finishing our tour at the Chikan Towers that is very pretty at night as it is all lit up. This particular evening there was also a musical performance happening, a male vocalist/guitarist, which added to the chill and mellow ambience of the evening. After that it was a short walk to the fruit stand for some shaved ice topped with fruit. This particular stand was listed in the Lonely Planet as a “must do,” and it was definitely worth it. There was a long line of locals, all waiting for what can only be described as a snow cone on steroids. The featured item was a large dish of shaved ice served with your choice of toppings. Everything from mangos to red beans. (Red beans???) I opted for the mixed fruit and condensed milk, and it was indeed delicious.

After finishing our tour and having our dessert, we decided to look for a place to relax over a couple of beers before catching the bus back to Taichung. There didn’t appear to be much to choose from where we were, but we spotted what appeared to be a bar on the top floor of a high-rise office building. We went inside and took the lift up to the bar, but it was quite empty except for several Taiwanese businessmen and what we assumed were their wives. (We had decided that they weren’t dressed fancy enough to be escorts.) We weren’t sure about going in, but a couple of the men spotted us and waved at us to join them. So in we went in our tanktops and flip-flops and sat down to join them for a drink. The restaurant host quickly came over and asked “whiskey or beer?”, to which we replied “Beer, please.” He returned and placed two large bottles of beer on the table, saying “no money, no money!” Turns out we had unknowingly crashed someone’s office party, and the drinks were on the house. The group was quite friendly and obviously enjoyed having some westerners around, so it wasn’t long before we were all doing shots and dancing and singing. This went on for an hour or so until the party wound down and it was time to leave. The host of the party, who kept telling us “I am owner, I am owner” and was apparently the owner of whatever company was having the party, made a gesture for us to get on his scooter and apparently wanted us to join them at wherever the next stop was, but it was getting late and we decided it was time to catch our bus back to Taichung. So we politely declined and caught a cab to the bus station instead. Once we got on the bus, I quickly crashed for the two-hour ride back to Taichung.

The remainder of the time in Taichung was pretty mellow, I spent most of my days wandering around the markets and hanging out at the coffee shop while Kristen worked. At night we’d usually find a little restaurant somewhere to hang out at. There was a little open-air restaurant across from Kristen’s building and we hung out there a few nights, drinking Taiwan beer, talking about home and traveling, and playing the occasional game of gin. The family that owned the place was quite friendly. Their three-year old granddaughter (we assume) was there one night, and although she was quite shy at first, she eventually came over to say hi and even brought over her bird cage to show us her bird. It was really cute. One of the highlights of the week was the night we went to a rock club called Ala. On this particular night there was a Taiwanese rock band there that was playing English hard rock, and they played a set full of Metallica, Guns and Roses, Megadeath, and even some Poison. They were really pretty good, and it was both awesome and hilarious. The singer picked us out of the crowd pretty easily, and both he and the lead guitarist both came over to say hi after their set was over.

Another thing I noticed about Taiwan is how many people smoke. I even saw people smoking while driving their scooters. But there was one guy that took the cake. There were a couple of days that Kristen and I went to the public pool to swim some laps and sit in the spas. On of these days, I was taking a breather during my laps and could smell cigarette smoke. I looked over, and there was a guy sitting by the side of the lap pool in his Speedo smoking a cigarette. I couldn’t believe it. Reminded me of the guy on the summit of Mt. Kinabalu who just after reaching the summit pulled out a cigarette and lit up. Just doesn’t make sense to me. You have to wonder what it feels like to be smoker and try swimming laps or hike to 13,400 feet. You’d think they’d be sucking some serious wind.

Anyway, Taiwan was fun, despite how dirty, noisy and smelly it was. My last weekend there also happened to be the last weekend there for one of Kristen’s fellow teachers, who was a Kiwi returning to New Zealand on the same day I was leaving Taiwan for Thailand. Some of her friends had planned a going away party for her on Saturday night, so Kristen and I met up with them for dinner at a TGI Fridays. This was really funny to me, because TGIF is a popular American restaurant chain that I had never been in before. So my first time in a TGIF was not in America, but in Taiwan. (We also ate at a Chili’s a couple of times when we went to see movies at the cinema in Tiger City mall. 🙂 ) After filling up on Quesadillas, we decided to take the party to a local pub called Freedom Club. It was a very small place with a couple of booths, a foosball table, and a very, very tiny makeshift dance floor. The Taiwanese girls working there seemed to love American music, particularly the Pussycat Dolls, which they played often while climbing up on the bar to dance. It was pretty funny. I struck up a conversation with one of them and noticed that she had some friends sitting in one of the booths playing a dice game. I asked her what the game was, and figured out that it was a game I play all the time in the U.S. called Liar’s Dice. So with her help translating, I asked if I could join the game, and spent the next hour or so playing dice with this group of Taiwanese, all of who spoke very little English. It was great fun.

It took me most of Sunday to fully recover from our night at the pub, and Monday was spent preparing to leave Taiwan and catch an early morning flight to Thailand on Tuesday. After a looonnnngggg layover in Kota Kinabalu, I arrived in Bangkok around midnight. I rested up there for a day before heading to Hua Hin, and I’m enjoying myself here quite a bit. I’ve found a good pub/backpackers owned by an English-Thai couple, and a double bed is only $10 USD a night. I’m planning on staying here for about a week before heading further south to Krabi and Phuket.

01Scooter.jpg
Born to Ride! 🙂

02Dakeng.jpg
More bloody steps at Dakeng Scenery Area

03Foodfest.jpg
Taiwanese Punk at the Int’l Food Festival

04seafood.jpg
Anyone for squid?

05Dragons.jpg
Me, doing my best dragon impression

06OregonFt.jpg 07OregonBk.jpg
This guy worked at the Chili’s restaurant in Taichung’s Tiger City Mall. He’s never been to Oregon and bought the jacket at some shop in Taichung. 🙂

08Liberty.jpg
Did anyone else know there was a Statue of Liberty in Tainan?

09Lizards.jpg
Fun with Lizards

10Temple.jpg
One of the many temples we saw in Tainan

11Dice.jpg
Liar’s Dice

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2 Responses to “Scooter craziness, Taiwanese rockers, and more bloody steps…”

  1. Laura Says:

    the pollution, dirtiness, etc are definitely on my glad-I-don’t-live-there-anymore-list… the food though….I miss that..

  2. Posted from United States United States
  3. Jill Liedtke Says:

    I stumbled across your site while trying to find out what time the Bee Movie is playing at Tiger City. Funny to see your Eugene references and the photo of the Oregon jacket. We are nearly retired teachers from Eugene who’ve been working in Taichung for the past four years. We’ve also seen the OREGON jacket around. We were at the same Int Food Festival you were; too bad we didn’t meet. I wonder if Jason Hu would call us SO SO also, never met him. Anyway, I enjoyed reading your entry about Taichung and agree about the miserable stairs on Dakeng trails.