Choosing What to Keep

I leave Taiwan very, very soon. This fact dictates my entire existence right now; every moment of my day which is not spent preparing directly for this event is spent in the knowledge that it probably should be. There's no longer any question of denial: it is what it is, and it's time I face facts. I'm going home. Soon.

I mentioned a few days ago that my packing process involves an awful lot of throwing stuff out. If you know me, you know that that is absolutely, 100% not in my nature. I'm not saying I'm a pack rat or anything, but actually I totally am a pack rat. Just look--no, just kidding, please don't look--in my childhood bedroom closet. There (and in the attic, since my room has been repurposed a few times since I moved out) you will find an archival record of my life, told through physical artifacts. My favorite toy from when I was 8, a cool art project from when I was 12, my high school English papers--they're all there, if you just look.

But here's the thing--I almost never do. Because, at the end of the day, there's rarely a reason to look back and see exactly what it is that I wrote about Catch-22 in that one paper, or exactly what my handwriting looked like when I was 5. It may be nice to have a few indicators of the different stages in life, sure, but ultimately the stuff that crowds the upper shelves of my closet is just that: stuff that crowds my closet. And, in some instances, my suitcase.

Having an imposed weight limit (set not just by the airlines, but by my budgetary rejection of excess baggage fees) has been hugely helpful in helping me see my pack rat tendencies for what they are: an unnecessary reliance on things to describe my experiences. I'm not saying I'm going to go through and trash what I have, but going forward, it's immensely freeing to be able to look at a pile of Chinese writing I've done, or my favorite bag since freshman year of college (the zipper of which recently broke, and which is otherwise well-loved throughout), or first-ever Fulbright name tag with "百合" printed on it, and realize that they belong in the trash, and that putting them there does nothing to dampen my memories.

My trash can is overflowing with such realizations.

And it doesn't bother me, not in the slightest, because of all the things that will come home with me--all the intangibles, which fortunately don't weigh in at the airport, since if they did I don't think my life savings would begin to put a dent in those fees. Choosing what to keep is easy when you realize you don't even have a choice on the important stuff.

Stuff like meeting Karina and her friend Satomi for shave ice (which I didn't end up getting to eat), and realizing that I now know Kaohsiung well enough to navigate on autopilot. And like being taken out to dinner by Alison, Maggie, Fiona and Patty, who took me to a Thai restaurant because it's my favorite, and who dared to brave spiciness beyond their comfort level to do so. And like getting waffles with Rachel and Chialing, despite being still full from dinner, just so we could have another little bit to sit around a picture-laminated table and take silly photos of Chialing's nephew's dog.

This is what I'm taking home; this is what matters:

As for the rest--no need to add to my rat's nest.

Thai Food and Mental Floss

Mostly, today consisted of me telling myself how much I needed to get done, and then failing to actually do it. But I'll spare you the details.

Tonight, Rachel, Chialing, Ariel (an ETA from last year who spent this year studying in Taipei) and I went to an absolutely adorable Thai restaurant down by the Banana Pier, where we gorged ourselves on green curry (my favorite), some sort of pork mash (Chialing's favorite, which we teased her for), coconut milk-seafood soup (Ariel's favorite, maybe?), pickled cucumbers (Rachel's perennial favorite), stewed cabbage, and empty heart vegetable (EVERYONE's favorite). Afterwards, we all agreed we were stuffed.

So, naturally, we all then set out to get ice cream. Not right away, of course; we made a little detour to the Love River to walk, sit, chat, and let our food digest. BUT THEN! Ice cream. And waffles. Obviously.

Question for my American readers: do we have ice cream with waffles in the States? I can't remember ordering it, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's not a thing there. Is it? It DEFINITELY is here, as is ice cream inside "toast," aka a loaf of hollowed-out bread.

Anyway, at a great little place just a block off one of my main routes but which I'd never seen before (also discovered on the back roads: another Smokey Joe's!), we got two waffle/ice cream combos, one chocolate banana and the other blueberry, and enjoyed them while smacking at mosquitoes and getting excited about how cold our metal chairs were (summer is here, for sure).

In all, a great night.

But where does the "mental floss" of the title come in, you wonder? Well. That would be via Sporcle.com, my latest easy-to-justify waste of time. Their website includes lots of things that I haven't yet explored; what I have explored, repeatedly, is their geography quizzes. Surprise surprise: I, like most Americans, have unfortunately never had a proper geography education, and therefore when I began quizzing myself I sucked.

However, as of about a half hour ago, I had a breakthrough: all 48 countries in Asia named in less than a minute. (Now, if only I could get the East coast of Africa straight in my mind...) So now I'm challenging you: how are you at geography? Click here and let me know how you do.

Beware of the Middle East, tiny countries and the hard-to-spell "stans"...

What do you eat?

For some reason, this question never fails to stump me. I've gotten it a lot since living in Taiwan, in different variations--"What do you eat for dinner here?" "What did you eat at home?" "What do Americans usually eat?"--and I never know how to answer.

I had the same problem at home--I would say I cooked for myself, and when people asked what, I would answer with an oh-so-dignified "Uhhhhh...." followed by something equally inane, like "chicken?"

Obviously, I eat. I would even go so far as to say that I eat pretty well, with a decent, though not chef-worthy, level of variety of meats and veggies and cuisines. But what are they, exactly? That, I couldn't say.

Some categories are easy: spaghetti, stir fry, meat and potatoes, salads, breads, tacos, soups, sandwiches. Beyond that, I often rely on a few steady cuisines: Italian, Thai, Mexican, some sort of "fusion" American (though I'll be the first to admit I have no idea what that means).

The problem, especially here, is that when I'm asked what I eat at home and the first things that come to mind are spaghetti and stir fry (which, in all honesty, I eat maybe once every two weeks), I'm then hard-pressed to explain to my Taiwanese friends why, exactly, I miss food from home. After all, most brunch shops here offer spaghetti, as do numerous other Western restaurants; as for stir fry, you'd be hard-pressed to go more than a few blocks here without hitting a dedicated restaurant. So why, they ask, and rightly so, do I miss food from home?

And that's where I get stuck. Why is it so hard to explain that everything, from the raw materials to the seasonings to the preparation methods, are different here? Or to mention how vastly the absence of things like convection ovens and non-American cheese (ironically the local favorite) affect one's ability to cook? Even now, I have a Taiwanese chocolate pudding in my fridge--a "pudding" the preparation for which required only water, not milk, and whose final consistency is closer to that of strawberry Jell-O than real, American-style pudding.

And what do Americans eat at home? As I tell my questioners, the answer to that is simply too vast for me to touch on. Americans eat everything. Every cuisine, tweaked a bit and catered to the American palate, shows up on American plates on a regular basis. Sure, here people may frequently treat themselves to other cuisines, but I don't think they realize just how prevalent other cuisines are in American foods.

One reason for this, of course, is that without other cuisines America doesn't have one--we have, after all, defined ourselves as a nation of internal immigrants, each of whom brought their own unique flavors with them when they moved. It's what makes American cuisine so nebulous and hard to pin down as anything other than diverse--and what makes answering "what do you eat?" such a ticklish task.

Unless, of course, you narrow it down to a simpler question, like "what did you eat today?" And that one, today, was a fun one for me to answer, as well as one that highlights America's culinary diversity. Today, I celebrated my aunt and uncle's family by cooking a dish that originated in their adoptive country of Bolivia. I didn't have potatoes today to round out the dish, but I did have the other component parts (beef, rice, eggs, salsa) that make up the wonderfulness that is SILPANCHO!

(The rice is under the meat patty, which is under the egg)

So yes, I miss the deliciously bad for you and fantastically diverse cuisine of America. And what do I eat? Well, today, I eat silpancho!

Theoretically the 29th

Technically, 1:28am in Singapore (and Taiwan), so 12:28am in Thailand, which is still not the 29th, but this is still pretty close to actually blogging all but one day of our stay in Thailand. Hooray!

So, we're currently in the Singapore airport, enduring a 6-hour overnight layover (cheap flights always have downsides...), and discovering that Singapore is the absolute best place ever to have a long layover. Their motto is "The feeling is first class," and it certainly does feel that way: wide open spaces, uber clean glass walls, smooth-running escalators, pristine stretches of (now-empty) carpet, free internet kiosks, an overnight cafe which smells scrumptious...and, as we just discovered, lounge chairs. Those will be our beds tonight.

In the meantime: today. It's been full. And a little crazy, for several reasons and on several occasions. Best of times, worst of times. A Dickensian day, if you will.

It started early, 7am, with a buffet breakfast and a rendezvous with our friend at the tour center, an older guy with so-so English who told us we could get a 2-hour snorkelling trip for two to Bamboo Island and Mosquito Island for 1,000 baht (~30USD). We said sign us up!

Snorkelling was glorious: after a 20 minute longtail boat journey, we started at Bamboo Island, where our driver parked on the beach near the coral; for me, a complete newbie at this whole being-in-the-ocean thing, it was perfect. I got to wade into it, literally, with the deepest spot I found about waist deep, and just float as I saw parrot fish, angelfish, leapord fish (campoflauged beautifully!), dozens of unidentified smaller fish, of course a fair amount of (unfortunately smallish) coral, sea cucumbers, some gorgeous peacock-blue floral-looking things, and, my favorite, a deflated puffer fish. Karina didn't snorkel much there, since she prefers deep water, but I loved it, my bi-minutely shark scans (I read too much for my own good) notwithstanding.

Then, after a brief verbal scuffle with someone trying to charge us to stay at the beach for an hour, we set out for Mosquito Island where, despite the name, I saw not a single mosquito.

What I did see, though, was fish. THOUSANDS of them, all swimming about and above a magnificent reef off the side of a limestone cliff. This one was deeper, and we didn't go to the shore, but just flopped out of the boat into what felt like an aquarium. Here were all the fish I saw before (except the puffer), plus some groupers, a Dory-like fish, some truly rainbow colored fish, and more varieties of others than I could possibly name. It was glorious.

All-in-all, a wonderful first snorkelling experience and, for that matter, first ocean-swimming experience. But I discovered that I love everything about swimming in salt water except the salt water. Despite my best efforts, it would NOT stay out of my mask and mouthpiece, leading to a few moments where I felt like I was drowning--many of which happened, not coincidentally, when I was in the deep water, barred from standing up and a long swim from my boat. Also, Karina delighted in throwing bread at me, upon which hundreds of thousands of fish would then converge--which is, by the way, TERRIFYING to experience inches from your face.

So snorkelling was great. When we got back, we checked out and I checked into the local massage place, where I treated myself to a lovely oil massage (at triple the prices of the mainland, unfortunately, though still four times cheaper than America) while Karina sunbathed. Then it was a rather rushed buffet lunch and just catching our 1pm ferry back to Phuket.

In Phuket, things got...interesting. For some unknown reason, not nearly enough taxis had shown up to service people coming off the ferry and, as all the minibuses were full, too, we decided to foot it to Phuket town (a 15 minute walk, we were told), eat dinner there and spend the rest of our Thai money (I REALLY wanted another hour or two of Thai experience), and then catch a minibus to the airport. A long walk past illegal taxi- and motorbike-hawkers later, we stopped in at a 7-11 and stepped out to find it was raining. And, of course, by then all taxis had disappeared.

At least this time my travel curse waited till we were off the beach.

About an hour, three stops for directions with some-English-speaking locals and several kilometers of walking and watching minibus after minibus speed by without stopping later, we found a wonderful Thai family who spoke decent English and called a taxi for us, which arrived just as it was starting to get dark for the last-minute save.

So we ate in the Phuket airport, bought a few postcards, rearranged our stuff, sat around, got frustrated with line-cutters at immigration, jostled for service with determined, yet non-English or Thai-speaking Chinese tourists with meal vouchers at Dairy Queen, and finally boarded our (delayed) flight for Singapore.

And now we're here, using our free Internet but more than ready to seek out the fabled "snooze chairs" the airport is advertising every time our 15 minute sessions run out. After all, the 29th has been a very long, though wonderful, day.

Krabi Jungle, Phi Phi Resort

Well, for the second night in a row I'm working with slow internet which I am being charged for by the minute, and the rate today is 4 times what it was yesterday, and they're closing in 10 minutes, so I REALLY have to be brief.

Highlights:
Krabi is amazing. I drove on the left and swam in a waterfall, and missed out on kayaking through mangroves but saw them anyway. Glorious hostel with animals and thatched huts and delicious food.

PhiPhi is gorgeous, but SPENDY. I knew the room was pricey but didn't expect the 3 times price hike on everything else. Going snorkeling tomorrow and laying out on the beach, then it's back to Taiwan! When I'll update more, retroactively.

RETROACTIVE ADDING, FEB. 3:

Picture-and-video time. Here's Krabi!

Wax apple on the ferry!

Kita!

Also, a video of us at the waterfall:

Krabi retrospective

Today is actually Feb. 2. However, on January 27th I was settling into a new hostel which, so far as I knew then, had no Internet. I later discovered this was wrong, but also discovered the baht-per-minute charge and snail-like pacing, so blogging took a backseat.

Also, here's us waiting for the bus at Patong beach, just because I like these pictures and want to post them:

Besides, by waiting and posting retrospectively, you now have the benefit of more than mere words on my blog! See, our first day in Krabi (after the insanely long bus-and-minibus journey from Patong beach to Phuket Town, and then Phuket Town to Krabi Town, and then the involved negotiation for a cab from Krabi Town to our hostel, a good 25 minutes outside town), was glorious.

First off, here's what the hostel looks like:

(food/internet/hammocks to the right; ocean straight ahead; huts behind)

 

The rooms. :)

Then there's the part where we got there just in time for dinner (DELICIOUS curry and fresh coconut for me):

And, after dinner, the sunset. And I really can't even begin to post all the amazing pictures we took there on here. I'll just throw up a few, and a few videos; give me a few days, and I'll put the link to my Facebook album on here. We must have taken over 200 pictures just in that one evening...absolutely GORGEOUS!

Okay, a few more than a couple. Can't help myself. Anyway, here is the more experiential version of the evening, via video:

So now the lost day is fully exposed, and, I feel (and you you agree), well worth the wait.

Relax....then go to Phuket

As I write this, it's almost 2am and we're in Phuket Town, here in the south of Thailand. Outside, life is still going on like crazy; Jack Johnson songs are drifting upward from the downstairs restaurant/bar area of our hostel. It's cool for a single night, but I'm glad we're headed to the more remote islands tomorrow, away from what I've mentally classified as the Las Vegas of Thailand.

Today was relaxation. We slept in, had a leisurely breakfast, strolled around Mel and Mar's house and watered their flowers, then packed our stuff and went to the mall to sample more Thai food, buy me some flipflops for the beach, get a Thai foot massage (Mar and I), and meet with Mel and Mar's friends from growing up, Maxine and Grace. Being with Melanie and Marissa in their home town felt like being home again and, in addition to the dry heat and leisurely pace, it was truly paradise. We were sorry to go.

But we did, and now we're in Phuket! Tomorrow we're off to Krabi, where we'll hopefully be roughing it a bit more; that is, there won't be a bar and internet cafe on every corner. Hopefully, there won't be corners, just more trees and rocks.

Wow, that last line sounds like Pride and Prejudice: "What are men compared to rocks and mountains?"

It's late, and Karina's beside me yelling at the malfunctioning hostel computer she's using, so I'd best get off and let her have a chance with a computer that works.

Chiang Mai

We rode elephants today! And I drove an ox cart! (Really, the driver got down and just chilled way behind us/fixed things back behind us!) And bought an elephant-made painting! (Spendy...slight buyers' regret but not, because it's a painting of an elephant DONE BY AN ELEPHANT.) And went to handicraft markets! And a night market! And bought a new Starbucks Chiang Mai mug and a gorgeous green Thai bag! And ate SO MUCH DELICIOUS THAI FOOD!

So yeah, long, amazing, expensive day. And glorious.

Wish I had time to tell the whole story, but I don't...so...now it's off for an impromptu Thai language and culture lesson with Melanie and Marissa.

Retrospective, added 2/1/12:
I posted pictures! Here's the public link to them:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2644331434819.2114580.1451610020&type=1&l=04c4bfe453

And here's the videos I took today, one of the elephants dancing at the elephant show at Mae Taeng, and one of Karina and riding the elephants. Good times.

Just a quick note

...to say that today was fabulous. Not raining, for the first time since Sunday, and my mom and I saw it all--okay not all, but Sizihwan (took the cultural tour bus, only to discover that the British Consular residence is under construction...sad), Cijin, and Lotus Lake, as well as sampling the delicious fare of the potsticker-and-dumpling place behind my apartment for lunch and the life-changing Thai food of the place I always talk about for dinner. Wonderful.

And....that's all for now. Just a quick note to say that I'm alive. :)

Rediscovering Kaohsiung, part 2

Today, I got out of school at noon, leaving me ample time to show Dan and Danny the sights, such as they are. Still not enough time to see everything, unfortunately--not even I have seen everything yet, and I've lived here for two months so far--but at least we got to most of the staples.

1.) Cijin Island. This happened yesterday.

2.) Chialing's noodle shop. This also happened yesterday. And also today. Because she's just that amazing, and her food is just that delicious. We couldn't stay away; I firmly believe that no one who tries her food could possibly feel any different. She even had rice and green bean noodles for Dan. She's amazing.


3.) Wu Pao-chun bakery. It's kind of a big deal--beat out pastry chefs from around the world with its French bread--and it just so happens to be roughly 6 blocks from my apartment. We bought a loaf of red wine and dried berry bread (can't remember the kind of berry, which is embarrassing but true), still warm, and brought it back to the apartment for a sample, where both Dan and Danny declared it to be the best bread they had ever tasted. The statement "I could eat only this bread for the rest of my life" was definitely used.


We then hopped a Kaohsiung Cultural tour bus (itself an adventure, between figuring out where it was, fighting off a betel-nut-chewing cabbie who wanted to take us instead, and listening to the tour guides alternately try to explain things in halting English--maybe once or twice--and speaking in rapid-fire Chinese), and set out for the higher coastal area; that is...



4.) The Former British Consulate. Easily one of my favorite places in Kaohsiung, it was used in roughly the 1860s and it sits atop a hill which can see the entire city on one side, the lighthouse on another, the whole broad stretch of coastline on a third, and the lush greenery of ZhongShan on the last. All complemented by a constant light breeze, and set to the backdrop of a charming brick building with huge arches and white-painted wood doors. Lovely.


5.) 國立中山大學 (ZhongShanDaShue) After a leisurely stroll after the passing bus, which somehow succeeded, we discovered that it only took us the very short distance to the bottom of the university's sprawling campus. We (and by we I mean I) decided we simply must climb to the top, which had gorgeous views--including the one which is currently the background on this blog. On the way we saw lots of foreign students, lots of feral dogs, a terrifyingly large spider, lots of great views, and disappointingly few monkeys (read: none). Seriously, though, this mountain is gorgeous; in my view, no trip to Kaohsiung is complete without it.


6.) Thailand Burma Restaurant. It's 3 blocks from my apartment. It's the best Thai you've ever tasted. Enough said.


7.) Kaohsiung 85 Sky Tower. I've posted about this before--2nd tallest building in Taiwan, 13th tallest building in the world. Still has its uber-awkward Tokyo photographers exhibit. Still a cool place to visit, though, with fantastic views of, well, everything.


Other moments of note today: I randomly met another American on my way to school! A guy pulled up to me and said "hello," and I turned, expecting it to be a Taiwanese person practicing their English. We both did double-takes. Turns out, he though I was his co-worker at the cram school down the street from Han-min. We got stopped at 5 lights in a row, so we got to have a nice little conversation! Gotta love random moments like that.


Also, I was the navigator in taxis to and from Kaohsiung 85. And both times, the cab driver knew what I was saying. Chinese lessons ftw.


Well this has been one of my most random, rambling blogs, the apparently straightforward formatting notwithstanding. But hey, at least it covers all the staples!

Loving Taiwan

Today was glorious. It began at 11:30, first of all, which was a welcome change after this sleepless week. In fact, that's an apt description of this day as a whole: a welcome change after a sleepless week.

The morning/early afternoon was pretty chill, which was perfect: Karina and I met Brittany's co-teacher Sophie to pick up a book for her, then got lunch at a curry place down the street and browsed in the stationary/ "teacher" store next door. She got some pretty cool foam pointers--one's shaped like a pointing index finger, and the other is shaped like a fist. On paying for it, she immediately "punched" me, and I told her now we have two people to worry about in the house! (Brittany bought some slapping hand pointers a couple days ago, and now she loves to sneak up behind people and freak them out with them.)

Then, around 4:30, Samia, Lydia, Rachel, Karina, Emily and I met up with Evelyn, Fonda, Chialing and Andrew (who had all scootered/biked there) at the MRT station nearest the ferry to Cijin. We took the ferry (itself an adventure for Rachel, who had brought her own bike along and had to board with the scooters) and, once on the island, rented bikes for the rest of us (including Samia, who didn't know how to ride yet) and set off down the shoreline, armed with cameras and water bottles.

It was fantastic--we saw the sunset the whole way, and partway down the trail, we saw some stray puppies and stopped to play. (Don't worry, it's safe here--Taiwan has absolutely no rabies.) Here, for your viewing pleasure, are some of the sights from along the way.

When we got back, we were sweaty and it was dark, but we loved every second of it anyway.

We got back to the area around our apartment at 8:25, just in time to make it to our 8:30 dinner reservation at the Thai restaurant around the corner. We've been trying to go there for a few days now, but last time we tried, there were 9 parties in line in front of us. So, we figured, it had to be good.

And we weren't mistaken. We ordered 9 dishes for a table of 10, and we polished off every dish and were wishing we had more room in our stomachs so we could order more and keep eating. Hard to say what was best--the Phad Thai (usually don't like Phad Thai, but this was DELICIOUS), the melt-in-your-mouth coconut chicken curry, the uber fresh and delicious ginger fish (we stripped it to the skeleton and kept picking at scraps)--the list goes on. I will be going back there.

Then we went home and began deep-cleaning our kitchen. Time to start treating this place like we actually live here! It's nasty now, but hopefully soon our whole apartment will be clean and cozy.

This day was fantastic. I'm so glad to be living in Taiwan!