(no subject)

[princesstagi]

ok so this will be the first of probably a few entries on Asia. So we get to Taipei and spend 2 nights there in a church "hostel". By hostel I really mean hotel but was called a hostel. It was really nice except that the beds were about as hard the floor (which all floors there are tiles because it's so dirty). At this point it's all bottled water, as it would be for the rest of the trip. I don't really drink a lot of bottled water, so it was really difficult for me at first to remember that I could not drink straight from the tap. One of the first things I learned was that the streets are very dirty. I now understand why asians take their shoes off and leave them outside. It was absolutely disgusting. It took about 15 minutes every morning for the bottom of my pants to turn completely black. To get pretty much anywhere (because it was on the way to the subway station) we had to walk though an area where an open-air market is. This area was particularly disgusting because the ground was covered in blood and remains of the animals that were sold in this area. I kid you not, when it was light, you'd walk though this area and they'd have a dead pig cut completely in half sitting on a table (or each half sitting on a table) and you could walk up and pick the part out of the pig that you wanted. Also, live chicken were kept in teeny tiny coops in this area. Because of all the food, wild dogs (which are everywhere, and even more so in Thailand) were attracted to it, so it was covered in dog excrement too, Oh and the smell! Everything there smells. There really is no such thing as fresh air. Everyone smokes and the city itself has a kind of disgusting smell. And there's a lot of natural decay around. Also there's this really smelly food (we called it stinky tofu for lack of a better name) that I though was just he smell of garbage when I first smell it. I seriously gaged the first two times I encountered it. It took me about a week and a half to figure out it was actually food. It smells about like a chinese restaurant dumpster and is basically fermented tofu. So back to how dirty the city is (there's really too much info for me to make this a coherent entry). Like it's really this dirty because it's in the mountains. All the smog that gets up into the air has nowhere to go and it comes back down in the form of acid rain. Everything is dingy and grey. Also it's cloudy/rainy all the time (I only saw the moon once, for about a minute and a half), so basically everything is very grey and dull. On our last day there (like at the end of the trip), the clouds parted for a while and the sky was blue (but really not that blue because of all the haze and smog and stuff) and you reallize how grey the city is. The whole city looks like it is still cloudy outside, only it's not. Taipei is really not a city one goes to visit. There were virtualy no white tourists there. The only white people you saw were either with a significant othere or they went to university there. I saw maybe 4 white people there except for the subway stops close to the university. I discovered sweatshirts are a very western thing. Nobody there wears them because everybody is very trendy and stylish. I refrain from saying they all dress up because they're not necessairly office clothes or particularly fancy, but everybody has a style going on. Also, all women wear heels except when in school clothes or when they're old. And then they wear converses and very trendy tennis shoes (even the old people). Also, boots and fur are very popular there. There's (fake) fur on almost everyones coats. Ug (sp?) boots are really popular, along with cowboy boots and scrunchy boots. Also, all the shoes there are ridiculously cute. Like really America really screws up fashion. I came back and was looking around and no wonder the rest of the world thinks we're slobs. Compared to there, we are. Everyone was dressed so nicely there. I was watching some moring show the day after I came back and it was talking about style in LA and NYC and it was talking about boots and talking about how in style they are (note "in style" in Asia means EVERYONE is wearing it) and they showed examples of "really cute" ones which really compared to asian boots were not that cute. On some levels it would be nice if it was like that here, but I'm glad I can wear a sweatshirt to class and not get staired at because it's so tacky (wearing a sweatshirt is about the equivalent of walking around in your pajama pants).

ok so that covers the first two days of an 18 day trip
26 flying, Taipei (arrive ~9ish pm)
27 Taipei
28 Taipei, flying, Thailand (arive ~2ish pm)
29-31 Thailand (Bangkok and Pattaya)
1 flying, Taipei
3-4 Hualien
4-11 Taipei
12 Taipei, flying, HOME

definitely more to come