Cavorting with Canadian Cohorts

Greetings all,

My usual apologies for the lateness of my update, you know, study, work, stress, the usual; today I’m going to skip all that and talk about two day trips I took around Taiwan.

On Monday, December 5^th, I will be beginning my third semester here in Kaohsiung, but way back during the three week vacation I had in between my first and second semesters, Sarah (the other ginger who I went biking with in her home town) and I spent a day exploring a little island located off of Taiwan (the slightly larger little island). This island is called Qijin and the pier where the ferry comes to collect its passengers for the daunting twenty minute ride is a stone’s throw from my house (assuming you could get enough arc on it to make it over the buildings, which seems unlikely).

We met up at the MRT station at about 10, grabbed a dan bing (egg tortilla thing) for breakfast from the local sandwich shop which I have described in previous emails (though tragically when I returned from my trip to Hong Kong, I was informed the shop would only be open in the mornings when I’m still asleep; then last week I rode by and its being converted into a 7-11!!! It’s literally three feet from another 7-11 too, the signs are almost touching).  After our snack we wandered over to the ferry and grabbed a window seat. I enjoy being on boats, but since I get nauseous on a swing-set I was glad it didn’t last too long.

           

                                                There's a little village, shrine, temple, as well as collection of people who live and work on this island; according to Sarah there used to be a lot more people who actually called Qijin home, but now it’s mostly for tourists. There are some mountainy hills you wander up and at the top there are ruins from the Qihou Fort and a light house. This fort is a great symbol of Taiwan because it combines local people’s culture with Chinese, European, and Japanese influences; if there were an American baseball diamond there too then the image of modern Taiwan would be complete. 

History lesson: in the 19^th Century, there were aboriginal people who lived in the Qijin district, but fighting with Japan (and a massacre of 54 shipwrecked Japanese people by the locals during the ‘Mudan Incident’) led the final Emperor of China to restructure the forts put in place over a century before him. In 1875, Qing naval officers hired an Englishman to help design the fort/lighthouse to stave off Japanese invasions. Unfortunately, when the Japanese actually did attack, the Chinese lack of leadership at the fort led to a quick surrender in 1895. The fort was left in ruins after the Guomingdang took over and built a new base elsewhere (I’m sure you wanted to know this, because knowledge is power).

So. Sarah and I were two of the only people there that weekday morning and we wandered around the crumbling fort walls, wove in and out of the barracks, and looked out at Kaohsiung from the top of the hill. There’s something strangely soothing about ruins for me;                                                    maybe it’s the vines and tree roots seeping in to reclaim the land that ‘civilization’ borrowed. That was the best thing about living in Scotland, you couldn’t swing a cat without hitting some long-forgotten piece of castle (not that I swing cats…). Unfortunately, the weeds and the bugs and the claustrophobic feeling of nature and possibly even velociraptors closing in on you can ruin the moment (I’d take an air conditioner and a sterile countertop any day).

We wandered back down and grabbed some noodles from a local shop, had an interesting plum tea, and then caught the ferry and headed home in time for Sarah to get back to work. It was a really pleasant day out.

The next day trip came a month or so later, I don’t really know when (I have no gift for remembering dates…or names…or places…any wonder why I’m a historian?). Sarah, as you may recall, grew up in Taiwan but her family and her passport hail from Vancouver (I feel I have to mention this to give my title more legitimacy). Bree and Luc Stone came from Alberta about a month after I arrived in Kaohsiung and we hit it off right away. They are super friendly, very inclusive people who have the same sense of humor and love of books as I do (and I’m not just saying that ‘cause they may be reading this!). They are much more adventuresome than I am, however, as they climb mountains and camp and explore and whatever else it is that outdoorsy people do, but they invited me to join them on a trip down to the almost southernmost tip of Taiwan to a town called Kenting and I enthusiastically accepted.

Taiwan, to state the obvious, is an island and as such has many, many beaches. Unfortunately, where I live there are only about two decent beaches and you have to pay to struggle through the hoards of Chinese tourists to find a spot to sit in the sun and blister, so I don’t make it to the sand very often. But Kenting is known for its long stretches of free beaches so we were all excited to get out of the city and play in the water. 

We were not excited enough to actually leave before 11, however, as we are all quite nocturnal. We met up at the train station at 10, grabbed some breakfast, and then went to find a taxi to take us the hour and a half journey down south. The bus apparently takes about twice as long and goes through very windy roads, and none of us were particularly looking forward to me throwing up, but luckily we discovered that it’s actually about the same price to take a taxi if you go in a group so we had to wait around at the station for enough other passengers to show up to make a full car.

Once we got to Kenting, we discovered that, apart from the main road with beach shops and restaurants, there’s not much to see so we decided to hire some scooters and go explore the beaches a little farther up the mountains. Luc forgot his international license and neither Bree nor I had one of our own, so we had to wander down the street ‘til we found someone willing to hire them to us in a less than legal manner (ironically, this shop was located right across from the local police station). I had never driven a scooter before, so Bree drove one and Luc and I hopped on the other one and we zipped along the highway that ran by the ocean.

 As we drove, Luc would stop sporadically so we could walk out to the edges of cliffs and look down at the beaches and the crags jutting up out of the blue water. It was really lovely, particularly because it wasn’t oppressively hot that day; we actually had some cloud coverage which was a relief.

We found one beach which seemed decent enough so we stopped, got sunblocked-up, and tramped down to the water’s edge, but there was a group of surfers monopolizing the big waves so we decided to take our body-surfing elsewhere. By that time, I was quite hot (clouds or no it’s humid like death here) so I just wanted to be in the water, but Luc remembered how to get back to a more isolated beach which we’d seen from one of our various cliff-side detours.  

Impressively enough, he managed to drive right to the little road which led down the mountain to the sand, but we couldn’t drive all the way, we had to climb down the pointy, sand-eroded craggy rocks to get there. I had been under the impression that we would be lounging on the beach all day so I wore my long green broom skirt and tractionless flip flops, which made this climb a more daunting proposition for me than for them. But they were patient and got me down the rocks without any mishaps, and the beach was definitely worth the struggle (Bree told me she learned quickly to always bring a pair of hiking shoes whenever she went out with Luc because they always managed to end up climbing something! I will remember this for the Nantou trip in December…).

  

There were only about two people on the entire beach and there were glorious waves rolling in and out on the soft shoreline. As soon as we dropped off our stuff we were in the ocean being slammed and carried by the waves, it was fantastic. During a particularly large wave, Luc and I were both knocked under and I came up to discover I’d lost my sunglasses, but just as I was going to tell him, he asked me to look for his actual glasses!!! We didn’t find them, though thankfully he had a spare pair back in Kaohsiung, but this Velma-moment meant that I was going to have to drive the scooter back to town…

Before we got to that, we continued to enjoy the beach; they found a little rivulet of fresh water running down the mountains and, since we’re all from some part of the Rockies, we all felt more at home playing in the cooler, softer fresh river water than the salty ocean. It was getting dark and we decided to head back so I didn’t have to drive in the dark. Climbing up the hill was much easier than going down, so we made it up to the scooters with little difficulty.

I climbed on the scooter and Bree explained all the buttons and everything. She also told me here in Taiwan as a general rule when you’re driving you’re in charge only of what’s directly in front of you, don’t worry about checking your mirrors or really even of looking left and right, just go straight and whoever’s behind you or next to you will deal with getting around you. 

I foolishly thought it would be better to try out the scooter on the little dirt path that led up a hill before I tried it out on the highway. I managed to make it up the hill, but as I was trying to turn around the weight of the scooter surprised me and it fell over on top of my leg, pinning me to the ground. After Bree picked me up and got the scooter back to the base of the mountain I decided that was enough practice, time to just do it.

Driving down the big, smooth mountain roads was unexpectedly easy, and the scooters don’t have gears or anything you just push the handles and they go (of course that’s the same as four-wheelers and I’ve managed to crash one of those just fine). When people pass here, they drive right up behind you, tailgate you ‘til there’s room to get around, then speed around you as fast as they can with the wind whipping your little scooter around and nearly running you off the road. I don’t even like riding my bike next to someone else and actually I’ve always been afraid of people riding behind me because I worry they’re going to hit my tire and knock me over, so when Bree suggested I should go first, I was reluctant.

It turned out to be a very wise plan, however, as I was going quite a bit below the speed limit when I first started out so I could hug the outside of the lane while Bree, at Luc’s suggestion, stuck to the outside of the lane right behind me so that in order to pass us the other vehicles had to go all the way around both Bree and myself. This made me feel much more confident, though I was gripping the handles ‘til my knuckles were white and praying all the way down the mountain! By the time we got to the flat stretch of road leading to town I was able to go the speed limit and even pass a few slow moving people so it didn’t take us too long to get back. Bree said she was proud of my driving, and I was just thankful I was alive. It was kind of fun, I’ll admit, but once we got back into Kenting during the rush hour and had to wade through other scooters and the night market crowds it lost its thrill. I definitely do not like riding it in a city! Bree took them back, and we went about finding a place for dinner.

My classmate from Hawaii, Ashley, and her friend were in Kenting the same night so we joined them for some Thai food. It was pleasant enough but the speakers were right by our table and they were blasting ‘look how fun our bar/restaurant is, come on in and have a drink’ music right into our ears which made conversation a little difficult. The bar was also hosting a transvestite performance of some sort, but we decided to skip it and check out the market. The night market was alright, but Luc couldn’t see anything, I couldn’t fit in any of the clothes, and Bree had to deal with both of us so we decided we were all funned out; we found a taxi and headed home.

This was the night I discovered that the subway closes ridiculously early here in Kaohsiung; this is a very nocturnal city. You can get food, clothes, pretty much anything you want ‘til at least midnight and a lot of places stay up even later. It’s the land of the night market. But the subway closes at like 11:30 so if you don’t have a scooter you can’t really enjoy any of it! I had to take a taxi home, which was a little irritating, but at least I learned my lesson. Besides, if the 5 USD it took to get me home that night was the worst of my money problems that week, I’d be laughing. The day we went out was a Saturday and, as you’ll find out in the next email, I discovered the following Tuesday that I already made an $800 mistake. (Is that a good enough cliffhanger for you? Since most of you already know what happens, probably not, but I tried my best…)

Hope you’re all well,

Manda