December | 2018 | Martin's Tripping

I have a little confession to make… I’m not really getting the high pitched buzz out of Taipei that I thought I would. I keep walking around and comparing everything here to everywhere else I have traveled and feeling generally very underwhelmed. It’s kind of odd because when the students complain to me that Sydney isn’t good because, for example, you can’t just stay in your room and buy and pay for everything through WeChat… you actually have to leave your room, or that curries here aren’t good because they’re not spicy enough. I’m always telling them, “It’s not bad, it’s just different and that’s OK”. Travel is about experiencing life and seeing how people live in other parts of the world. I really need to remind myself of this. I’ve been feeling just a tad let down. *hashtag first world problem* … Taipei is not an obvious city like Tokyo or Bangkok, but that’s OK! The magic lies in the moments. And the great thing is that you can get on a train or bus for 30 minutes and be in the country side soaking in a hot spring.

So far, I’ve made two trips to the Beitou Hot Springs. Beitou is the closest and most convenient to Taipei City. It’s only about 20 or 30 minutes on the MRT red line. It was also the first hot spring area to be developed in Taiwan. The first hot spring spa there was actually opened by a German, but it was the Japanese that really developed the area and the whole “onsen” culture. They needed somewhere to relax and unwind after a hard day of raping and pillaging the land. You can certainly feel the Japanese influence in the area.

On the first trip to Beitou, I went to Kawayu onsen. It’s located a bit further up the mountain so I took the MRT to Xin Beitou and then cabbed it from the station. It calls itself by the Japanese pronunciation of the characters for “River Spring” (Kawa + Yu) but of course all the cab drivers only know it by the Chinese pronunciation. Fortunately the kanji for “river” is pretty easy and I could half remember the kanji for “spring”, so I drew them in the air with my finger. The cab driver eventually worked out my air kanji and whisked me off to Kawayu.

It was raining that day, as it has been pretty much every other day, so it was difficult to take many pictures and you can’t take any pictures inside anyway… The few snaps that I have don’t really do it justice.

The onsen was great and felt very Japanese, although it was a little more “rustic” than you would find in Japan. There were no cabs to take me back so I bussed it to Shipai MRT station.

For the second trip to Beitou, I couldn’t be f***ed drawing air kanji and dealing with cab drivers again so I just went to Beitou Hot Spring Resort, two minutes’ walk from the station. The resort itself was of a much higher standard, but of course you didn’t get the mountain view.

The other bonus of going to this resort was that “Thermal Valley”, a river of steaming spring water, was just up the road.

Yesterday, I went to visit Shen Keng “Old Street” which is a rural township in southern New Taipei City and is famous for its tofu dishes because apparently the best tofu is made here and the restaurants here use a distinctive cooking method. There’s A LOT of tofu! Pretty much everything is tofu… All different kinds like regular tofu, stinky tofu, dessert tofu, fried stinky tofu, BBQ stinky tofu, tofu cheese, tofu cake, sweet tofu drink, dried tofu, and tofu ice cream. As well as the tofu, they have a lot of sweet snacks and candies. I wasn’t too hungry so I only tried the tofu in spicy soup and deep fried stinky tofu. Apparently people like stinky tofu. Personally, I don’t get it. It smells like rotting garbage… It’s like “Let’s take a perfectly good food and make it smell and taste bad just for the hell of it.” I had to soak the deep fried stinky stuff in the spicy soup in order to mask the smell and taste. And when you walk past a stinky tofu restaurant, it’s like walking through an open sewer.

I had a “temple” day. I walked around the city and checked out a few of the Buddhist temples: Longshan, Dalongdong Baoan, Confucius and Tian Hou. As is the case with cathedrals in Europe, unless you are a worshiper of that religion or have a particular interest in the history of the structure, they all tend to blur into one after a while, especially Buddhist temples which are mostly built on a standard design. The beauty of these temples lies in the small details: the colours, the flowers, the incense, and the intricacies of the design. The structures themselves are all relatively modern as the original structures were destroyed one way or another.

I discovered this too on my temple walk: Toffee cherry tomatoes on a stick which were surprisingly good!

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I witnessed this mother/child bonding moment on the MRT the other day:

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Recently at work, there has been a lot of discussion about the issue of smartphone usage, in particular internet and smartphone addiction. While this may have been an isolated incident and probably not the norm, it does make you wonder about the future generation.

And on that note..

I’m off to have dinner in Taipei’s Modern Toilet restaurant. It’s completely toilet themed… Right up my alley… You can get such delights as “Modern toilet turd sub sandwich”, “Poop stuffed pancakes” and “Urine beer”. Yummy, yummy… can’t wait!

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I really wanted to get away for the Christmas and New Year break. Work had been getting me down and so I felt like I needed a bit of pick-me-up treat. Not being a huge fan of beaches, I opted for a two week Asian urban adventure. Taipei seemed like a good idea… It’s not too far away and I like travelling in ugly cities. People are generally nicer in ugly cities, with the exception of Seoul of course. It’s like they feel that they have to try harder to compensate. But now, sitting in my room on the third day of rain, I’m thinking maybe I could have gritted my teeth and put up with a bit of sand and sun.

I booked a ticket to Taipei on China Airlines. The main reason for this decision was that it’s the only airline offering non-stop flights between Sydney and Taipei… And of course, the price was very competitive! If you Google “Airlines + most fatalities + last 30 years” China Airlines comes in at the number 1 spot, beating out Korean Airlines at number 2 by about 200 people. Mind you, for “most fatalities of all time”, Aeroflot is the hands down winner there! China Airlines was founded by an ex-air force pilot and throughout the 90s, they mainly recruited ex-ROC Air Force pilots. It took them about 8 crashes and 700 odd fatalities, to work out that this practice wasn’t working for them. For about the last 15 years though, they’ve been cleaning up their act. They recruit university graduates and put them through a pilot training program and have also overhauled their maintenance programme.

Anyway, today’s China Airlines is not too shabby… Now, on the Sydney – Taipei route, they fly brand new Airbus A350s. The A350 is like the Dreamliner… It has higher ceilings, bigger windows, variable mood lighting and a higher cabin pressure so you don’t feel so disgusting when you arrive. The economy baggage allowance is 30 kg, which is perfect for “just-in-case” travelers like me. I packed 25 kgs for two weeks, including jeans that I never wear. That’s the heaviest outbound luggage I’ve ever had and for the shortest trip. For the interior, they’re going for a kind of zen bamboo forest thing and have done the walls in a sort of wood grain finish and an angular pattern on the carpet. I’m not a big fan of Chinese aesthetic. For me personally, I don’t get “bamboo forest”. I just all feels a bit chintzy. Anyway, at the end of the day, economy is economy and we were all crammed in like cattle on a live export to Asia.

I’ve been here for four days now, and my impression of Taipei is that it’s a pretty nice place. Visually, it’s no show-stopper… It certainly ticks the ugly box, that’s for sure… Kind of a dirty mini-Tokyo… But… It proves my theory of “ugly city, nice people”. People here seem very polite, kind and friendly and the language barrier doesn’t seem to cause too much awkwardness. Overall, the city has a relaxed, unpretentious vibe to it. It was part of the Empire of Japan for 50 years so culturally it feels like a Chinese/Japanese hybrid. The Japanese influence can be felt most noticeably in their manners, and of course the Japanese style hot springs and Japanese food chains. Announcements on trains are made in Mandarin, English and Japanese.

Perhaps in part due to the Japanese influence, I’ve been having flashbacks and have been reliving my time in Japan… Going into supermarkets and restaurants and not being able to read the labels and not knowing what’s in the food, and having to rely on people to always translate everything. And then there’s the whole “gaijin” scene (whatever the Taiwanese equivalent of “gaijin” is) … Going into bars and witnessing the “zero to hero” phenomenon or the foreigners who are trapped in a bubble one way or another… And then there’s the whole who’s into rice versus potatoes versus sticky rice. While I still do use the terminology myself, it’s always with tongue planted firmly in cheek. I’m so glad I can just observe it now and walk away.

On the other hand, one positive flashback is the relaxed attitude towards alcohol and drinking in Asian countries… Being able to buy alcohol in the convenience store and just walk down the street drinking… Here, not only do you have the choice of the usual stuff, but you can buy shots! It’s one of those bucket list items to walk down a city street doing shots you bought in a convenience store. I started with Pussycat, moved on to Buttery Nipple and ended on Porn Star!

The food here is INCREDIBLE!!! Perhaps in part due to there being a lot of elderly Buddhists living here, there are quite a number of amazing vegetarian restaurants. So far, I’ve checked out “Three to Vegetarian”, “Minder Vegetarian” and “Rice Revolution”. I thought the name Rice Revolution was pretty cool. It sounds like an Asian protest rally… But the other two names? Not sure what the idea there was. The first two restaurants are buffet restaurants. They each have about thirty or forty dishes. You help yourself and then they weigh it at check-out. Although Rice Revolution sounded cool, it was quite small and they had a very limited menu. However, outside of designated vegetarian restaurants, it’s pretty much a porkfest everywhere else.

Other than eating and walking down streets drinking, I’ve done the usual kind of tourist stuff and checked out the main sights. I even did a Bikram Yoga class. If you’ve ever wondered how you Bikram Yoga could be more challenging and unpleasant… Try doing it in Chinese! That takes it to a whole new level!