Part 1 of 3: In Taipei, Taiwan the Republic of China ... 6 July
Slowly catching up on my posts. This was for 6 July, day 1 in Taipei.
First? No net blocks here, so I can post directly into LJ :D
Secondly, I wonder how my work would have felt to know that while 98% of my blackberry is for work, 2% is used to type up LJ entries when I'm sitting around airports or on the plane :D
6 July, 7.30am, written inflight
My god, what a day from hell. First of all I was running late this morning when I left home, then I got an insanely maddening cab driver who kept insisting that Hong Kong was part of China so therefore the flight should be from the domestic and not international airport!!!!!
He absolutely refused to take me to the international and so I had to walk 15 minutes with luggage from one terminal to the other!!!! Even when we got there he was still insisting on the whole "one China" thing and refusing to take me to the international airport even though I kept telling him that politics aside, all Hong Kong flights left from the international airport.
I guess it's lucky I didn't tell him I'm going to the Evil Taiwan ...
Fortunately Cathay Pacific will check my luggage straight from Beijing to Taipei. [Note: O noes! It's koala's evil jinx again]
Today I am very glad to leave "this China" if only for a few days. "One China" is a myth - just the difference when using Cathay Pacific an airline from one of the "other Chinas" (Hong Kong) is a ridiculous difference...
I was kind of boiling this morning because of the heat, I couldn't find anything this morning so was totally in headless chicken-mode. Also at the back of my mind was the inevitable conversation with SBL ... She actually tried to call me last night but the phone cut out. Who knows how the conversation would have gone :p
The flight from Beijing to Hong Kong has been nice. I am so tired that I managed to doze off a few times. A dead arm and a lolling head woke me up each time but I feel quite refreshed :)
Yesterday, I had to do interviews and I was taking the candidate around to try to calm her down and CR, a girl who sits near me made some kind of comment about me never coming in before 9am. :p. It made me feel bad because I realise it's true - I seem tired to be tired all the time lately. I really need to do something about that.
Arriving at Hong Kong airport felt great. Consumer paradise. Just seeing the variety of choice instead of the same boring brands that I see no matter how many shops I visit.
Also it was a funny experience to go from Mandarin, then temporarily back to Cantonese and English and then back to Mandarin again as I boarded the plane for Taipei. I found myself replying in a hotchpotch mixture of all three because the Cathay Pacific staff spoke to me in a mixture of all three so I'd reply in whatever language they picked.
The smoking rooms full of desperate smokers make me laugh.
*
Almost landing in Taipei ... The announcement was a little surreal. It announced that we were about to arrive in Taiwan. I missed the exact words but it sounded like - "drug smuggling is prohibited and Taiwan has capital punishment". Definitely an odd type of welcome announcement!
In Taipei
At first glance the airport made me panic a little. It looked so daggy and incredibly mainland Chinese that my first thought was:
"Oh my god, the KMT escaped to Taiwan and brought the crappy modern Chinese architecture with them!"
I always laugh at the way immigration describes foreigners. In Australia it's: "Holders of Australian passports" and "holders of foreign passports". In China, they say: "Foreigners". In Taiwan, they describe foreigners as: "Non-citizens".
I was such a retard, I totally forgot that there was no way I was going to be able to exchange my RMB for Taiwanese dollars. First, RMB is not a hard currency so it can only be converted into Hong Kong dollars and nothing else. For all other currencies you have to do the intermediate conversion first RMB to HKD and then to whatever and then vice versa. Secondly, there was definitely no way that RMB was going to be convertible into Taiwan dollars, but my brain clearly spasmed in my rush to leave my apartment so the man at the currency exchange booth had to very politely say: "Sorry, we don't exchange RMB to TWD."
A stream of Chinese people from the mainland were asking the same question - interestingly enough, there was no sign up saying this. You would think that it would have been easier just to up up a sign that said:
"We cannot exchange RMB. Duh!"
Surely that wouldn't count as an accidental, de facto acknowledgement that The Other China existed? :D
"So I guess I won't be able to exchange RMB to TWD anywhere in Taiwan," I mused aloud.
The man at the counter nodded and said. "不是那么开发." (Not that 'open').
I trundled to the luggage carousel and a large whiteboard appeared saying: 'K Bear please contact ground staff about your luggage'.
"Oh dear," thought I and trundled off to see ground staff. The similarities with mainland China faded quite quickly because the groundstaff were super nice and incredibly apologetic. They promised to deliver my luggage to me as soon as possible - it had somehow missed the connecting flight in Hong Kong even though I'd made it ;)
The service in Taiwan was also really good here - people are so friendly and polite. The cab driver didn't try to rip me off even though it was obvious I was a foreigner. The hotel had told me it would cost approximately NTD$1,000 to get to the hotel and that's about what it cost and he gave me a discount and offered to take me to the airport to Monday.
The hotel staff were also very polite and helpful, housekeeping showed up within 5 minutes of my call with an adaptor. Even though my luggage got lost inflight (hence my reference to koala's evil jinx), both the hotel and Cathay Pacific worked together to try to make sure my stuff got delivered to me.
I couldn't believe how incredibly hot Taipei was. It was an intense, overwhelming heat that kind of battered at your whole body and it was a humid heat rather than the dry heat we have in Beijing.
So I munched on some Läkerol, having stocked up in Hong Kong :)
Then went for a walk. Taipei appears to be the City of Scooters. There are scooters everywhere.
The Sogo here was Pocky Heaven:
Other Japanese nibblies
Strange brand name. I know it's famous but it seems weird for a human product
Pineapple cakes
My Pocky loot
I realised that I had hopped on a plane and headed for Taiwan without a guide book or any clue about what I was going to do, so I grabbed a hotel freebie booklet and a freebie map and started to plan my destinations :D I also recalled that I have relatives here in Taipei - paternal grandmother's elder sister's daughter i.e. Auntie M so I gave her a call to say hi to see if she wanted to have dinner on Saturday night. I always worry people will think it's annoying that just because I am on holiday that I will assume that they should take their precious time to entertain me so I just suggested dinner, but she was like: "Do you know anyone else here?"
I was all: "Nope, but I'm just going to make my way around." She asked me what I was intending to do and I said I was going to see the National Palace Museum and she said: "But that won't take all day!" So the plan was that I'd call her in the evening when I got back and we'd meet up for dinner.
We also joked around about how my bro had become obsessed with the best pineapple cakes in the world and how he had bought eight boxes of pineapple cake trying to find the right one :D I also mentioned that it's an office tradition that we had to buy local delicacies to take back to share when we went on a trip so I was asking for suggestions from her about what was good and uniquely Taiwanese.
When I called her, I spoke in Mandarin because I wasn't sure who would answer the phone but I kept expecting that we would switch back into English because her English is a million times better than my crappy Mandarin but for some reason except for the occasional word and phrases, I ended up speaking Mandarin with her and Uncle M the whole weekend! Quite funny :D I seriously have no idea why we did that given that the last time we meet, when I was in my early teens, I didn't speak a word of Mandarin so we only spoke in English and also when she spoke to my bro (who speaks no Mandarin at all), she would have spoken entirely in English.
Anyway I didn't mind, it was just a bit funny to be speaking in Mandarin to her. I was quite exhausted and limp from the heat so after my wander around the central district, I decided to stay in the hotel and wait for my luggage to be delivered. It finally arrived at 1.30am Saturday morning!!
PS: I am the only person in the plane who laughed when the English pilot introduced himself as Ian McKellen. Bwahahaha. Gandalf flies!
First? No net blocks here, so I can post directly into LJ :D
Secondly, I wonder how my work would have felt to know that while 98% of my blackberry is for work, 2% is used to type up LJ entries when I'm sitting around airports or on the plane :D
6 July, 7.30am, written inflight
My god, what a day from hell. First of all I was running late this morning when I left home, then I got an insanely maddening cab driver who kept insisting that Hong Kong was part of China so therefore the flight should be from the domestic and not international airport!!!!!
He absolutely refused to take me to the international and so I had to walk 15 minutes with luggage from one terminal to the other!!!! Even when we got there he was still insisting on the whole "one China" thing and refusing to take me to the international airport even though I kept telling him that politics aside, all Hong Kong flights left from the international airport.
I guess it's lucky I didn't tell him I'm going to the Evil Taiwan ...
Fortunately Cathay Pacific will check my luggage straight from Beijing to Taipei. [Note: O noes! It's koala's evil jinx again]
Today I am very glad to leave "this China" if only for a few days. "One China" is a myth - just the difference when using Cathay Pacific an airline from one of the "other Chinas" (Hong Kong) is a ridiculous difference...
I was kind of boiling this morning because of the heat, I couldn't find anything this morning so was totally in headless chicken-mode. Also at the back of my mind was the inevitable conversation with SBL ... She actually tried to call me last night but the phone cut out. Who knows how the conversation would have gone :p
The flight from Beijing to Hong Kong has been nice. I am so tired that I managed to doze off a few times. A dead arm and a lolling head woke me up each time but I feel quite refreshed :)
Yesterday, I had to do interviews and I was taking the candidate around to try to calm her down and CR, a girl who sits near me made some kind of comment about me never coming in before 9am. :p. It made me feel bad because I realise it's true - I seem tired to be tired all the time lately. I really need to do something about that.
Arriving at Hong Kong airport felt great. Consumer paradise. Just seeing the variety of choice instead of the same boring brands that I see no matter how many shops I visit.
Also it was a funny experience to go from Mandarin, then temporarily back to Cantonese and English and then back to Mandarin again as I boarded the plane for Taipei. I found myself replying in a hotchpotch mixture of all three because the Cathay Pacific staff spoke to me in a mixture of all three so I'd reply in whatever language they picked.
The smoking rooms full of desperate smokers make me laugh.
*
Almost landing in Taipei ... The announcement was a little surreal. It announced that we were about to arrive in Taiwan. I missed the exact words but it sounded like - "drug smuggling is prohibited and Taiwan has capital punishment". Definitely an odd type of welcome announcement!
In Taipei
At first glance the airport made me panic a little. It looked so daggy and incredibly mainland Chinese that my first thought was:
"Oh my god, the KMT escaped to Taiwan and brought the crappy modern Chinese architecture with them!"
I always laugh at the way immigration describes foreigners. In Australia it's: "Holders of Australian passports" and "holders of foreign passports". In China, they say: "Foreigners". In Taiwan, they describe foreigners as: "Non-citizens".
I was such a retard, I totally forgot that there was no way I was going to be able to exchange my RMB for Taiwanese dollars. First, RMB is not a hard currency so it can only be converted into Hong Kong dollars and nothing else. For all other currencies you have to do the intermediate conversion first RMB to HKD and then to whatever and then vice versa. Secondly, there was definitely no way that RMB was going to be convertible into Taiwan dollars, but my brain clearly spasmed in my rush to leave my apartment so the man at the currency exchange booth had to very politely say: "Sorry, we don't exchange RMB to TWD."
A stream of Chinese people from the mainland were asking the same question - interestingly enough, there was no sign up saying this. You would think that it would have been easier just to up up a sign that said:
"We cannot exchange RMB. Duh!"
Surely that wouldn't count as an accidental, de facto acknowledgement that The Other China existed? :D
"So I guess I won't be able to exchange RMB to TWD anywhere in Taiwan," I mused aloud.
The man at the counter nodded and said. "不是那么开发." (Not that 'open').
I trundled to the luggage carousel and a large whiteboard appeared saying: 'K Bear please contact ground staff about your luggage'.
"Oh dear," thought I and trundled off to see ground staff. The similarities with mainland China faded quite quickly because the groundstaff were super nice and incredibly apologetic. They promised to deliver my luggage to me as soon as possible - it had somehow missed the connecting flight in Hong Kong even though I'd made it ;)
The service in Taiwan was also really good here - people are so friendly and polite. The cab driver didn't try to rip me off even though it was obvious I was a foreigner. The hotel had told me it would cost approximately NTD$1,000 to get to the hotel and that's about what it cost and he gave me a discount and offered to take me to the airport to Monday.
The hotel staff were also very polite and helpful, housekeeping showed up within 5 minutes of my call with an adaptor. Even though my luggage got lost inflight (hence my reference to koala's evil jinx), both the hotel and Cathay Pacific worked together to try to make sure my stuff got delivered to me.
I couldn't believe how incredibly hot Taipei was. It was an intense, overwhelming heat that kind of battered at your whole body and it was a humid heat rather than the dry heat we have in Beijing.
So I munched on some Läkerol, having stocked up in Hong Kong :)
Then went for a walk. Taipei appears to be the City of Scooters. There are scooters everywhere.
The Sogo here was Pocky Heaven:
Other Japanese nibblies
Strange brand name. I know it's famous but it seems weird for a human product
Pineapple cakes
My Pocky loot
I realised that I had hopped on a plane and headed for Taiwan without a guide book or any clue about what I was going to do, so I grabbed a hotel freebie booklet and a freebie map and started to plan my destinations :D I also recalled that I have relatives here in Taipei - paternal grandmother's elder sister's daughter i.e. Auntie M so I gave her a call to say hi to see if she wanted to have dinner on Saturday night. I always worry people will think it's annoying that just because I am on holiday that I will assume that they should take their precious time to entertain me so I just suggested dinner, but she was like: "Do you know anyone else here?"
I was all: "Nope, but I'm just going to make my way around." She asked me what I was intending to do and I said I was going to see the National Palace Museum and she said: "But that won't take all day!" So the plan was that I'd call her in the evening when I got back and we'd meet up for dinner.
We also joked around about how my bro had become obsessed with the best pineapple cakes in the world and how he had bought eight boxes of pineapple cake trying to find the right one :D I also mentioned that it's an office tradition that we had to buy local delicacies to take back to share when we went on a trip so I was asking for suggestions from her about what was good and uniquely Taiwanese.
When I called her, I spoke in Mandarin because I wasn't sure who would answer the phone but I kept expecting that we would switch back into English because her English is a million times better than my crappy Mandarin but for some reason except for the occasional word and phrases, I ended up speaking Mandarin with her and Uncle M the whole weekend! Quite funny :D I seriously have no idea why we did that given that the last time we meet, when I was in my early teens, I didn't speak a word of Mandarin so we only spoke in English and also when she spoke to my bro (who speaks no Mandarin at all), she would have spoken entirely in English.
Anyway I didn't mind, it was just a bit funny to be speaking in Mandarin to her. I was quite exhausted and limp from the heat so after my wander around the central district, I decided to stay in the hotel and wait for my luggage to be delivered. It finally arrived at 1.30am Saturday morning!!
PS: I am the only person in the plane who laughed when the English pilot introduced himself as Ian McKellen. Bwahahaha. Gandalf flies!