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Sunday we caught the Taipei Rapid Transit System (TRTS) train north to Tanshui which is at the mouth of the Tanshui river as it spills out into the East China Sea.

A festival was going on which apparently had something to do with fireflies. We walked up and down the streets among the crowds eating food and watching people. Teams were practicing in the river for the next weekend’s Dragon Boat Festival. Much like a crew-team, Dragon-shaped boats were racing for practice.

The TRTS was impressive. Clearly, a foreign-designed train of some kind, it really could move quickly, unfortunately, it stopped so often I don’t think it ever got up to full speed.

That evening the Huangs ordered pizza from Pizza Hut while I packed. Then they drove me to the airport.

My flight home was uneventful but boring, as Chu-wan remained in Taiwan through the end of June.

We had a good tailwind and the plane made it in about 45 minutes early on the normally 11-hour flight. Of course, that just meant 45 more minutes in LAX waiting for the connecting flight.

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Notes from the 21st Century
When I left Taiwan on this first trip, I really thought that I had gotten a good feel for the place. How wrong I really was. It’s a lot more complicated and diverse place than can be seen in just 10 days.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Retro, Taiwan, Travel

Saturday was both Chu-Wan’s mother’s and brother’s birthday. I was surprised when, first thing in the morning, her mother gave me a present. It was rather awkward as I didn’t really understand how to interpret this. The present was a very nice (and expensive) designer belt from Paris. Unfortunately, it was too big and we took it back to the Sogo Department store to exchange it for a smaller one.

What is Sogo, you say? Picture in your mind a 10-story tall Department Store. It’s huge, massive, and Japanese. It contained all sorts of cool Japanese merchandise – exactly the kind of things I had hoped to find.

First, we took the belt back. Chu-wan explained the size problem to sales clerk. She looked at us rather oddly. She put the belt around my waist, popped the buckle off the belt and cut the leather to size with a pair of scissors. Who knew? I’m sure she had a laugh with her friends over that one!

There’s a Kinokuniya book store inside Sogo and I knew I was going to have a good day, if perhaps an expensive one. There was the Ultraman Tiga & Ultraman Dyna book! (Which I bought.) There were Megaranger and other Ultraman books, but they were mostly activity books for children and didn’t interest me much. I was stunned when I saw the Ultraman paper kit. It was a 12 inch tall model of Ultraman to be assembled out of paper. Not square and blocky, but a rounded, real looking model! Incredible!

Next came the toy section. As I peered over the heads of the crowds, there on a TV screen across the floor, was Gingaman, the most recent Japanese Sentai series, playing on a video tape. Next to the screen were 12 inch soft vinyl Guyferd and Deathferd figures. On the other side was a large scale Mechagodzilla. (Somewhere in the junk area they also had the American Godzilla Travesty Toys.)

The video of Gingaman gave way to Ultraman Dyna, but I wasn’t watching. I was staring at the sea of Ultraman figures… all of them. 29 figures in all, less than $5 each at current exchange rates. As I calculated my luggage space I realized there was no chance, then my eye got pulled away by the metal Megaranger figures ($9 each), and then by the sea of Kamen Riders – all 19 of those. Tokusatsu toys as far as the eye could see.

After an hour of so, Chu-Wan dragged me out of the toy section, we left and went to Tower Records Taipei. There I found my next quest: Jackie Chan movie soundtracks! Between Tower and a dozen other CD stores we hit that day I managed to get Soundtracks to Drunken Master II, Supercop, Mr. Nice Guy, Who Am I? and Jackie Chan’s Greatest Movie hits.

For lunch we stopped at Ruby Tuesday’s, another American chain restaurant. The hostess greeted us in English by saying, “Two persons for seating?”

She seemed very relieved when Chu-wan responded in Chinese.

We were taken to our table and given menus. The menus were in English, with Chinese subtitles, as was the décor of the restaurant. I eyed the sirloin steak, but, since I was expecting a large dinner, I opted instead for the steak sandwich. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the steak sandwich.

“Damn”, I thought, “they must not have steak here, either!” So I chose again, this time selecting the cheeseburger.

No luck – no cheeseburgers.

Going back for a third try, I chose the steak pita, fully expecting it not to be available either. To my surprise, it was, and so that was my lunch.

Again the odd taste of the beef was unnerving, but combined with an awful yogurt sauce it was next to inedible. Halfway through my pita, which had the same beef as the steak sandwich would have had, I realized that it wasn’t the steak or burger they didn’t have, it was the buns! I should have gone for the plain steak instead of the sandwich!

After lunch, we passed a store called “Area 51” which was a collectible toy store featuring American and Japanese collectible toys, but it was closed that afternoon.

I wanted to hunt more in the shopping district, but it was time for her mother’s birthday dinner.

Dinner was at a hotel. We had a private room with a large circular table. Chu-Wan’s parents were there, plus Chu-wan’s three friends from the previous Sunday’s excursion, and another Mr. and Mrs. Huang and their daughter. Chu-Wan’s father’s best friend happens to have exactly the same name as her father. Chu-Wan’s brother was not there as he had to work that evening.

The conversation was a bit awkward, only Chu-Wan and I were fluent in English so the conversation tended to be in Chinese all evening. From time to time my hosts or the other guests would try to make conversation in English with me, but it was difficult – not that I couldn’t understand them, but mostly because I wasn’t sure if I could make myself understood.

My biggest surprise was that Chu-wan’s mom apparently didn’t receive presents.

I did.

The family friends, who I had never met or heard of before I walked into the room, walked up as Chu-wan and I entered, introduced themselves, and gave me a present – a very nice porcelain dragon emblem, framed, which now is hanging on the wall of my living room. Chu-wan’s friends also gave me presents. I was totally lost.

Dinner consisted of having food brought out, dish after dish and placed on a huge rotating centerpiece, people pulled items by rotating the center and picking up what they wanted. When one dish was completed, something new was brought in to replace it. This went on for over two hours.

The Chinese love to eat!

There was some pretty good food and I thoroughly enjoyed dinner. Dinner lapsed into conversation in which I would occasionally be asked to comment on my trip so far. Frankly, despite the fact that I was enjoying my trip immensely, I don’t think I gave a very compelling version of my story.

The highlight of the evening was (in my opinion) when I asked Chu-Wan to marry me, and she accepted.

I think everyone else was quite shocked. I may have stepped on some traditional toes by not asking her parents permission first.

After dinner we went to a men’s wear place and had a suit tailored for me, which I picked up Sunday on the way out of town.

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Notes from the 21st Century
That night, after I went to bed, Chu-Wan’s parents had a long talk with her about marrying a foreigner.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Retro, Taiwan, Travel

Friday morning we were informed that the roads were still impassable because of the earthquake two nights before, so no tour busses were coming up from Chiayi. We had been planning on taking one of the tour busses around town to see the sights. Now we were on foot and on our own.

There were three or four potential sights of interest in the area, but without transporation we were limited to choosing one. We chose the bat caves, mostly because of the distance – about a one hour hike.

Down the bamboo forested road we went. Down, down, down the steep roads until we came to the turnoff. It was hot and humid and I was giving my Tevas and trail shorts a workout.

Finally, after an hour walking we reached a trail which continued on after the road ended. Well, it wasn’t so much a trail as a slight indentation in the vegetation, steeply heading down toward the river. As I stepped toward the overgrown path, Chu-wan said just one word, “Snakes.”

“Snakes?”

“Yes, snakes”

“I thought you said there weren’t snakes in Taiwan?”

“Yes, we have snakes”

“Poisonous ones?”

“Yes”

Later, I studied the poisonous snakes of Taiwan, which include Venomous Bamboo Snakes, 100 Pacers (you won’t live 100 paces if one bites you), Banded Kraits, the Taiwan Habu, Russell’s Viper, the Coral Snake, Oshima’s Habu, the Chinese Mountain Pit Viper and even the Cobra. We won’t mention sea snakes, all of which are poisonous.

Without seeing the bat caves, we turned around and headed back to the hotel. The pleasant one hour downhill walk became and exhausting two and half hour trek back up the mountain, till finally we reached the hotel.

The hotel was an interesting place. It was wood – not wood in the common sense of the word, but wood in the everything sense of the word. Floor, walls, ceiling, ceiling fan, desk, chairs, bed, bathtub (bathtub? Yep.) were all highly polished wood with bamboo wood inlays. Only the mattresses and parts of the bathroom were of conventional origin.

That afternoon, we caught the forest train down to Chiayi, then caught the regular train back to Taipei, getting in after 11:00PM.

Once again we stopped in the McDonald’s in Chiayi, this time I tried a special “local” food item: Spicy Fried Chicken. Wow! It was terrific! If only McDonald’s would import it here!

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Notes from the 21st Century
After more trips overseas I discovered that the spicy fried chicken was in other Asian countries, too. I thought I attempt to express myself to McDonald’s and tell them that they should sell it in the US also – it really is the best thing they make.

When I attempted to send eMail to McDonald’s their contact page is a veritable minefield of warnings saying that they you must not send them any ideas for new food items. Such messages will be rejected, unread. (Rather like sending an unsolicited script to Hollywood.)

Of course, that didn’t apply to what I was trying to tell them, I was simply suggesting that they expand the distribution of a product they already sell into new areas.

No matter how many times I tried to phrase that eMail to get the point across, it was rejected by their automatic mail scanners with a disclaimer about not listening to product ideas.

Screw them, then.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Retro, Taiwan, Travel

Apparently sunrises are a big deal in Taiwan, because they organize tour buses just to see the sunrise over Yushan, a neighboring mountain. So, at 3:40 in the morning Chu-wan and I were standing outside the hotel waiting for the bus to show up.

Yushan (Jade Mountain, roughly translated) is the highest mountain in Southeast Asia. Known as Mt. Morrison to westerners, the mountain was also known as Nitakayama during the Japanese occupation. The name refers to the fact that Yushan is taller than Fujiyama, displacing it (at that time) as the tallest mountain in the Japanese Empire.

Yushan was popularly believed to be 3,997 meters (13,190ft), and a 3 meter tall statue stands at the top making the mountain 4,000 meters tall. In fact, whether due to improvements in measuring devices or changes due to the earth shifting, Yushan is really only some 3,950 meters (13,035ft) tall, although, the 3 meter statue does stand at the top of the mountain.

Sunrise was beautiful, and luckily I didn’t yawn at just the wrong moment. I got a number of photos and video of the whole thing. As soon as the sun rose, the tour guide drove us back into the bus like cattle, and down we went from our vantage point, stopping at several scenic spots along the way. On the way back we could at least see the scenery as the sun had risen.

Once we returned to Alishan, we walked through the forests and ponds while the clouds created impervious mists and eerie shadows among the green, soaked forest.

In the afternoon, we caught the forest train halfway back down the mountain to Fen Chi Hu, a town dependent on wood carving and the vast lumber resources of the area.

We stayed in a hotel again that night. (This time with real beds!)

Technorati Tags: Blog, Retro, Taiwan, Travel

Wednesday we caught a train to Chiayi, which is a bit further south than Hualien, but on the western side of the island instead. I caught a brief look at the Taiwan Straits and the East China Sea, but couldn’t see the mainland. It’s apparently too far away. Chiayi is a large tropical town with lots of insects, and a McDonalds, where I discovered that the McFish Sandwich tastes more “fishy” in Taiwan, and that the Chicken McNuggets are just as awful as they are in the states.

From Chiayi we took the “world-famous” Forest Railway, an old, small gauge train built by the Japanese in 1912 that winds it’s way up the steep and beautiful mountains from 31 meters at Chiayi to over 2000 meters at the town of Alishan.

I was repeatedly told that the Forest Railway is world-famous, but have yet to meet a non-Taiwanese person who has heard of it. It’s quite impressive, nonetheless.

The entire journey begins in a tropical rainforest, and takes you through semi-tropical forests and then finally into a temperate forest where ancient pines grow.

Shrouded in clouds, the mountains around Alishan (including Alishan, which is also a mountain) are eerie. The small clouds crawl across the surface of the mountains like living creatures. At anytime, these roving amoebae-like monsters might swallow the ground you stand upon.

We arrived at sundown and were warned to stay in our hotel room for the night as there are no streetlights in Alishan and people get lost if they go out.

Go out? What? Were they crazy? I had a hotel room, with a bed! A full night’s sleep was all I had in mind!

The bed was a board.

Luckily, in the closet they had these “Chinese Blankets” as Chu-Wan called them. Personally, I think they were futons. Picture sleeping with a futon over you. They weighed about 25 pounds, were mostly stiff (they had to be rolled up in the closet) and about 2 inches thick. I slept on one and under another!

During the night (while I slept) there was a small earthquake. I complained afterwards to Chu-wan that she should have woke me up, but by then it was too late.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Retro, Taiwan, Travel

Tuesday was a relaxed day, with no specific itinerary. When I awoke, the fever was gone, for which I was very grateful.

We went around Taipei by bus to various stores and restaurants. I picked up a Mah Jong game set at a Mah Jong store. At the distinctive Eslite Bookseller I purchased a book on Mah Jong, including instructions (in English), some Chinese/English dictionaries and a couple of gifts.

The Eslite Bookseller is an interesting bookstore, similar to Borders or Barnes & Noble back home. It contains a large selection of books in Chinese, English and Japanese, plus a coffee and gift shop. Eslite, unlike the other cramped and utilitarian bookstores in Taiwan, was open and distinctive – a considerable departure from the others.

I was very disappointed though, I could find no Japanese Ultraman books, but often saw an Ultraman sticker on the front of scooters. The sticker was a great pose of Ultraman firing his beam weapon forward – appropriate indeed for the traffic conditions of Taipei!

I had seen several Kentucky Fried Chicken shops in Taipei and decided I needed good old-fashioned fried chicken for lunch. Instead of KFC, Chu-wan took me to TKK International Fried Chicken.

She said, “It’s like Kentucky Fried Chicken, only better.”

Well, her definition of “better” turns out to be fried chicken without batter, but it was pretty good nonetheless!

The French Fries were another story. They were made from sweet potatoes. Yams. Yuck. I suspect the expression on my face was somewhere between comical and horrific as I chomped into that first “french fry”.

Dinner was at Sizzler.

I loved their little picture menus that made it easy for the illiterate foreign traveler to order a meal. I just pointed at the picture on the menu of what I wanted, in this case, the Sizzler Sirloin Steak, and they responded by telling me (through my companion interpreter, of course), “Sorry, we don’t sell sirloin steaks anymore.”

Well, a ribeye steak and the salad bar made a good dinner anyway. One odd thing was that the steak tasted… different. It wasn’t bad, just… different. It was as if the very cow itself had a different underlying genetic structure.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Retro, Taiwan, Travel