Taiwan Rocks

I’ve been trying to figure out a way to tell about this country in the most accurate way but I’m quite speechless. I don’t want to be unfair with it or other countries but I think Taiwan rocks.

Do you know where is Taiwan? It’s an island south of China. In the south it almost touches Northern Philippines, and to the East it looks like you can jump between the little islands all the way to Okinawa in Japan. A big part of the population is Chinese who came over from the mainland over hundreds of years but the indigenous people still thrive and are ethnically relatives to the people of Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia. It has a unique interesting past of indigenous cultures and colonial invaders but I won’t go into that. If you are interested to know more about the history of Taiwan in relation to its Austronesian culture please visit this great website of my good friend Chris Anderson who is an anthropologist and has been doing research on this subject for some years.

Amis village chief and elders paying an official visit to our gathering in their traditional clothes. They still keep their traditional social structures such as the age groups. After a little talk and thanks giving they sang their songs, danced their dances and even thought us some. For them dancing and singing is a very high form of social bonding and they love it.

I arrived in Taiwan thinking that it would be much like China (well, isn’t it officially called Republic of China after all?) where I hadn’t felt such warm feelings. Then I thought “both my laptops were made in Taiwan and the world’s tallest building is in Taiwan. So it must be very developed, babylonized and expensive, more like Singapore or Hong Kong.” What a mistake to compare Taiwan to any of these, or any other country at all. It is really unique I think.

View of Taipei from the top of Taipei 101, world’s tallest building today. It was surprising that this was almost the only skyscraper there, Taipei not a city of high-rise buildings. It’s rather a widely developed flat city with rivers.

On arriving in Taipei, the first thing I realized was that it was quite a big and crowded metropolis but it seemed to work better than most others I had the chance to visit. It was very clean and orderly, and there were no traces of chaotic corners or aggressive or oppressive behaviour. There were instructions all over the place “Mind your rubber sandals in the escalator. Speak slowly on the mobile phone. Toilets 30 meters.”, etc. Just when I was thinking maybe this was too much, I saw in a toilet right above the urinal a sign saying “come closer” to activate the flush. But it was not like the signs in Singapore where they’d be more like “Flush after using. Penalty $5”. I didn’t see any fines printed except for the new West induced fascistic smoking ban stickers. And it seemed that although it’s a big crowded metropolis, Taipei worked really smoothly, without needing a visible police force or security guards everywhere. When I realized that there are no policemen around I started looking for them and for many days only saw them around the police stations and no where else. The Taipei Metro, which has been awarded the title ‘World’s most reliable public transport system’ for four consecutive years running, has contributed immensely to the clean streets where traffic is no longer disturbing. As nice big cities go, Taipei was pleasant for a short time.

Taipei metro with helpful instructions. Hush now baby, 100 meters left.

I can’t say that this sign was too much. In Taiwan I saw relatively people having a loud chat on the phone in public spaces. As it says “Good citizens create a happy atmosphere in Taipei Metro”

First SARS and then avian flu has been used to create much public fear in Taiwan. Still in some airports and railway stations have fever scanners (to see if any passengers have fever) and some people go around with a mouth cover. And the buses have these ‘no birds’ signs.

Mind your Crocs on the escalators. One can hardly walk a few meters without instructions and warnings in the metro and inside the metro cars there is hardly any advertisement, all that is posted are instructions.

Although it seems a very safe place there are these ‘night time safe zones’ in metro stations which are monitored by surveillance cameras, in case some guys are too drunk perhaps.

Then I discovered other aspects. Dealing with people first of all was very easy and pleasant. Many people speak English and even if they don’t they still do their best to help you when you need it but don’t bother you when you don’t. There is this general feeling of being taken care of and sometimes being accepted like a local, which I have felt only in Malaysia before but even there not to this degree. There is no double pricing for the foreigners and even the taxi drivers are decent people (doesn’t happen anywhere else it seems) who take the shortest road to your destination. The food is great with many options and vegetarian restaurants are widely available. The night food markets are great to explore ones own taste buds but coming from Chinese culture they also have a taste for “strange” things such as snakes, turtles and snails. I was surprised that food prices were almost the same as Thailand, as well as cheap clothing prices which were even cheaper.

Downtown Taipei has all the scenes we so very well know of scenes of Hong Kong or of Japan. When you have those Chinese characters with which you can tell a lot with just a few lines, then you write, it seems. It’s colorful and I was happy they didn’t mean anything to me.

Chinese new year is the biggest holiday in Taiwan and lasts 9 days. During the weeks before the holidays the markets swell and get very colorful. This stall sells all different golden decorations for the year of the Ox along with very necessary sweets. The downside is the interest in explosives, they just keep going day and night for a whole week.

The most intense food experience I went through while I was there was the Shaodofu or stinky tofu. It is one of a million way of cooking tofu which is first fermented and then fried. Shaodofu places can be found by their smell much easier than by the eye. The stink reaches far , sometimes a hundred meters away you can smell something strange, very strange, something between lightly dirty socks and wet carpet mixed with rotting meat. The smell hits the back of the nose and makes one wonder. But when you sit down and order one there comes this brown crusty tofu which is inside spongy, tastes a bit like meat and you eat it with a sauce of soy, vinegar and lots of garlic accompanied with sweet cabbage pickles. It is the most delicious form of tofu I’ve tasted so far and the experience of going through this smell and taste process is at least as transformative as learning to eat durian.

Candied fruits in the night market. These are like the shish-kabab of mixed fruits dipped in sugar. Yummy.

Another colorful aspect of the markets, dehydrated vegetables and fruits.

Later we went south along the East Coast, which is the less developed, more natural side of Taiwan. We crossed the Tropic of Cancer and very surprisingly the climate changed dramatically. It was supposed to be the dry season but during the two months I was there, we had maybe once or twice two days on a row with no drizzle. It was drizzling all the time, or anytime. Meanwhile the Central Weather Bureau of Taiwan proved to have the most unreliable weather forecasts. Everybody accepts that the weather in Taiwan is simply unpredictable.

Very fortunately for travelers, just the opposite is true for people of Taiwan. Nowhere else I have traveled I felt so easy to rely on people I didn’t know. And this covers all aspects of life. For example if you forget your map, you may get lost anywhere but in Taiwan it is more likely that this way you’ll get to meet people and always will get to where you want. I’ve been doing hitch-hiking all my life (not that it is my main means of transport but I use it) and it has never been so easy. Usually I didn’t even reach the place I thought to start hitch-hiking, a passing car would just give me a lift when I’m walking. And people are inviting. I don’t know how much of it was because of the area I spent most of my time (the East Coast) but we received many invitations and when we accepted them we saw they were from the heart. And a very important thing that contributes to a traveler’s perception of Taiwan is that it is a safe country, once again, the safest I’ve been so far. It’s been a while since left all my bags in the waiting room in a train station and went to toilet, got tickets and snacks for half an hour and didn’t have to worry. Observing the local or localized friends around me I realized how attached I am to locks and keys; people simply didn’t lock their cars or bikes or homes all the time. Of course they do it when they leave for long and of course there is some crime, such as breaking into houses where noone lives and stealing things but the petty crime seems not to exist and it has a very cooling effect on the soul, especially after having spend 2 years in other countries of South East Asia.

Jinzun beach is one of those long beautiful dark sand beaches of the East coast.

Some parts of the east coast are steep cliffs and big waves. Still the corals give this amazing colors to the sea.

Traveling inside Taiwan can be quite pleasant also. There seems to be a good reliable train network as well as bus companies. And it’s a small country, a short overnight train will take you between the northern and southern ends of the island. In the last years cycling is being promoted and there are bicycle lanes on all highways and in Taipei you can even bring your bicycle inside the subway trains in most stations. Along the East coast, which is far more natural than the West coast, I saw many groups of cyclers and campers although it was the cold season (down to 14 C) and was drizzling most of the time. And if you cannot find a place to camp, you can always camp in the garden of the local police station; they usually have a nice set up with camping grounds, shades, showers and toilets and other conveniences.

Dulan mountain is one of the most sacred mountains of southern Taiwan. And the foothills are full of, well, rice fields and betelnut trees of course.

The nature I have had the chance to experience during my short stay there was quite stunning and I was very surprised because I expected none of these. The East coast has many nice beaches which range from black sand to white sand to colorful stone. I heard that there are many surfers’ paradises along the coast and there are plenty of people carrying around surf boards even in the cold season. And some parts are rocky with cliffs going straight into the sea, leaving just a tiny space for a little beach and perhaps a couple of caves. Then there are the central mountains which are home to some of the indigenous communities and are mostly well preserved. At most places they look almost impenetrable. Although they are not massive mountain ranges, they are full of amazing valleys with clear rivers and waterfalls, lots of great forests, many hot springs and peace. As an amateur bird watcher I was very happy to see such diversity of birds even being close to the hills. I hear that in most parts there are some poisonous snakes and trekkers need to have boots, but I love the snakes and the way they serve to keep the land pure. I had the chance to visit the famous Taroko Gorge and I’ll never forget it. It’s a gorge, or a network of gorges and valleys, carved into a mountain made of marble. Yes, it’s all marble and when water slices through it you can see the whole marble face inside the mountain. It is breath taking. The roads leading up to the gorge are also very unique in the way that they are carved into this marble and look like many ant paths. I think this is a must see in Taiwan.

The entrance to Taroko gorge where nature’s majesty is humbly touched by human creation.

Clear waters, marble walls reaching up to the clouds and roads carved into these in a manner of ants in Taroko gorge.

The road in Taroko Gorge took decades to build and it's very easy to see why.

This mountain area, they say, has the greatest concentration of marbles in the world. It takes your breath away to see it like this.

Taiwan rocks. It is just along the same fault lines with Japan and Philippines which create all the earthquakes. And Taiwan has typhoons which are sometimes very strong. In the two months I was there I felt about 10 minor earthquakes some of which made strange grumbling noises which scared the s*** out of me but I didn’t have any typhoons thanks to the season (all the typhoons I experienced when I was in the Philippines between June and October, either started near Taiwan or more often were exported to Taiwan from the Philippines). But Taiwan seems to have the best infrastructure I’ve seen in a country with a rainy season and typhoons. And they are good at engineering marvels such as the world’s tallest skyscraper (over 500 meters) and world’s longest highway tunnel (over 20 kms). It surprises me that in places like Philippines and Thailand they have the rains every year and each year they seem to be caught unaware. This wouldn’t happen in Taiwan I think.

Right on. I want to put this stickers in all toilets, on all paper towel boxes. In fact they should print these on all tissues like the warnings on cigarettes "tissues kill". It hurts me to see people dry their hands with dead trees and even waste them. The point is, some of the warnings and instructions can be very useful.

The plan in Riuesiue hotsprings. Do you see anything strange? Chinese in general are pretty superstitious and the Chinese in Taiwan are no exception. Apparently the character for 4 resembles the one for 'death' so they always leave it out anyway but here they also had a fear of number 9. Funny enough the place was established 1919 and it was the 90th year when we were there (sometimes you just can't help it, can you?)

Of the other unique things about Taiwan I can count the betel nut chewing culture which has found it’s way into a modern society. I have chewed betelnuts in India but the ones in Taiwan are whole fresh nuts and they are more fibery so they don’t disintegrate inside the mouth and are quite pleasant to chew. I know they are addictive but they are also great after the meals or anytime one needs to get going. And you can get betelnuts everywhere, and they are conveniently always 50 NTs (Taiwanese money) for a bag of 10 to 20 green nuts wrapped up in half a vine leaf. They have these ‘betelnut beauties’ which are good looking and scantily clad girls in glass boots selling betelnuts by the highways. It’s funny how this marketing strategy using colorful fluorescent lights and a very sexy outfit to sell something you chew and spit out works for so many years but it is there and it is unique to Taiwan.

Most younger people seem to speak English but as it is with any other place, sometimes English is just spokening.

Taiwan is a small box of wonders, a country of pleasant surprises and it’s there waiting to be recognized. If you ever get the chance go visit Taiwan, you won’t regret it and it won’t be a hard experience. In fact you’ll most likely be so spoilt that traveling in other places will feel not so nice any more. Of all the westerners who choose to settle and live in Taiwan (and there are many of those) the most common reason for this I have heard has been “because everything is so easy here”. Of course people are people and there are some rotten apples everywhere, and we have our individual karmas also, but Taiwan is a great place in many senses. I pray I go back there soon, I love Taiwan.