travels.
ok, i've got a bit of time to update now, so here goes with my report of what happened during the break period between the two camps... this is gonna be a long one, so settle yourself in. i'll include the link to my pictures here at the beginning, so as you're reading about the different cities you can follow along in the photo album (and of course you can find a few pics of different students from the camps at the beginning and end).
so that the description of my travels makes a little bit more sense, i'm linking to this map of taiwan so that you can follow my course. as i said before, my camp was in taoyuan (in the north part of the island). on the final night of the first session, i took a train down to tainan with my t.a. cherry.
she was nice enough to let me stay in her home, and her family was extremely hospitable. she has two brothers and a sister, but for the three nights i was there all of them slept together in one room just so that i could have a room all to myself. and they constantly treated me to food and drinks and everything i needed. other than her, none of them spoke any english, but i guess kindness doesn't need translation eh? cherry also served as my tour guide, letting me ride around on the back of her scooter and taking me to all of the good historic sites. on the first day we visited quite a lot of places, but unfortunately because it was just before chinese new year a lot of them weren't open. so we got a good look at the outside of some touristy spots, but only got to actually go in to two or three temples (the only thing that never closes). that night her family took me out for a fresh seafood dinner, where we went up to the tank full of live stuff and picked out what we wanted and they cooked it up in all different ways. quite nice. the next day we went to anping, just outside of tainan city. we went to a very famous (and gorgeous) temple there, and we went shopping on an old-style street which had lots of interesting local treats and souvenirs. i ate and bought a lot, so it was quite a good day... until the drive home, anyway. as i mentioned in a previous post, the driving there is quite crazy. when we were riding home on cherry's scooter, we got into an accident! an old guy riding his own scooter was turning a corner and bashed straight into us. we were fine - didn't even topple over - but the guy took a header into the pavement. it was pretty scary, because we pulled over and tried to help him up, but he wouldn't move and i honestly feared that he was dead. eventually we got him out of the street and called an ambulance, but he seemed to have a concussion and couldn't remember who he was. the police eventually came and questioned everyone for a while, and the guy went off to the hospital. we followed him to answer more questions and write up our statements. it ended up being a three-hour ordeal and i didn't understand much of what was going on obviously, but it was an interesting experience because i could see how the taiwanese health care system works (not too bad, and coincidentally the guy was fine in the end, just some minor cuts and bruises). that night was chinese new year's eve, so after we eventually worked everything out we went to a night market nearby cherry's house. these are quite interesting - they're like mini-carnivals that happen on a daily or weekly basis. there are tons of cheap clothes and rip-off merchandise and lots of interesting foods. the most noteworthy food is called "stinky tofu" and is a favorite dish in taiwan. it's one of the worst things i've ever smelled (you can tell you're getting near a vendor about 20 feet before you see him) and the taste isn't much better, but it was certainly interesting to try. after the market, one of cherry's friends took us to her house to show me how to play mah jong. so in all, it was quite an action-packed new year's eve!
the next day i said goodbye to cherry's family. in the morning we revisited some of the sites that had been closed on the first day, and then in the afternoon i set off by myself on the train to chunghua (written on the map as changhwa... silly chinese, able to be romanized in so many different ways). it was chinese new year's day and thus a bit difficult to find a hotel, but cherry had booked one for me that was supposed to be "near the station." after wandering for about 45 minutes to finally find it nearly on the other side of town, i decided to grab a taxi to my sightseeing destination so that i could get everything in before the sun set. i went to see a huge buddha statue on top of a mountain, which was nice but would have been more impressive had it been a clear day. i saw a few more touristy spots around the city, wandered around some shops, and called it an early night. the next morning i took a bus to the nearby city of lugang, which has several very famous historical spots. the city was incredibly crowded because everyone has to go to the temple to pray after the chinese new year, so it was a bit hard to get around. but the sightseeing areas were quite nice and i managed to see everything i had planned to.
later that evening i took the bus back to chunghua and got on the train bound for taipei, because i was supposed to meet my australian friend around midnight and stay at his apartment. he had been vacationing in thailand and was scheduled to get back around 10:30. my train ended up being late, and i was really worried about not meeting him in time and rushed frantically to get to his station on the mrt (subway-type thing in taipei). when i got there and called his cell phone, however, i discovered that his flight had been cancelled due to cloudy conditions in taiwan! so i was stuck in a strange place very late at night with nowhere to stay. needless to say, it was a pretty tough time and i wasn't very happy about it. but eventually i got things worked out and found a hotel, and he got a flight early the next morning so i was able to meet him in the afternoon. we were both pretty tired, so we just took a scooter ride up the nearby mountains and had a very short hike before getting a cup of coffee and heading back home to make dinner and watch a movie. for the rest of the week he had to work during the daytime, so i ventured into the city on my own for some sightseeing. on the following day, i planned to visit a lot of different places but actually only made it to taipei 101, the world's tallest building. the bottom 5 floors are a shopping mall (the other 96 are a financial center), and the basement floor offered a very nice food court with lots of different options. i found a spicy tofu dish that i was really looking forward to trying, but the court was so crowded that i had to walk around for 20 minutes with my heavy tray before finding a seat. somewhat flustered, i ate quickly and then did a bit of window shopping before buying a ticket for the super-fast elevator up to the observation deck. it was quite high, and when i went up to the outdoor viewing area two flights up i discovered that it's actually cloud-level and is much windier/rainier than the city below. fairly impressive overall, but it would have been nicer if it were a little less crowded.
the next day i was supposed to meet up with my friends from camp at night, so in the daytime i went sightseeing around taipei. i saw most of the outstanding places (most of which were pretty cool, all of which are documented in my photos). but when i went to find my friend daniel at the train station, i discovered that we had a miscommunication about the meeting place and thus i ended up walking aimlessly around looking for him for about 2 hours (and in the end never finding him). so i just went back to their hotel and got my own room for the night so that i could have some privacy and a little time to relax. the next day i went with leigh, an australian girl, to danshui (a small city on the north coast next to the ocean). we had a nice, leisurely day of shopping and snacking on local treats. that night we met our irish friend katie for an adventure to "snake alley," a famous night market. it's so-called because the shopkeepers have live snake shows; at one store we saw small animals being fed to huge pythons, and at another we saw a man taunting a snake and then eventually killing and gutting it. kind of awful, and i couldn't really watch at either place, but it was certainly a unique experience.
the day after that i met up with a taiwanese friend i had met through the internet to eat some beef noodles. luckily, he wasn't weird at all and we actually managed to have a good conversation and spend a couple of hours eating, drinking tea, and browsing around some bookstores. after we parted ways, i went back to meet up with my friends at the hotel to celebrate our final night in taipei. we bought some drinks at the supermarket and sat around the lobby for a while sharing interesting tales and getting to know each other better. it was fun, but unfortunately i had purchased some mysterious taiwanese liquor that ended up being much stronger than i expected, and by the time they decided they wanted to go out to a club i was already too far gone to go with them. so i just hung around for a bit with my friend daniel and fell asleep before everyone else had even come back.
finally, on the following day, we had to go back to taoyuan to get ready for our second session of camps. in all, i managed to see a lot of different things in taiwan, but i didn't get to a few places that i had been really looking forward to visiting. i definitely got my fill of temples, though... as beautiful as they are, they get a bit monotonous after a while. anyway, this entry is also kind of a bare-bones description of what i did without too much of what i was thinking or feeling. if i have time, i'll try to update once more about my actual impressions about different things in taiwan. until then, let me know if you have any more specific questions/comments!