sybarites

We have arrived in China (proper)! Shanghai is the first stop on our tour of the country and we’ve only just cracked the surface on checking out the city. However, in a short period of time, we’ve taken note of a few things to add my mental list of things that are different and/or interesting; relatively speaking, of course. Most recently, we’ve come across giant bottles of beer which are ¥3.50 (about 50¢ CDN) and are pretty tasty when sipped cold on the shared balcony of our hostel above the sounds of the Shanghai traffic, which consists mainly of honking and squealing of breaks.

Then, there are the intersections which, although they have traffic lights, are uncontrolled and pedestrians are expected to navigate thorough and around cars, buses, bicycles and scooters at will and as best as possible. Maybe the lights are only in use during rush hour?

While walking down the waterfront promenade today, known as The Bund, we stopped at a shady spot for a rest and a map consultation.

I left Marc with the map and walked over to buy a Coke from a man selling cold drinks and had to turn back when I realized that all I had were large denomination bills. I couldn’t have been gone more than 30 seconds and when I returned, Marc was encircled by three young women who wanted their picture taken with him. They left as I walked up and Marc commented that that was the best thing that had happened all day. How flattering for me. Then, a minute later, the same three returned and asked to have their picture taken with me. So we did, but I still can’t fathom why. Do we look that much stranger than any other tourist on the boardwalk? Are they collecting pictures of tourists? Were we the butts of a joke or being set up as marks? It was harmless and the motivation remains unknown. (BTW, I don’t even look like that much of a freak anymore because I got my lip ring removed when we were in HK. I look normal again.)

Anyway, to keep it brief and to act as a reminder for me later of some of the interesting things we’ve encountered so far, here is my Top 10 List:

10. Seen: seven wedding parties during one weekday afternoon near the Hong Kong Cultural Center- can’t imagine what a weekend is like.

9. Snoopyland.

8. On a menu: “Hot Lemon Coke” We didn’t try it.

7. In a restaurant: a table-top waiter control system (?) with buttons for “Order”, “Water”, “Bill”, and “Service”. Incidentally, this saved us from succumbing to our usual fate of being trapped at the table of a restaurant being incapable of requesting the bill. On the plus side, we’re getting really good at charades and my Chinese vocabulary has doubled (i.e. 4 words)

6. On a poster in the Metro: an ad for KFC with a woman against a red background holding a bucket of chicken and shouting, in a big speech bubble, “Casual wear!” It defies explanation.

5. Method of transport: the fabulous Aloha bus line from Taipei to Kaohsiung. The bar has been raised to a new high level after having taken this trip. All the huge, Lazy-Boy-esque seats were on the top level of a double-decker bus and featured personal climate control systems and in-headrest speakers to go with the private 12”, fold-out TV screens. One of the channels showed the route, the ETA and where we were on the GPS. Also, there was a Bus Attendant, offering free refreshments, blankies and pillows.

4. Method of transport: the Maglev train from Shanghai Pudong airport to the Metro station. It took less than 5 minutes to to reach our destination while we relaxed and watched the sunset at 300km/hr.

3. Method of transport: the longest escalator in the world in SoHo in HK. We’ve never escalated so much as in HK.

2. Food: Asaji Ichiban is a chain of shops in Hong Kong that sells only a phenomenal variety of ichiban-type noodles.

1. T-shirts: “Blondes are Great, Dumb and More Fun”, “Help me! My girlfriend wants access to my trust fund!”, and, above a picture of a chocolate bar, “Peanutbutter Mother^#*&$er”.

Off for dinner now. I think we’ll go for Chinese.

We set out this morning to see the Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery. Our book made it sound quaint, quiet and small, at its location along the periphery of the city. The first leg of the journey was via MTR subway where I saw, and had to take a picture of, the Nail Art Machine.

The directions indicate that one should apply a base coat to one’s nails using the bottles along the shelf at the front before choosing and design on the screen and then placing each finger, one by one, into the slot for the design to be applied. Then, one must apply a topcoat. Finally, a machine for those of us with no time to spare for a relaxing manicure so that we can get our nails done with classy art whilst on the run to the subway!

We connected to the mid-range train circuit to reach our final destination. At our station, we disembarked and Marc starting searching his pocket for the directions we had written out before leaving but, there was no need because the subway signs were clearly posted to indicate the correct exit for the monastery. We followed the helpful signs in English that were spaced 100′ apart, turned left at the IKEA, and then rounded the last corner to find this:

It appeared as though we may have been encouraged to visit this sacred site.

We started climbing the 400 steps up the mountainside and the path really was picturesque, with the first few hundred golden buddha lining the path.

This one was very upset, presumably about the the bug in his eye.

When we reached the top, we came upon a small, sunny square, with yet more buddha, several pergolas and a tower.

Also, we saw the temple, which we weren’t allowed to photograph but could enter and buy souvenirs. The inside of the temple itself was where the remainder of the ten thousand buddhas sat, lining the walls from floor to ceiling. We thought the number was figurative but it was very much literal. I could’ve bought a key chain stating this fact.

Before I came here, I thought I knew what crowded was, I thought I knew what rich was, I thought I knew what culture was. And then I experienced the MTR subway at rush-hour, the outrageous cost of living in Repulse Bay on the south part of Hong Kong Island and the fantastic food, art and, mostly, architecture that this place has in abundance.

The first day we were here, we went straight for the waterfront along the northern edge of Hong Kong island to see the tallest building in Hong Kong.

We saw a TV documentary on this building once and now, we have actually been to the real life version! Does it get any better than this?

The next thing we did was to take the tram up the unexpectedly steep slope to Victoria Peak for the view.

I won’t go on about how amazing the view was because the interweb is littered with such descriptions. I will, however, mention that the people who live in the houses on the road leading up to the peak must be exceptionally wealthy. The kind of wealthy I wouldn’t even know if it bumped into me on the street, which it may very well have already in a city this busy. I am invigorated by the crowds. There are more people on this island than I can even fathom and when everyone decides to take the MTR at the same time (when the drivers of their Mercedes and Jaguars have the day off, I presume) it is too crowded to move. The crowds at the Temple street Night Market can’t really compare but the lights, colour and traffic make up for the density.

Today, we visited the Graham Street market which is known for its food. From start to finish, from one end to the other, we were wishing desperately for a kitchen in which to cook.

There were many vegetables and a myriad of fish that we’ve never even seen before, let alone can imagine cooking. What I wouldn’t give for just a chef’s knife! (Though the hostel does have a corkscrew for happy hour so we’re not completely lost.)

Speaking of food, we went for dim sum today at the “famous” Yung Kee restaurant in SoHo.

Apparently, the roast goose at this restaurant has been the talk of the town since 1942. We didn’t have the goose, but we did have steamed dumplings with shrimp and bamboo fungus, yummy steamed pork buns, spring onion pastries, garlicky squid,spring rolls, mango pudding and an appetizer we didn’t order: century eggs.

I think they’re hard-boiled eggs that have been… um … preserved (?) for a few months. I tried them first and then coaxed Marc into trying. They weren’t bad but they’re weren’t something I would’ve ordered. Who cares, I tried them, and that’s the whole reason we went on this trip.

P.S. Typhoon Chenchu is due to pass through Hong Kong tonight. Should be.. interesting.

Our hostel in Los Angeles is not what we were looking for—big and lots of kids. It suited our purposes for one night. Our hostel in Taipei was just what we were looking for—small, clean, nice guests, and helpful owner. We’re not expecting anything fancy in our accommodation. However, we splurged one night in Kenting.

We left with every intention of camping with rented gear. Even after renting a scooter to get to the site, the cost would have been reasonable. Meg wanted to stay someplace where she could keep the dog with her, rather than outside, and I was worried about driving back to the camp site after drinking. So we ended up getting a hotel room, a hotel beautiful room.

I love high end hotels. It started when I first stayed at the Edmonton Centre Delta as a child. My family regularly had a room looking into the mall. I laid on the floor behind a mirrored window to watch the people at the food court.

Golden Ocean was about the same price as our hostel in LA. It was also the most beautiful room I’ve ever had. The soft white bed was on a raised section of the room that could be closed off with curtains. The shower was incredible. We stood on large black lava stones and beach rocks filled the rest of the floor. The sink was a solid marble bowl. The shower area was separated from the rest of the room by windows and lit columns. Shower gel and shampoo were provided in green porcelain decanters. We took three showers. Tea, coffee, porcelain tea cups, thermos and slippers were also provided. I’ll try to forget that experience before we get to our next hostel.

It is humbling that we know so little Mandarin (i.e. At best, two words, pronounced poorly) and so many people in Taiwan know how to speak so much English. It was a miracle that we made it to Meg and Kent’s apartment without too much incident, given the way that I butchered the pronunciation and couldn’t even write anything on paper to clarify the situation. Hopeless as we are with the language, our cab driver went to the trouble of calling someone on his cell phone who spoke English to try and get a more specific answer out of me as to where we wanted to go. Sadly, even this didn’t really help because all I had was the phonetic pronunciation of the address and couldn’t elaborate further. Regardless, he got us to within 3 blocks of where we were to be and told us the cost of the ride in English and thanked us as well.

Not only are we spoiled with respect to language and communication, I don’t know that I’ve been anywhere in my limited travels that so many people have offered unsolicited help. First, there was the woman in Taipei, who noticed us both gawking over a map on a corner of an intersection and came up to us to help us find our way though, ironically, this was one of the few moments that we weren’t actually lost. Then ,there was the man who noticed us queued behind him at the bus station ticket stand and, after having bought his ticket, stood nearby and offered his help in English, should we have had trouble signing our destination and buying tickets. For a fraction of a second, my suspicious side had to wonder at his motive for helping us but he was simply being kind. Most recently, and in addition to Meg & Kent who have touristing us around town and the countryside for the past several days, we met Zinky, the woman who runs the breakfast place down the street. She chatted us up and helped to get us on the right bus to Kenting by writing out a detailed note of instructions in Mandarin for us to give to our cab driver and then to the bus station ticket office. And, she makes a mean little puff-pastry-egg-sandwich thing for breakie.

The most challenging thing we’ve come across so far is driving. Another extremely nice friend of Meg & Kent’s offered to rent us a scooter for a couple of days but when I arrived to pick it up, he just lent it to us for free. Thus began the challenge of driving. First, there was the matter of once again becoming accustomed to driving a scooter. Then, I graduated to being able to try doubling Marc on the back. A few minutes later, I was thrust into the melee of Taiwanese traffic. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that a million people drive scooters and that the rules of the road are fairly loosely practiced. Kent gave me a quick run-down of what to look out for while negotiating the scooter through intersections and down long stretched of road (so, like, all the time): watch out for taxis because they’re crazy, blue service trucks because they cut off scooters, buses because they don’t stop for scooters, and other scooter drivers because they tend to weave in and out of traffic and might slide by too close. Oh yeah, and watch out for stray cats and dogs who may dart out onto the road at any moment. The pictures don’t really do the situation justice.

Despite all this, we set off in an envoy of two for a few local destinations of interest. Thankfully, it wasn’t rush hour and we didn’t have to navigate as Kent led the way. Just the same, we saw one three-car fender-bender in an intersection and, sadly, one scooter-meets-dog accident on the way to our first stop. But it got easier with more traffic and, by the end of the day, I was confident enough to weave – though not too aggressively – and managed to have a great time whipping through rush hour and then cruising around at night. Ultimately, I’m really happy that we braved the scooter because it meant we got to go for shaved ice: ice cream, fresh fruit and sugary syrup perched on top of crushed ice; I had never tasted dragon fruit before.

The heat and humidity continue to astonish me.

The temperature here is remarkable. When we left Canada, it was mild enough to be comfortable outside, though it snowed on our penultimate day in the country. When we arrived in LA, it was on the warm side but we still couldn’t abandon the long underwear. Finally, upon arrival in Taiwan, we experienced heat.

On our first day, it seemed so lovely to be so warm and let our skin absorb the moisture in the air. “Isn’t it so nice,” we said, “that we can walk around in the evening and not wear a jacket!” Then the rain started falling, and we thought “Oh my, a little sprinkle. We had better go back to the hostel.” And then we got trapped by the DOWNPOUR of rain, under an awning fifty feet from our door. (That was Lesson #45 of being in Asia- we continue a burn-rate of 20 Lessons/day.) The next day, we began our touristing with a walk to Taipei 101, currently the tallest building in the world. The building was great, the heat was astonishing.

After having bought about 10 bottles of water, I convinced Marc to try something new: sweetened rose water. It tastes great and, when the cold bottle is held to the forehead, it seems to create the illusion of being cool for a couple of seconds.

Now, we are at Meg and Kent’s apartment in Kaohsiung the heat is consuming. The good news is that our extremely generous hosts have a balcony with a fantastic view of the city and the mountains beyond, which is a perfect place for happy hour. Surely, we will become a little more acclimatized as our jet lag wears down and our beer consumption increases. It’s not for nothin’ that my favourite beer is sold cheap at every convenience store, which are conveniently located every two blocks.

• Number of Times That We Have Been Lost So Far: 6
• Number of Items That We Have Lost So Far: 4

P.S. I can hear the experienced travellers we know reading this and scoffing, “You think this is hot?! Wait until you reach Beijing/Dubai/India/Thailand.” Yes. We know.

We had to pack a lot of food into one day and two nights. On our first night I insisted we order from Salvatore’s Pizza. They make a plain cheese pizza to die for. We also split a mushroom and garlic pizza, a meatball hero and a salami-pepperoni hero. This was a traditional meal of Danny J and me. I used to favour the salami-pepperoni hero over the meatball, but this time was different. The meatballs are sliced and covered in cheese and sauce. The texture clearly states the sandwich is full of fat. It’s worth it.

The next day required an extra lunch to fit in all the mandatory stops. Ray’s at Scotia Square has a wide selection of Lebanese food. I hadn’t been there in three years. Nothing is fried. Everything is low fat. I always order the barbeque chicken pita. Rather than lettuce, he adds salad with tomatoes and pita croutons. The croutons add a great crunch. The oddest ingredient is roasted potatoes. He finishes it off with hummous and tahini sauce. I guess I’ve been there a lot. Ray looked and me and says, “it’s been a long time.”

Lunch two was chirashi sushi from Dharma. It wasn’t as good as I had remembered. That may have been purely because of the plating. Normally chirashi is served in a bowl with sushi rice at the bottom and assorted shashimi on top. The unique element at Dharma is barbeque eel sauce on the rice. On this occasion the rice was on one side of a plate and the fish on the other. All the fish was excellent, but it didn’t have the usual visual punch.

Steve-o-reno’s has the best coffee in Halifax. We both ordered the double short latte. It wasn’t as good as the Blue Bottle Company in San Francisco, but still very good.

Our next stop was Dio Mio for chocolate ice cream. They do have many more special flavours, but the chocolate is better than almost anywhere. It’s not too sweet. The cocoa flavour is strong. I remembered it being even more so, but the ice cream still tasted very good. I used to eat a small tub of it every week along with another of strawberry sorbet.

Dave and Karen picked up Indian takeout on our last night. Some couple with a hole in the wall sells their own frozen dishes. We had paneer, butter chicken, curry goat, curry vegetables and samosas. All were excellent. The best Indian food I’ve had at a restaurant was only marginally better.

We quickly learned how to get necessities in Taipei. Someone told us Taipei is a good city for us to transition to Asian travel. Most people speak at least a little English. Most signs are posted in English and most places have very good signs. The metro is very easy to use. They even provide a very good map of the city for free.

Food can be a little challenging. The key factor is selecting a food stand where we can communicate what we want. Some restaurants and stands have pictures, others have English menus. Some just have food on display at which to point. It’s also possible to point at meals that have been served to other people. Most food vendors seem used to selling food in this fashion.

On our first night we selected a small restaurant with pictures of noodle soup. We pointed at what we thought was chicken, but were served barbeque pork, which was better anyway. The pork and broth were very tasty. The soup also included baby bok choy, an egg and a slice of white something with a pink flower that had no flavour at first, then tasted like fish or fake crab. I suspect it was some sort of fish log. The smiling proprietor brought us some ice tea at no extra charge.

Dessert was a bit of surprise. I picked out something pink from a display case with the assumption it was soft, fluffy and creamy. I’m glad we didn’t wait until we got back to the hostel to eat it because it turned out to be frozen. The outside was covered in sticky gelatinous rice. The inside was like strawberry ice cream, but with a slightly waxy texture. We’re sure to have more pleasant surprises.

There are so many places to go in Taipei and so much food to try. We could spend a three weeks here instead of a few days.

• Number of Times That We Have Gotten Lost So Far: 3

• Number of People That We’ve Seen That Officially Qualify as Extraordinarily Weird: >10 (Most notably, the “Greatest Wino in The World” according to his sandwich board sign and the Muscle Beach dude, all greased up and wearing nothing beyond a stars n’ stripes Speedo^TM at 8.00pm when everyone else is wearing jackets)

• Number of Oceans Viewed Within One Week: 2 (Atlantic & Pacific)

• Number of Time Zones We’ve Crossed In The Last Three Days: 5

• Number of In-N-Out* Cheeseburgers Experienced: 2

* I’ve been wanting to try an In-N-Out burger since reading about them in a random food blog about a year ago. The guy went on and on about how scrumptious they were, how perfect and cheesy exemplary of all that makes a burger great. He wrote probably >500 words about these burgers, and the accompanying fries and shake, so I had to put them on The List. Of course, I forgot all about them when we were in San Francisco last year but was reminded of them by a recent article about this California food chain in Food & Wine magazine. This article described how Thomas Keller liked them and if he likes them, I have to try them. It turns out that they make a very decent burger: fresh ground beef, made while you wait, home-made buns and fries, hand-torn lettuce, etc. Nothing to write home about (no pun intended) but I’m sure I’ll have pleasant memories when we’re in the middle of China with nary a burger joint on the horizon.

• Number of Toothbrushes Lost So Far: 1