WARNING: This is REALLY long so save it until you have time

I am currently sitting in the Silver Kris lounge in the Taipei airport. The phrase “time flies when you are having fun” is really, really, true. I think I have only shared with you guys the positives of this trip. There have been a few negatives but overall the time went EXTREMELY fast, so it MUST have been overwhelmingly positive.

If you are wondering what negatives I am referring to, they primarily have to do with Yi-Chen occasionally driving me crazy. For instance, I had never noticed how slowly she moves. I know that I am generally a fast walker but she is REALLY slow. I had a million and one things to do on my agenda and early on it became glaringly clear that they just weren’t going to happen. One thing that I had been telling Yi-Chen for months that I wanted to do was attend a Taiwanese baseball game. I however had NO ability to determine where and when because all of the schedules are written in Mandarin. She told me early on that we would attend a game on Tuesday night. I asked if she knew where this was and she assured me that she did. I asked her about this game at least once a day from Saturday up to Tuesday morning. On Tuesday afternoon when I asked her what time we needed to leave for the game she told me that she read the schedule wrong and the game was being played in the South of Taiwan. While Taiwan is not that big of an island it would have still been a three-hour train ride each way. Needless to say I never made it to my baseball game and I am really sad about that. There are a few other things that I wanted to get to and didn’t… but as I am sure my dad will say… I can always come back.

Before I continue with a few more generalizations I want to give you all a recap of the last two days, which I have failed to write about.

Tuesday 5/29/07

This was our first day back in Taipei after our three-day excursion around the east coast of Taiwan. On the bus tour there were many cool things that I wanted to stop and look at… but obviously I couldn’t because I was on a bus with 20 other people. In particular, there were two basketball hoops where I REALLY wanted to take a picture. As most of you know I like to collect pictures of hoops from around the world. Yi-Chen doesn’t understand this interest at all. It took me a good two hours of negotiations on the train to convince her of the importance of this to me and to why she should drive me the hour to find them. Her main argument was that she didn’t want to waste her time. Finally, she conceded and we agreed that she would pick me up at 8am to go on our adventure.

When Yi-Chen showed up on Tuesday morning she was not in a good mood. About 30 minutes into our drive she said this…
YS - “I am in a bad mood because I think my period is coming. What do you call this?”
KP – “PMS”
YS – “Yah, I want to be at home doing nothing… that’s what you should do when your period is coming and you have PMS.”
KP – “Do you mean you’d rather be watching Taiwanese soap operas? Because you claimed you didn’t want to drive me here because it was a waste of your time. Sitting at home doing nothing is the ultimate waste of time.”
YS – “Uhh (insert a little annoyed laughter)… I don’t know Katy… I just don’t really like adventure… I like security.”

Or it was something very similar to that.

I missed the enthusiasm to go out and experience stuff that I have shared during travel with most of you on this list serve. Yi-Chen said more than once that she doesn’t enjoy adventures and that makes me sad… even with that sentiment I managed to have quit a few adventures and I think that in the end Yi-Chen enjoyed them. It was funny though on the way to the airport this morning (Thursday) she said that we did A LOT and that she prefers a more leisurely vacation style.

Back to Tuesday…

I managed to get some really cool hoop pictures. I look forward to showing them to you all. After our trip out to the east coast shore we went to downtown Taipei. Our first stop was Taipei 101. For those of you that don’t know this is the highest building in the world. I convinced Yi-Chen to go to the top and boy was it cool. The elevator is so fast it is crazy. I believe it goes 600m a minute at the fastest point. Basically the ride to the top (384m) is about 40 seconds long. We were fortunate that the time we went to the top was probably the most clear hour that I was in Taiwan. You could see what seemed like forever. I really enjoyed it.

The next stop was the crafting area of Taipei. I was looking for fabrics and stickers for my mom. I was surprisingly unsuccessful. The fabrics were shockingly expensive (more pricey than Wal-Mart) and the stickers were all super cutesy and not Americanized at all. I imagine if you new EXACTLY where to go that there must be a place to find these things but Yi-Chen didn’t know where.

At this point Yi-Chen decided that she wanted to eat dinner at her house but understood that I likely would not want to do this. So we agreed that I would stay downtown until 9:30 where we would meet at a specified subway station. Yi-Chen and I picked up two subway maps, in Korean and Spanish because there weren’t any English maps to be found, and she marked them up for me with where we would meet and places that I should visit. I wanted to see Taipei’s big night market so that’s where I went first.

The Shinji Night Market is very similar to those I had previously visited in China. There are all kinds of supremely nastily cooked foods. Octopus on a stick was probably my favorite that I saw this time. There are endless vendors pushing all kinds of knocked off merchandise. The quality of this knocked of merchandise however didn’t seem to be nearly as good as those I saw in Beijing and Shanghai. The fellow I am sitting next to on the plane was telling me how more and more companies are doing their massive production in other Asian countries that have even cheaper labor than Taiwan. This may be why the merchandise seems to be more free flowing in Mainland China. I am VERY SORRY to report to Robin that I didn’t see any Burberry or Coach knockoff products that were remotely close to passing as real. Maybe we’ll find some in New York when you come to the shore this summer! :~> hint, hint…

The best part of the night market was that I finally found my proliferation of Nike merchandise. It’s really weird how stores distribute in Asia. There are literally 50 sporting goods stores located within 20 blocks of each other. Each store has slightly different prices (even if it is the same chain) and many have different types of merchandise. You all can only imagine how much fun I had. How many pairs of shoes do you think I bought? As Brittney Murphy says, “I’ll never tell”. I will say, however, if I buy anything else… and I do mean anything in Japan, then I will need to buy a new bag. I have three carry-ons as it is! Yes, this is against the rules, and no, no one cares. One of the bags is a shopping bag filled with food I don’t want to crush but still…

During all of my frenetic Nike and craft shopping I didn’t eat anything (from like 3:30 to 8:45). My sugar was good but at 8:45 I realized I was STARVING. I didn’t want to eat any street food, one because it looked gross, and two because I didn’t want to get the runs… so I headed for the first place I saw… McDonalds. What a wonderful experience. I finally found a Taiwanese person (not named Yi-Chen) who spoke pretty good English, the bathroom featured a western toilet and was clean (a rarity in Taipei). The best part however was the cheeseburger that I ate. I don’t know if Taiwan beef is special or if I was just really hungry but it was AMAZING! They also had Coke Zero on the fountain which was lovely. I had a thirty-two ounce soda with ICE. Heaven can’t be much better than that. The McD’s was connected to an entertainment area… for fun I wondered around in there and I found a mechanical bull. There was a Taiwanese male, probably in his late teens riding it… it was HILARIOUS. This guy really thought he was cowboy. I have pictures of this and will obviously show you all when I get home.

I ended up spending (no I’m not going to say how much money) all of my 5 hours without Yi-Chen in Shinji. When 9:10 rolled around I headed back to the subway with Korean and Spanish maps to meet Yi-Chen. I arrived to my station at 9:28 and headed to an exit. Yi-Chen called me (I borrowed Ling’s cell phone) to ask where I was right as I was exiting the station. She said that she didn’t see me (I didn’t see here either). I told her the name of my station and that I was by the “Hi-Life” (a local convenience store) next to exit 6. She said that she was at different station. And that she would come and get me. I went in the Hi-Life bought a Coke and waited on a pile-on by the street.

As I was waiting for Yi-Chen I had a great time watching the people ride their scooters. It is crazy how prolific scooters are in this society and how people ride them. I saw more than one woman dressed to the nines come out of the subway and hop on their boyfriend/husband’s scooter. They sit with their legs crossed hanging off to one side. I can’t believe they don’t fall off with the way they drive and take corners. I also saw lots of families on scooters. Sometimes you will see as many as four people on one regular sized scooter. From back to front there is an adult, kid, adult and kid. Usually the kid in the front is standing and the other three are sitting. You will also often see the parents wearing helmets and not the kids. I think this is weird. I would have thought it more likely to be the other way around. I don’t have any really good scooter pictures but we may be able to pick out a few of these things in the pictures of other stuff… because they truly are everywhere.

About 20 minutes after I talked to Yi-Chen she and Ling pulled up. Yi-Chen jumped out of the car and gave me a big hug. She was worried that she lost me. Evidently there are a lot of Hi-Life’s around the subway station and Yi-Chen couldn’t find me. She called me again but I didn’t answer the phone. Unbeknownst to me the phone battery died. Based on the car ride back to the hotel Yi-Chen really was worried that she lost me. I think this is because here Grandpa gave her a terrible time because she left me in downtown Taipei by myself. He was worried for my safety. The funny thing is that I wasn’t even the slightest bit worried for my safety or that Yi-Chen would find me. I was actually excited because it gave me the ability to move at my own pace without having to worrying about moving too fast (in general) or too slow (in the Nike stores) for Yi-Chen. Overall Tuesday was a very good day. It provided lots of good memories and merchandise with which to remember my trip to Taiwan.

Wednesday 5/30/07

I wore Yi-Chen out the previous 5 days so she decided that she wanted to start the day a little later. We agreed to meet at 9:30 (when did you ever think I would say 9:30 was later ;~) At around 9:30 my phone rang and it was Ling. She was in the lobby to get me. I met her and surprisingly there was no Yi-Chen. She was out doing something with her mom and grandma, so Ling was picking me up to take me back to her house. We had a nice ride and had fun practicing English. Evidently I am not as cool as Dad but I’m okay in Ling’s eyes.

It took Yi-Chen forever to get back to the house. I don’t know how long forever is but I do know that it felt like a long time. Since I couldn’t really communicate with Grandpa I decided to free the Su dog that no one likes. The Su’s have four Maltese’s. One is Ling and Yi-Chen’s (Shinju) that lives on the second floor. The other three live downstairs in the main hall in cages. Two share a cage (Lottery and ?) and then there is Mimi. Mimi lives in her own cage and no one likes her. Evidently they think she is dumb because she doesn’t go CRAZY when strangers enter the house. I liked that about Mimi. I took her out and played with her the whole time we waited for Yi-Chen. Grandpa told me that I should take her back to the States with me. I would have considered this if not for the whole customs thing… and the mom kicking me out of the house thing ;~>

Eventually Yi-Chen returned and Ling, Yi-Chen, Grandma and I went to the local grocery market. This was lots of fun. It would best be described as a Taiwanese Fred Meyer. It had a little bit of everything, with a heavy concentration on food, but not as big as Wal-Mart or Target. I bought all kinds of fun food there. If they don’t make me give up my third carry on tomorrow, then you all will be able to try it Thursday. We waited in line and checked out. I paid for my stuff and Yi-Chen proceeded to try and steel my receipt. I didn’t let here have the Visa slip but I eventually gave her the rest of it. I asked her why she wanted it so much and she said they were going to write it off as a business expense. I asked her how the heck that works, when it clearly says that I paid for it but she just shook her head and says that it does. I questioned her more about this since she is CPA for Heaven’s sake! She said that was accepted ethical behavior in Taiwan and I just laughed. On the way out of the store Yi-Chen and Grandma decided that they needed to go back and buy more toilet paper. This was hilarious because they had already purchased an entire cart full (dad would like these people). Ling and I went ahead and loaded the car. I asked her why they needed more and she said that if they bought one more today, then they got a free lotion or something. I didn’t understand this because it was just a lotion and they would have to get in line again and find it and on and on. But the Taiwanese love their free products. I won’t write it now but remember to ask me about 7-11’s and Hello Kitty.

After the grocery store we went to lunch. Yi-Chen told me to go upstairs and get a table in the place we were eating… she would bring the food. On the way up the stairs I looked down and saw two dead cockroaches above the kitchen. My lunch tasted really good after that. I really had to go to the bathroom but I decided it wasn’t worth the potential risk of what I might find. We ate pretty fast and then we were off to my potential gravy separator factory.

I’m not sure if the factory was what I was expecting. It was pretty ghetto but so is most of Taiwan. The bottom line is that the price is cheaper here but it may not be cheaper enough to make it worth the headache of doing business overseas. I plan to go and see the place Tim Stokes found in Corvallis after I return home and a final decision can be made about this. I can give more detail about this but I won’t take the time now.

After the factory we took Grandma and Ling back to their house. Yi-Chen and I then when back to Taipei for my last night in town. We started out the evening together in the part of town where all the young people hang out. I can’t remember the name. Yi-Chen wanted to buy some Hello-Kitty boxers. This area again had a similar feeling to that of a night market… but it was a little more permanent, and little nicer. Something I have failed to mention until now is the absolute PROLIFERATION of grab machines in Taipei. They are EVERYWHERE and so are their bounties (Ling’s car has all kinds of little animals hanging from the windshield and dashboard). I must admit Yi-Chen and I had some fun playing them. I do have a picture of these, so you all can see how grab machine crazy the culture is. At around 6ish Yi-Chen went off to meet some of her Taiwanese friends for dinner. I was invited to go but I decided that I would rather shop more. I went in a bunch of random little places and picked up all kinds of gifts for both now and later (some of my Christmas shopping is done already…)

Yi-Chen and I had made plans to meet back at the subway where we started at 9:30. She called me at around 9:05 got five words out of her mouth and then the phone battery went dead again. Yi-Chen is not very detail oriented with things like charging phones, which is scary since as an auditor detail is her business. Anywho… I would have liked more time to shop but since I couldn’t call her to finish our conversation I hoped that she would just stick to the original plan. By coincidence we ended up riding the same train back to our original station. My playtime in Taiwan was over. As I write this last line my plane is starting to descend into Nagoya. I am off for one last day of adventure. I miss you all and will send this when I can.

Katy