neverending pain in my ass
Literally. Scabies are a neverending pain in the ass.
I am 75% certain that although the scabies treatment killed the outbreaks all over the rest of my body, the little shits are still somehow infesting my butt, which is extremely fucking annoying because (like a lot of my back), it's a part of my body that i can't actually see, so i can't tell if things are getting better or not. I have tried valiantly to take some cellphone shots that turned out very NSFW to try get an idea of what's going on, but even beaming my phone screen to my computer to try get it lined up, i can't get good enough focus or camera resolution to really be able to see what's happening. What i can say, is i have many, many bright red dots on my ass. For a while it seemed like they were becoming less raised and the itching subsided, with only the odd tingle here and there. But this week it seems to have started back up again, and i have a suspicion (from what camera angles i can get) that one or two of the bumps are actually those tell-tale burrows brimming with eggs that will shortly hatch and start the whole fucking nightmare all over again.
FUCK SCABIES.
I cannot explain you just how much this shit has fucked up my life for the past few months. Yes, i still made an international move and went on a business trip and i'm going to work every day, but for months i was losing sleep from the itching, and every time i had to sit still for more than a minute or two it was like my skin was crawling and i wanted to tear it all off. The past few weeks i've been sleeping normally again, but i'm still paranoid about every little flutter and tingle. I've been afraid to go out and do anything in the warm weather for fear of exacerbating it. I can't relax. I'm constantly worried if i'm showering right, if i'm soaping right, if i'm drying myself off right, if my clothes are truly clean, if my bed is infested, if i should use lotion, or not use lotion... It's exhausting.
Today - in case it's the beginning of a new wave of misery - i just went "fuck it" and decided to go on adventure.
Yep, i went to see the sea. Taipei is nestled in the middle of a ring of mountains and sits mostly in the lowlands where the Dahan River merges with the Xindian River to form the Tamsui River. It doesn't feel like a seaside town, but you can hop on the metro and get to a beach in under an hour.
Or you can jump on a bike and just follow the river.
I bought some sunblock at the convenience store by my house, then picked up a sharebike at the metro station and headed directly west to pass through the flood barriers into the riverside greenway.
I've mentioned before that Taipei doesn't really have shit for parks - there are a few, but it's very easy to live your life in this city and only ever see a tree growing out of the concrete in front of 7/11. But when you go through the flood barriers, it's a whole different story. The rivers themselves are respectably wide, but add the mangroves and riverside greenery and longer view distance... it feels like you teleported 50 miles out of town instead of just 50 meters.
When i traveled through Taiwan about 5 years ago, i took the metro up to Tamsui (name of the river, but also the name of the town on the east side of its mouth) and wandered around for a few hours. I had heard from a colleague that you could actually bike all of the way up there - it's only about 25km - so figured why not.
Well, the weather was 36 degrees and humid as hell. Air quality not great either. That's why not. But that seems to be my MO - pick the hottest, sunniest, most hellish day for an adventure. I mean, it's not really an adventure if it's comfortable, right?
The great thing about taking a bike places is that you get to see the change more slowly. After crossing onto the west side of the river and cycling along a tall dyke feeling like king of the world, the greenway ducked under a bridge and switched to a mangrove-level boardwalk.
Crossing back over again at the last bridge before the coast, the bike path gets squished up against the metro tracks and features several blind turns.
Just as i was starting to think i should've packed more than a liter of water, i popped out near the Tamsui metro station, which is also where the big seaside shopping strip starts. It's the usual array of places selling deep fried seafood and weird-looking shellfish on a stick, plus shaved ice and fruit juice of course. And all the usual snack and noodle joints covering most every preference, since tourist destinations need to make sure everyone can get what they want, even if it's not the best version of that thing. Plus it's the seaside, so there are also all the shops selling plastic junk to keep kids entertained, places to buy hats and sunscreen and flip-flops and bikinis.
I actually don't hate those sort of seaside strips, touristy as they are. They're tacky and charming and full of life. But what i was really on the hunt for was a small side street up top of a hill that i remember i visited last time i was there, which felt a lot more "local" and where i remember getting a nice 涼麵 cold noodle.
I was pretty starving along the way, so i got a 西瓜汁 watermelon juice from the juice guy and a 潤餅卷 from a lumpia stand. I didn't actually know this was a lumpia till i looked up the Chinese name (which means something like moist flatbread roll), and i never would've considered it a lumpia because in the Netherlands (and most of Europe, i think) a lumpia is a deep-fried spring roll similar to what Americans and Canadians call egg rolls. (蛋捲 "egg rolls" are actually something completely different - and sweet - in China.) Anyway, it turns out that the Taiwanese version of lumpia from the Philippines is something a bit closer to a Vietnamese salad roll. But the wrap is a bit more substantial. When i started eating it - before i looked it up in wiki - i decided i was going to name it a Taiwanese burrito. You know what? Here, just have a picture.
I got the vege version with bean sprouts and cabbage and tofu and peanuts and some kind of sweet, crispy magic. It was very good.
Then i headed up a hill that seemed somewhat familiar. But, as i got further up, it didn't seem familiar any more. I resolved to sit down at a small 糖水 tongsui place to get 花生豆花 peanuts on bean flower (tofu pudding) with some shaved ice and simple syrup. It's refreshing, vegan and nutritious, one of my most common snacks i remember from last time i traveled in Taiwan. That gave me the energy to keep going. I walked up and down and round a few circles, past a snazzy church and some hideous gated communities, and then... after going past one of those typical Taiwanese schools that look like they came straight out of an anime... i think i found the road!
But it's hard to know for sure, because when i visited the last time it was evening and it was a bustling little street full of local restaurants and i think even some market stalls. At 2 in the afternoon on Sunday pretty much nothing was open. I don't know if it wasn't open because it was Sunday, or if because it was one of those streets that only really starts kicking off when the sun sets, or if because last time i went there it was pre-COVID when there were more tourists around, although it is not a very touristy corner of the town... Maybe it was students that were packing it out? It is close to a university residence. I mean, if it's the same place at all. There were plenty of other little side streets i didn't check.
I have to say, though, traveling around Taiwan now that i can comfortably read most of the signs, it takes away some of the mystery of traveling before i could understand half of what was going on around me... but also it makes it difficult to remember these places that i only half-remember. Because now i can immediately tell a private university from a gated residential community from a golf course so my points of context are different. But back then it all looked the same - high walls, expensive vehicles, security guard - and i'd invent the story in my head of whatever i wanted it to be.
And, fuck, there are still a shit-ton of gated communities up on the far side of Tamsui. I remember walking through there the last time and i was just blown away by the endless rows of brand new skyscrapers being built. This time the skyscrapers previously under construction were all finished, but a whole new set was under construction.
But, again, the context with which i see these things has changed now. After living in China for 3 years and change, the first thing i think is "this is so fucking mainland". Gated communities. Security guards. Teslas and BMWs. Massive fucking suburb full of stooges, people who only care about building their own wealth, living in a meticulous community of upper middle class douchnozzles, sending their kids to the world's best universities, eating steak, playing golf, drinking wine, listening to classical music... And all the while making damn sure that none of the riff-raff can ever get within a stone's throw of their little bubble of ultra-westernized conspicuous consumption. And these motherfuckers - the ones living the most bourgeois, capitalist lives in the whole country - are exactly the people who quietly become members of the so-called "communist" party because it helps them get ahead in their careers, meanwhile turning a blind eye to the authoritarian policies and ever-increasing government-sponsored nationalism and xenophobia.
God it's disgusting. It makes me so mad. That country sure did get under my skin, because now i'm in fucking Taiwan and i'm still pissed at Rich China's hypocrisy and narcissism.
Deep breath.
Now, aside from how much i hate gated communities (i'll never give up hating on them in my LiveJournal now - it's become a part of my brand), there is actually an important lesson for Americans and Canadians here. And that is every time someone starts yet another tired rant about how "we can't have any more foreigners coming to the country, it's not that i'm racist or anything, i'm just being very logical and smart - of course i would totally love to welcome more immigrants if it were at all possible, but the unfortunate truth is we simply don't have the space for them..." Bla bla bla tell me you're a xenophobic reactionary without telling me etc.
When Asian cities can build entire districts in a few years, completely new neighborhoods for tens of thousands of people, with parks and public transport and everything... It is weak fucking sauce to complain about your far less densely populated country not having enough space. Immigrants aren't the problem. Bad urban planning is the problem. It's simply a matter of priorities. Invest in building a city, and - surprise - you'll find yourself with a city full of houses and shops and all of the things people who need somewhere to live could want. Even if part of it is a district full of bland gated communities and chain restaurants... Let's be honest, there are people out there who legit want that stuff. If the city is "full"... just build more city. It really is that simple.
Which isn't to say there are no homeless in Taipei, or that that there is no poverty... because in my district there are plenty of homeless. And on my ride up the river i still saw some squatter-looking shantytowns along the floodplain. But one stretch of road that i hoped to revisit - which was a little nerve-wracking at the time due to the wild dogs roaming along the seawall - is gone now. The city has started building a new bridge, right between Tamsui and Bali, at the mouth of the river. And that construction has uprooted whatever people used to live along there, mostly in shacks if i recall. I hope they found somewhere else to stay. Maybe they're some of the guys sleeping by the tree growing out of the concrete near my apartment.
So it's not perfect. But at least it feels like there's something happening.
Anyway, after walking through the weird ghost town of all those ritzy residential compounds, i popped out at the beach. (Oh, did i mention there is a tram line that goes through there now? The tram line was not there 5 years ago.) Something i noticed last time i was in Taiwan is that the beach is much less popular than the seaside shopping streets. That makes me happy. It wasn't deserted, but it was laid-back. I had a nice, mask-free splash through the water all the way out to the fishing harbor, then dried off my feet, wandered along the pier till i found some shade where i could sit down and chill... Then it was onto another sharebike for a few minutes back to town. I stopped in at a restaurant that did a not-terrible version of 重慶小麵 Chongqing small noodle, then hopped on the metro back home.
And, on the train, i started to itch.
Sigh.
I picked up some 葱油筋餅 green onion pancake, which is the Taiwanese name for what they just call 葱油餅 in China. (Turns out most of what they call 葱油餅 in Taiwan is deep fried, so it's more like a donut than a pancake.) Of course there's no hot sauce because it's fucking Taiwan, so i couldn't get my beloved 醬香餅 version. But at home i have my special Sichuan pepper sauce and peanut butter, so i nibbled on that, and some 龍眼 longan and 甘蔗汁 cane juice and nori senbei rice cracker things. All the while hoping that this itch is not The Itch.
Fuck.
I should post one more picture of me smiling, for posterity. Before what's happening in my posterior kills the mood again.
I am 75% certain that although the scabies treatment killed the outbreaks all over the rest of my body, the little shits are still somehow infesting my butt, which is extremely fucking annoying because (like a lot of my back), it's a part of my body that i can't actually see, so i can't tell if things are getting better or not. I have tried valiantly to take some cellphone shots that turned out very NSFW to try get an idea of what's going on, but even beaming my phone screen to my computer to try get it lined up, i can't get good enough focus or camera resolution to really be able to see what's happening. What i can say, is i have many, many bright red dots on my ass. For a while it seemed like they were becoming less raised and the itching subsided, with only the odd tingle here and there. But this week it seems to have started back up again, and i have a suspicion (from what camera angles i can get) that one or two of the bumps are actually those tell-tale burrows brimming with eggs that will shortly hatch and start the whole fucking nightmare all over again.
FUCK SCABIES.
I cannot explain you just how much this shit has fucked up my life for the past few months. Yes, i still made an international move and went on a business trip and i'm going to work every day, but for months i was losing sleep from the itching, and every time i had to sit still for more than a minute or two it was like my skin was crawling and i wanted to tear it all off. The past few weeks i've been sleeping normally again, but i'm still paranoid about every little flutter and tingle. I've been afraid to go out and do anything in the warm weather for fear of exacerbating it. I can't relax. I'm constantly worried if i'm showering right, if i'm soaping right, if i'm drying myself off right, if my clothes are truly clean, if my bed is infested, if i should use lotion, or not use lotion... It's exhausting.
Today - in case it's the beginning of a new wave of misery - i just went "fuck it" and decided to go on adventure.
Yep, i went to see the sea. Taipei is nestled in the middle of a ring of mountains and sits mostly in the lowlands where the Dahan River merges with the Xindian River to form the Tamsui River. It doesn't feel like a seaside town, but you can hop on the metro and get to a beach in under an hour.
Or you can jump on a bike and just follow the river.
I bought some sunblock at the convenience store by my house, then picked up a sharebike at the metro station and headed directly west to pass through the flood barriers into the riverside greenway.
I've mentioned before that Taipei doesn't really have shit for parks - there are a few, but it's very easy to live your life in this city and only ever see a tree growing out of the concrete in front of 7/11. But when you go through the flood barriers, it's a whole different story. The rivers themselves are respectably wide, but add the mangroves and riverside greenery and longer view distance... it feels like you teleported 50 miles out of town instead of just 50 meters.
When i traveled through Taiwan about 5 years ago, i took the metro up to Tamsui (name of the river, but also the name of the town on the east side of its mouth) and wandered around for a few hours. I had heard from a colleague that you could actually bike all of the way up there - it's only about 25km - so figured why not.
Well, the weather was 36 degrees and humid as hell. Air quality not great either. That's why not. But that seems to be my MO - pick the hottest, sunniest, most hellish day for an adventure. I mean, it's not really an adventure if it's comfortable, right?
The great thing about taking a bike places is that you get to see the change more slowly. After crossing onto the west side of the river and cycling along a tall dyke feeling like king of the world, the greenway ducked under a bridge and switched to a mangrove-level boardwalk.
Crossing back over again at the last bridge before the coast, the bike path gets squished up against the metro tracks and features several blind turns.
Just as i was starting to think i should've packed more than a liter of water, i popped out near the Tamsui metro station, which is also where the big seaside shopping strip starts. It's the usual array of places selling deep fried seafood and weird-looking shellfish on a stick, plus shaved ice and fruit juice of course. And all the usual snack and noodle joints covering most every preference, since tourist destinations need to make sure everyone can get what they want, even if it's not the best version of that thing. Plus it's the seaside, so there are also all the shops selling plastic junk to keep kids entertained, places to buy hats and sunscreen and flip-flops and bikinis.
I actually don't hate those sort of seaside strips, touristy as they are. They're tacky and charming and full of life. But what i was really on the hunt for was a small side street up top of a hill that i remember i visited last time i was there, which felt a lot more "local" and where i remember getting a nice 涼麵 cold noodle.
I was pretty starving along the way, so i got a 西瓜汁 watermelon juice from the juice guy and a 潤餅卷 from a lumpia stand. I didn't actually know this was a lumpia till i looked up the Chinese name (which means something like moist flatbread roll), and i never would've considered it a lumpia because in the Netherlands (and most of Europe, i think) a lumpia is a deep-fried spring roll similar to what Americans and Canadians call egg rolls. (蛋捲 "egg rolls" are actually something completely different - and sweet - in China.) Anyway, it turns out that the Taiwanese version of lumpia from the Philippines is something a bit closer to a Vietnamese salad roll. But the wrap is a bit more substantial. When i started eating it - before i looked it up in wiki - i decided i was going to name it a Taiwanese burrito. You know what? Here, just have a picture.
I got the vege version with bean sprouts and cabbage and tofu and peanuts and some kind of sweet, crispy magic. It was very good.
Then i headed up a hill that seemed somewhat familiar. But, as i got further up, it didn't seem familiar any more. I resolved to sit down at a small 糖水 tongsui place to get 花生豆花 peanuts on bean flower (tofu pudding) with some shaved ice and simple syrup. It's refreshing, vegan and nutritious, one of my most common snacks i remember from last time i traveled in Taiwan. That gave me the energy to keep going. I walked up and down and round a few circles, past a snazzy church and some hideous gated communities, and then... after going past one of those typical Taiwanese schools that look like they came straight out of an anime... i think i found the road!
But it's hard to know for sure, because when i visited the last time it was evening and it was a bustling little street full of local restaurants and i think even some market stalls. At 2 in the afternoon on Sunday pretty much nothing was open. I don't know if it wasn't open because it was Sunday, or if because it was one of those streets that only really starts kicking off when the sun sets, or if because last time i went there it was pre-COVID when there were more tourists around, although it is not a very touristy corner of the town... Maybe it was students that were packing it out? It is close to a university residence. I mean, if it's the same place at all. There were plenty of other little side streets i didn't check.
I have to say, though, traveling around Taiwan now that i can comfortably read most of the signs, it takes away some of the mystery of traveling before i could understand half of what was going on around me... but also it makes it difficult to remember these places that i only half-remember. Because now i can immediately tell a private university from a gated residential community from a golf course so my points of context are different. But back then it all looked the same - high walls, expensive vehicles, security guard - and i'd invent the story in my head of whatever i wanted it to be.
And, fuck, there are still a shit-ton of gated communities up on the far side of Tamsui. I remember walking through there the last time and i was just blown away by the endless rows of brand new skyscrapers being built. This time the skyscrapers previously under construction were all finished, but a whole new set was under construction.
But, again, the context with which i see these things has changed now. After living in China for 3 years and change, the first thing i think is "this is so fucking mainland". Gated communities. Security guards. Teslas and BMWs. Massive fucking suburb full of stooges, people who only care about building their own wealth, living in a meticulous community of upper middle class douchnozzles, sending their kids to the world's best universities, eating steak, playing golf, drinking wine, listening to classical music... And all the while making damn sure that none of the riff-raff can ever get within a stone's throw of their little bubble of ultra-westernized conspicuous consumption. And these motherfuckers - the ones living the most bourgeois, capitalist lives in the whole country - are exactly the people who quietly become members of the so-called "communist" party because it helps them get ahead in their careers, meanwhile turning a blind eye to the authoritarian policies and ever-increasing government-sponsored nationalism and xenophobia.
God it's disgusting. It makes me so mad. That country sure did get under my skin, because now i'm in fucking Taiwan and i'm still pissed at Rich China's hypocrisy and narcissism.
Deep breath.
Now, aside from how much i hate gated communities (i'll never give up hating on them in my LiveJournal now - it's become a part of my brand), there is actually an important lesson for Americans and Canadians here. And that is every time someone starts yet another tired rant about how "we can't have any more foreigners coming to the country, it's not that i'm racist or anything, i'm just being very logical and smart - of course i would totally love to welcome more immigrants if it were at all possible, but the unfortunate truth is we simply don't have the space for them..." Bla bla bla tell me you're a xenophobic reactionary without telling me etc.
When Asian cities can build entire districts in a few years, completely new neighborhoods for tens of thousands of people, with parks and public transport and everything... It is weak fucking sauce to complain about your far less densely populated country not having enough space. Immigrants aren't the problem. Bad urban planning is the problem. It's simply a matter of priorities. Invest in building a city, and - surprise - you'll find yourself with a city full of houses and shops and all of the things people who need somewhere to live could want. Even if part of it is a district full of bland gated communities and chain restaurants... Let's be honest, there are people out there who legit want that stuff. If the city is "full"... just build more city. It really is that simple.
Which isn't to say there are no homeless in Taipei, or that that there is no poverty... because in my district there are plenty of homeless. And on my ride up the river i still saw some squatter-looking shantytowns along the floodplain. But one stretch of road that i hoped to revisit - which was a little nerve-wracking at the time due to the wild dogs roaming along the seawall - is gone now. The city has started building a new bridge, right between Tamsui and Bali, at the mouth of the river. And that construction has uprooted whatever people used to live along there, mostly in shacks if i recall. I hope they found somewhere else to stay. Maybe they're some of the guys sleeping by the tree growing out of the concrete near my apartment.
So it's not perfect. But at least it feels like there's something happening.
Anyway, after walking through the weird ghost town of all those ritzy residential compounds, i popped out at the beach. (Oh, did i mention there is a tram line that goes through there now? The tram line was not there 5 years ago.) Something i noticed last time i was in Taiwan is that the beach is much less popular than the seaside shopping streets. That makes me happy. It wasn't deserted, but it was laid-back. I had a nice, mask-free splash through the water all the way out to the fishing harbor, then dried off my feet, wandered along the pier till i found some shade where i could sit down and chill... Then it was onto another sharebike for a few minutes back to town. I stopped in at a restaurant that did a not-terrible version of 重慶小麵 Chongqing small noodle, then hopped on the metro back home.
And, on the train, i started to itch.
Sigh.
I picked up some 葱油筋餅 green onion pancake, which is the Taiwanese name for what they just call 葱油餅 in China. (Turns out most of what they call 葱油餅 in Taiwan is deep fried, so it's more like a donut than a pancake.) Of course there's no hot sauce because it's fucking Taiwan, so i couldn't get my beloved 醬香餅 version. But at home i have my special Sichuan pepper sauce and peanut butter, so i nibbled on that, and some 龍眼 longan and 甘蔗汁 cane juice and nori senbei rice cracker things. All the while hoping that this itch is not The Itch.
Fuck.
I should post one more picture of me smiling, for posterity. Before what's happening in my posterior kills the mood again.