Part II: Taiwan Life Begins

One thing that can be pretty cheap in Taiwan is food, so we went out for breakfast. We walked about a hundred feet and there was the place, basically a small room with an open kitchen and cute little tables spilling out onto the sidewalk. I had a tasty little breakfast sandwich and some warm soy milk, S. some eggs and coffee, for a total of about US$2.50, no tip needed.

S.’s in the process of inheriting a couple of acres of rice paddy and needed to take care of some paperwork, so when we got our stuff together, we headed out to find the right government office. Of course, we’d gotten a late start and would arrive right when the office was on lunch break, so we took a little detour.
In the hilly part of Taichung city near Tong Hai University, there’s a cute little area of shops and art studios and cafes. It’s kind of like one of those upscale towns in Maine on the way to Boothbay Harbor, appearancewise. About half the shops were closed or just opening for business when we got there, but it was a nice place to stroll around anyway. We did stop in at an eclectic handicraft-oriented gift store as well as a kind of strange Australian organic food store. On the way back down the hill, I was psyched when we discovered a shop from Chun Shui Tang, the small chain that first popularized boba, a Taichung invention.

We both had boba—mine with milk, S.’s without—and shared some pre-lunch snacks of some kind of rice flour squares with a sauce on them and a dish of dried tofu with another sauce. As was often the case in Taiwan with snacky things, we ate these using two-pronged wooden mini forks. Both drink and food were really yummy, and the boba were smaller, softer, and fresher than the L.A. variety. While we were having our little snack, a black stray dog came up to us, obviously looking for food. He had an interesting way about him. He was small enough that you could call him cute, and he seemed quite healthy, but I got this feeling that he was kind of volatile and that doing the wrong thing could set him off. So though I decided to let my guard down enough to take a picture, it was with a certain amount of trepidation that the dog would take that opportunity to attack me. However, after I took two photos and then ignored him, he wandered on his way.

In Taiwan, you’ll see a lot of stray dogs. In fact, after a while I started to see it as a defining feature of the country—like motor scooters. Stray dogs are pretty much everywhere, and they seem to exist in far greater numbers than stray cats, of which I saw a few. Of course, as soon as I mention that, I can picture an army of ASPCA zealots ready to go over there with little pairs of scissors and—snip snip! But after being around the dogs so much, my outlook on such things has become pretty averse to that of those helpful folks. The dogs there seemed totally fine. Of the 2,000 or so that I saw, only one of them looked really unhealthy (and insisted on following us for a while, which freaked S. out, as you’ll hear later). In nature, there is no snip snip. True, some animals suffer, but the majority do fine. There seems to be enough dog food to go around in Taiwan, and these are very efficient models, not monsters that have been bred to the point that they can’t provide for themselves.

Eventually we made our way to the land tax office. I won’t go into too much detail, but I did want to mention two things. One was that I was impressed by the presence of a carafe of water and paper cups at every table where you’d sit to fill out forms. The other was that everyone at the office seemed relatively patient and helpful. S. herself was surprised at the second aspect, as it hasn’t always been that way. Well, it if had been mainland China, it definitely wouldn’t have been that way.

With stamped land papers in hand, we continued on our way.

Our next destination was Guguan, a well-known hot springs area in the mountains east of Taichung. After an hour or so of urban/suburban driving, we started making our way up into the mountains. Along the way, S. pointed out the way the river was a very wide swath of dirt, rocks, and boulders with a narrow strand of water making its way down the middle. She mentioned that that particular profile is caused by a combination of the massive flooding that happens in Taiwan and neglect on the part of the government. It seems the government doesn’t do much to control the flooding and related problems. Once in the mountains, much of our journey was along a river like this, and this sort of river was a common sight during the rest of the trip as well.

After maybe an hour, hour and a half, we arrived in a cute hot springs town with restaurateurs beckoning. S. didn’t like being beckoned, so we always avoided those places, which was probably a good thing. We drove up a small hill to find two hot springs establishments, one with a slick glassed-in lobby, and another slightly less slick-looking and higher up the hill. I agreed with S. that the higher one may give a better view, so we decided to go there, but first…we seriously needed some (late) lunch.

A short ways back down the hill, we found a restaurant with an outdoor patio and no one beckoning. In fact, we had to go inside and wake people up to see if we could get some food, then we grabbed a table outside. I should point out here that although Taiwan can seem crowded at certain times in certain areas, it can be un-so if you avoid these times and places. Since S. and I were on vacation schedule and just ate when we felt really hungry, this meant that half the time we ate in nearly empty restaurants. That was cool in one way, but, you know, I do like the energy of crowds, too.

Anyway, we ordered several dishes—as required in Taiwan—including cold chicken, soup, some mountain vegetables, and a steamed fish. A few minutes later, the woman cook came outside, stuck her hand into a tank full of beautiful 16-inch orange cream-colored fish, pulled one out, and –whack—hacked it’s head halfway off with a long knife, killing it. A few minutes later, there he was, steaming away on a little charger right on our table, and he was delicious. Even the pile of cold chicken tasted awesome and fresh…I think I heard clucking in the distance….

While we ate, the proprietor, a very pleasant guy, visited us and chatted amiably with S. about…well, something. As we were leaving, he said we should mention his name to the hot springs people to get a discount. That brings up two important facts about getting things done in Taiwan.

One is that Taiwan seems to revolve around ways to get discounts. Constantly people will tell you “Tell them I sent you and you’ll get a discount” or “Tell them I sent you and then I’ll get a discount.” You can also ask for discounts based on what season it is, what day it is, what time it is, whether it’s a nice day, how much you order, how little you order…okay, maybe I’m exaggerating, but there are a lot of ways, and discounting does seem to make the world go ‘round in Taiwan.

The other is that 90% of the time when we were shopping, eating, or visiting somewhere, S. would have a congenial conversation with the proprietor or staff. I was pretty impressed. This made our trip even more pleasant, made it easier to find places we were looking for, got us discounts, and generally just greased the wheels in every respect. Sure there were a couple folks that were surly, or some conflict arose now and then, but overall I got this feeling of “we’re all in this together.” I’m not sure if it was just politeness, the bad economy, a country that’s struggled for independence together, or love of one’s fellow man, but it helped make Taiwan a nice place to be. Then again, perhaps not every Taiwanese has this ability S. has, and I was just really lucky to be with her in particular.

A few minutes later, we were back at the hot springs entrance, and soon we were opening the door to our little mini paradise. We had a big shower, a sort of large open bed/sofa, toilet, sink, coffee maker, tea, all sorts of amenities in little packages, stone-lined hot and cold tubs with a mini waterfall, and an open half wall with a view of the valley below and the mountains across from us. As the tubs filled, we showered up and took photos of the place, heated water for tea, etc.

After maybe half an hour of enjoying the hot tub, though, we started enjoying it less, as we were being attacked by mosquitoes. We tried to tough it out, but eventually it got too much. So we fairly quickly wrapped things up and got dressed to hit the road. But by the time we got out, S.’s back was looking like a relief map of New Mexico. On the other hand, I seem to be immune to mosquito spit, but that doesn’t mean I was gleeful about the half dozen bugs that bit me.

It was a relief to be enclosed in the car and bug-free again. We had plenty of time to enjoy the feeling, because it had gotten dark in the meantime and the road back to Taichung was very curvy. So it took us a few hours.

For a little contrast from our idyllic hot springs, our next destination, back in Taichung, was S.’s favorite place for shopping—Chung Yo Department Store! We had to find two special clothing items to make me “Tai Ke” and swimming pool friendly--“slippers” (sandals/thongs/flip-flops) and a tight-ass bathing suit and other accoutrements. You’d think that’d be easy—department store=departments=easy to find specific kinds of things. Well, not so, especially for flip-flops and other ubiquitous clothing items. Chung Yo wasn’t so much a department store as a designer boutique flea market, with each boutique displaying a product line from a specific designer. So if you wanted to find, say, flip-flops, you had to walk all over one expansive floor of the store to hunt down all the different caches of shoes. As you can imagine, after an hour or so of this, I was like “Fuck the flip-flops!” They were all too expensive anyway, especially considering that I was very dubious of the whole flip-flop concept in the first place.

Fortunately, bathing suits were actually all in one place, so I was able to find something pretty quickly. Hell, it was so convenient, S. decided to buy a new suit too! Totally psyched.