I am in Taipei
After two months or so of traveling in China, I have hit a new country. My intention is to spend the next 28 days here in Taiwan, a large chunk in Taipei probably and then some other period of time jumping around to other cities and visiting some of the many scenic parts of the island.
The hostel here is nice and it is for some reason I have yet to ascertain called Taiwanmex and the computer is in Spanish. Everyone who works here as far as I can tell is Taiwanese. The mystery deepens. My Mandarin seems to be coming back though I certainly feel a bit tentative after a few weeks in Hong Kong speaking largely English. Everyone here has been speaking Mandarin all night and my roommate is a Taiwanese guy on a business trip who doesn't speak much English according to him so we spoke only Chinese. I'm sure what little hesitation I feel will fade away swiftly. I did manage to score a vegetarian meal despite being the most confused about a street layout I have been in recent memory. There are all these lanes and sections here, and the real hard part is the streets do not seem to be consistently signposted in any way. Also, and I'm not making this up, in each subway station I visited there are multiple exits and occasional wall-posted maps to indicate where you will be when you leave via a certain exit. Every map I encountered, including those in the same station, was rotated to a different orientation. Sometimes North was up and right, other times it was down and left. Am I what the Governator would call a girly man for not being able to sort out which way I'm supposed to walk to get where the hell I'm trying to go? These problems aside, I found a vegetarian snack stall and ordered myself a cheap bowl of noodles, vegetables, and some sort of vegetarian meat for about $1USD. Nice to be back in a place where that is possible and easy, though I'm sure I could've done it in Hong Kong with a little bit of Cantonese at my disposal or a bit more bravery when it comes to making an ass of myself. I got over that quickly in mainland but I always had my Chinese ability to fall back on as I suppose I do here, so once again, it is ON.
My stay in Hong Kong was enjoyable. I do enjoy that city quite a bit though it is somewhat of a relief to be in Taipei in a way. Being able to speak the language is certainly a big part of it. Here I know that it will always be English or Mandarin and the likelihood of one or the other working is extremely high. In HK a lot of people spoke English and quite a few I encountered spoke Mandarin, but there was always a negotiation in the beginning of a conversation to determine which language I was better off using which always lent a certain apprehension to starting an actual conversation. Also, if I'm speaking English in a Chinese country I feel like a gringo and here it makes me happy to be able to conduct all my transactions more fluently and without forcing the other person to speak my language. Despite that, Hong Kong is a great city and I think in many ways I can call it a favorite in the world. Getting around is so easy, the mass transit system is just beautifully done and incredibly efficient. My last week there I finally purchased the Octopus card which enables the bearer to store money and then use that card to ride all mass transit including the MTR (subway), the buses, the double-decker electric tram, and all of the ferries of which there are many. Also the Airport Express train to and from the airport is covered. Now that's fairly cool, but what's really cool is you can use the Octopus card to purchase things at 7-11, Mcdonalds, and apparently other participating store chains. So you bring your stuff to the counter, the guy or gal rings it up, and you hold your card in front of a reader which beeps and you're done. No signing, no accepting the charges, just done. The card is based on radio frequencies not a magnetic strip, so you just hold it there, no swiping or anything like that. You often will see women holding their purses up to the reader, you don't even need to take it out of the bag or out of your wallet. So mass transit is great, plus you can walk pretty easily wherever you want to go within a particular island anyway. The density of stores, restaurants, shops, and people is all very high so there's rarely an uninteresting block. There are towering skyscrapers with exotic designs and in between them run tiny sidestreets with chaotic markets or larger avenues with designer stores and cafes. It's a tremendous mix of old and new as well as the occasional international influence. I saw restaurants with Indian food, Italian, French, American, lots of vegetarian of different styles of course, and many others. There are fancy places where you can spend hundreds of dollars and there are shops with only one kind of noodle soup for next to nothing.
I'll refrain for the moment from describing Taipei too much as I've just arrived tonight and have yet to really take a decent walk around the city. I was here a few years ago and it'll be interesting to see how my perception of the city has changed having now studied mandarin for a while and traveled in mainland China. My initial reaction has been positive. I'm happy to be somewhere new and on the move again and the streets on which I've strolled so far have all been very active and packed with a kind of activity and chaos that is a bit more unrestrained somehow than what I saw in Hong Kong and more like what I remember from Chinese cities. Also, I had some street food tonight for a snack after my noodle soup which is something in which I did not indulge too much in Hong Kong, perhaps because of the language barrier. Here of course I can ask any questions I like and if I don't understand the response, hey, at least I tried. I did understand in this case and scored a nice stick of grilled tofu which was "a little spicy" but my lips are still mildly numb. That dude is right on my street too. I have a feeling I'll be seeing him again. I wasn't too deterred by the pig blood and I think it was ducks' heads or something that were resting on the same rack of options. I have taken a practical approach to veganism here as I feel I must and I suppose as I always have. The bottom line is I have to eat so as long as I don't actually consume the meat I think my goal is fulfilled. I think it would be next to impossible to travel as I am and be a strict vegan even with complete fluency in the language.
So tomorrow I'll be getting up and exploring the city. The last time I was here was with Joy and her father who pretty much took care of everything and I didn't even have a map to guide me for lack of need. This time I've got a map and I'm sure by the end of tomorrow the city will be marginally less confusing to me than it was tonight. There's about a zillion vegetarian restaurants here so I think eating will pose no major problem. I am uploading some pictures from Kunming and my second stay in HK which should be up soon. Hope all y'all are well.
The hostel here is nice and it is for some reason I have yet to ascertain called Taiwanmex and the computer is in Spanish. Everyone who works here as far as I can tell is Taiwanese. The mystery deepens. My Mandarin seems to be coming back though I certainly feel a bit tentative after a few weeks in Hong Kong speaking largely English. Everyone here has been speaking Mandarin all night and my roommate is a Taiwanese guy on a business trip who doesn't speak much English according to him so we spoke only Chinese. I'm sure what little hesitation I feel will fade away swiftly. I did manage to score a vegetarian meal despite being the most confused about a street layout I have been in recent memory. There are all these lanes and sections here, and the real hard part is the streets do not seem to be consistently signposted in any way. Also, and I'm not making this up, in each subway station I visited there are multiple exits and occasional wall-posted maps to indicate where you will be when you leave via a certain exit. Every map I encountered, including those in the same station, was rotated to a different orientation. Sometimes North was up and right, other times it was down and left. Am I what the Governator would call a girly man for not being able to sort out which way I'm supposed to walk to get where the hell I'm trying to go? These problems aside, I found a vegetarian snack stall and ordered myself a cheap bowl of noodles, vegetables, and some sort of vegetarian meat for about $1USD. Nice to be back in a place where that is possible and easy, though I'm sure I could've done it in Hong Kong with a little bit of Cantonese at my disposal or a bit more bravery when it comes to making an ass of myself. I got over that quickly in mainland but I always had my Chinese ability to fall back on as I suppose I do here, so once again, it is ON.
My stay in Hong Kong was enjoyable. I do enjoy that city quite a bit though it is somewhat of a relief to be in Taipei in a way. Being able to speak the language is certainly a big part of it. Here I know that it will always be English or Mandarin and the likelihood of one or the other working is extremely high. In HK a lot of people spoke English and quite a few I encountered spoke Mandarin, but there was always a negotiation in the beginning of a conversation to determine which language I was better off using which always lent a certain apprehension to starting an actual conversation. Also, if I'm speaking English in a Chinese country I feel like a gringo and here it makes me happy to be able to conduct all my transactions more fluently and without forcing the other person to speak my language. Despite that, Hong Kong is a great city and I think in many ways I can call it a favorite in the world. Getting around is so easy, the mass transit system is just beautifully done and incredibly efficient. My last week there I finally purchased the Octopus card which enables the bearer to store money and then use that card to ride all mass transit including the MTR (subway), the buses, the double-decker electric tram, and all of the ferries of which there are many. Also the Airport Express train to and from the airport is covered. Now that's fairly cool, but what's really cool is you can use the Octopus card to purchase things at 7-11, Mcdonalds, and apparently other participating store chains. So you bring your stuff to the counter, the guy or gal rings it up, and you hold your card in front of a reader which beeps and you're done. No signing, no accepting the charges, just done. The card is based on radio frequencies not a magnetic strip, so you just hold it there, no swiping or anything like that. You often will see women holding their purses up to the reader, you don't even need to take it out of the bag or out of your wallet. So mass transit is great, plus you can walk pretty easily wherever you want to go within a particular island anyway. The density of stores, restaurants, shops, and people is all very high so there's rarely an uninteresting block. There are towering skyscrapers with exotic designs and in between them run tiny sidestreets with chaotic markets or larger avenues with designer stores and cafes. It's a tremendous mix of old and new as well as the occasional international influence. I saw restaurants with Indian food, Italian, French, American, lots of vegetarian of different styles of course, and many others. There are fancy places where you can spend hundreds of dollars and there are shops with only one kind of noodle soup for next to nothing.
I'll refrain for the moment from describing Taipei too much as I've just arrived tonight and have yet to really take a decent walk around the city. I was here a few years ago and it'll be interesting to see how my perception of the city has changed having now studied mandarin for a while and traveled in mainland China. My initial reaction has been positive. I'm happy to be somewhere new and on the move again and the streets on which I've strolled so far have all been very active and packed with a kind of activity and chaos that is a bit more unrestrained somehow than what I saw in Hong Kong and more like what I remember from Chinese cities. Also, I had some street food tonight for a snack after my noodle soup which is something in which I did not indulge too much in Hong Kong, perhaps because of the language barrier. Here of course I can ask any questions I like and if I don't understand the response, hey, at least I tried. I did understand in this case and scored a nice stick of grilled tofu which was "a little spicy" but my lips are still mildly numb. That dude is right on my street too. I have a feeling I'll be seeing him again. I wasn't too deterred by the pig blood and I think it was ducks' heads or something that were resting on the same rack of options. I have taken a practical approach to veganism here as I feel I must and I suppose as I always have. The bottom line is I have to eat so as long as I don't actually consume the meat I think my goal is fulfilled. I think it would be next to impossible to travel as I am and be a strict vegan even with complete fluency in the language.
So tomorrow I'll be getting up and exploring the city. The last time I was here was with Joy and her father who pretty much took care of everything and I didn't even have a map to guide me for lack of need. This time I've got a map and I'm sure by the end of tomorrow the city will be marginally less confusing to me than it was tonight. There's about a zillion vegetarian restaurants here so I think eating will pose no major problem. I am uploading some pictures from Kunming and my second stay in HK which should be up soon. Hope all y'all are well.
posted by Dan at 6:17 AM
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