6 days in Taipei

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Rather than write a short blog entry for each day, I'll just re-cap our entire trip for you. The overall gist? We had an incredible time, ate delicious food and could really see ourselves living in Taiwan someday. The city was just that great.

Either we were REALLY tired everyday or our bodies just don't know what to do in super dark basement rooms. We slept in until 10am each morning, something we rarely do...unless we've been awake until 5am. But we'd gone to bed at a fairly decent hour and still managed to snooze for a long, long time. Our hostel dorm room was underground, so there was no natural light, and the rest of our roommates did seem to stay up fairly late. The hostel was pretty full, surprisingly for a random middle of the week in April. Most people also seemed to be English Teachers, some in China, some in Japan, some in other parts of Taiwan...our jobs seem to be the 'easiest' as far as actual time spent teaching from everything we've heard! Most people we met were Americans, which was quite a change from our time spent in SE Asia, where almost everyone we met was European or Australian. Funny to finally be in a place where we met both American and Japanese tourists!

We did just 1-2 'touristy' things each day, keeping our exhaustion level to a minimum during this trip. It's easy on these vacations to get totally wiped out, trying to cram so much in...but since had planned to stay within Taipei the entire time, we knew we'd have ample time to see what we wanted to.

Each day started much the same- showering in the 'shower cubicle' thingys at our hostel, finding clothes in the dark room, stumbling out to the bright streets to find coffee and sustenance and then deciding where to head on the metro. Day 1 was spent visiting Taipei 101, which USED to be the tallest building in the world until Dubai came along and just built built built. It still has the fastest elevators in the world, though, taking you from floor 5 to 89 in just 37 seconds. Our ears definitely popped, it was an intense but cool ride! We enjoyed the views from so high up, stopping for some taro & brown rice gelato at the cafe up top and then headed back down into the city to explore the closeby 'Dr Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall'.

Other highlights of the trip include visiting a gorgeous waterfall/hot spring area about 30 km outside the city, going to see Iron Man 2 (and realizing that rather than popcorn, everyone brings in their own bags of fried chicken to the theater), going to a night market every night, seeing lots of beautiful traditional buildings, eating some delicious vegetarian food, getting bubble tea daily (it's from Taiwan and Martin's favorite thing EVER, besides me) and just generally enjoying being in a completely new area.

It was interesting to be in a place that politically has had so many struggles with Mainland China and to observe the differences in the culture and people. Immediately we noticed so many differences- namely the things that bother us so much occasionally in Mainland seemed to be non-existent in Taiwan. It was probably the CLEANEST city we've ever been to-- there were garbage trucks everywhere that played music like the ice cream truck in the States and everyone would run out and throw their trash in it. How cool is that? People talked quietly on their cellphones (there were even signs telling people to be considerate and keep their conversations to a minimum in public places, or to text instead), cars stopped for pedestrians, nobody hawked loogies almost on your feet and everyone just seemed lighter and happier. This isn't to say Mainland is a bad place; it just has more obvious cultural differences that are sometimes harder for us Westerners to digest/get used to.

The main thing about Taipei was the Mandarin they spoke- it was so clear! So crisp! So easy to understand! AND- THEY UNDERSTOOD US SPEAKING MANDARIN! None of those blank stares we get in Mainland that clearly say "I think you're trying to speak my language but you're really failing at it". It was incredible.

We both highly recommend Taiwan as a place to visit, should you ever get the chance. We'd love to go back someday and explore more of the island, away from the big cities...there's so much greenery and untouched wilderness!

We came back Monday, May 3rd and promptly found out that we had the next two days off from teaching, thanks to a last minute leadership decision to extend the holiday 'unofficially'. May 3rd was already a day off in China to commemorate their 'May Day', sort of like our Labor Day, that falls on May 1st every year. So, we embraced the days off with a trip to Ikea and a little bit of exploring Shenzhen before being dutiful students on Wednesday and still showing up for Chinese class.

In addition, our future for after China became a little more clear while we were in Taipei. I've officially accepted admission to Eastern Washington University, in Cheney, for their Masters in Social Work program, to begin this Fall. We'll be looking to move to Spokane (about 20 minutes away and a much bigger city for Martin to find a job in than Cheney!) probably sometime in mid-August...so our time in Seattle this summer will be limited but packed with fun, I'm sure.

This weekend will be spent relaxing and perhaps starting to put our things together in piles to figure out what we're bringing back and what we're not...the countdown is officially on. 2 months from today, we'll be landing in Seattle. 😊

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Comments

[Sandy Mathews]

Yay, social work!!
Hi, Stacey~ I'm so glad you'll be in social work, maybe clinical like me. It's a fairly well-paid profession, given the activists that keep watch and advocate for us all. When you get back, I want to give you a reprint from the New Yorker about an American couple returning from China who were culture-shocked. Theirs was very different from your experience, but interesting. ~Sandy