sybarites

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.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 11th, 2006 at 1:24 am by Marc and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.