Saturday, April 15, 2006

Taiwan Tourism...A Lesson in Miscommunication


We got invited to go on a little two day trip by a friend of ours, Lillian. Lillian owns a bushiban (English cram school), and lives in our apartment complex. She has been taking good care of us here in Taiwan, and even invited us to her Chinese New Year's dinner. Anyway, she called us and asked if we would like to go see some fireflies...and told us that we would be taking a bus and staying overnight. That is all the information that we got. We thought Madi would really like seeing fireflies, so we told her we would go...and we thought it would be great to get out of the city for the weekend. We thought the picture above was funny because when we got to the meeting place it was a whole bunch of Taiwanese tourists....and us. We were the only foreigners there, and consequently we really stood out. It was cool though, being part of the tour group.

These two pictures are what we looked like after a few hours in the bus. Remember that Lillian said we would be taking a bus to see the fireflies.....what she didn't mention that the bus ride was eight hours, and that we would be participating in the favorite Taiwanese past-time.......for the ENTIRE bus ride. Yes....picture this....a comfortable bus seat with lots of leg room....a nice view out the window...all the warm soy milk and steamed buns you can eat.....and eight straight hours of William Hung (think American Idol) style kareoke going on, nonstop!!!!! We thought that after a while they would get sick of it and stop, but we were wrong. They are DIE-HARD kareokiers!!
The bus ride took eight hours because we stopped every forty minutes or so to buy Taiwanese snacks and go to temples. The tour group was partially sponsored by the local Buddhist temple, so we stopped at a lot of temples! The one below is of the cool Buddha with sunglasses. One of the people told us that they added the sunglasses to boost tourism. What can ya say...it is pretty cool!
Here is some cool architectural features of the temples. It is so cool how intricate the work on the temple is. The temples are actually all constructed completely out of concrete. Even the intricate dragons and lamps and things...they pour the molds and then paint them each individually and add the extra touches like the whiskers. It's hard to describe how decorated these places are....it must take months or years to paint everything...and the really amazing thing is how uniform it all is. Very cool!

When we stopped for lunch we discovered that we were actually at Alishan National Park. I was surprised because this was a place that my students had actually told me about, and so we were excited to finally get to see it. Okay, remember that Lillian never mentioned anything other than the bus ride and the fireflies.....so we ended up hiking for two hours....around twenty thousand miles......and we were all wearing flimsy flip-flops, because it's hot....and we were trying to be comfortable on the bus. Most of the hike was really steep stairs, straight down for the first hour....straight up for the second. By the time we got to this place with the waterfalls, our legs were shaking like crazy every time we tried to step down. The hike was crappy....but the view was beautiful. I'm really glad we're finally getting a chance to see this side of Taiwan. It gets pretty gloomy in the dirty city, and we forget that we are on a beautiful island.

Here's Brian carrying Madi after about the first mile.....poor Brian. Madi was too tired to carry on, and her feet were killing her due to the crappy shoes. Poor Madi!
Madison, of course, made lots of friends on the trip. It was awesome for her to finally get to hang out with kids! She was the ring leader of mischief while we were on the trip...and all of the Taiwanese parents thought she was just sooooo cute. She tries to speak Chinese to them, and they love it. Everyone kept giving her treats that she would spit out (they thought this was adorable) and the moms kept rubbing weird herbal creams all over her mosquito bites. She had about twenty new moms on this trip, and loved the attention.
These are some pictures of the scenary in the Taiwanese country. It is really beautiful, and almost worth the death-defying bus ride up the cliff.
The bushes are tea trees, and we saw so many fields just full of them. All of these tea trees are harvested by hand, which we are told makes the tea a whole lot more expensive....and I can see why...I would want to make a lot of money if I was forcing my grandma to harvest my tea trees.
This sign really says it all about the bus ride up the mountain. It was these insane switchbacks, and Taiwan roads aren't even really wide enough for a bus to be driving on them in the first place....so you can imagine how scary it was when two buses tried to pass each other on these switchbacks that were one side to the mountain...and one side off the Cliffs of Insanity!!!!!!! One wrong turn, and you have the consequence shown on the sign below (this is actually a picture of a sign we took on the side of the road).
Here is Madison wearing my shirt...and me wearing Brian's. This is what happens when we let Brian pack the bag for the trip. Madi ended up with four pairs of pants, three pairs of underwear and no shirts. I ended up with one extra t-shirt. But she still looks cute! Brian just pointed out to me that he had all of his clothes....go figure. Madi's Taiwanese mothers took pity on her and loaned us a shirt for her to wear the next day, so she only ended up sporting this look for bed.
Our hotel had all of the modern conveniences....a television, a flushing Western-style toilet, and this keen elf-sized bathtub. Very cool. I wanted Brian to take a bath in it just because it was so hilarious. I was actually desperate enough that night to take a bath in it...and I was so tired from the hike that I fell asleep. Brian threatened to take my picture asleep in the elf-tub...and I reminded him that he is heavy sleeper....and is quite attached to both of his eyebrows. If you are wondering why we didn't just shower.....there was no shower curtain!!
For dinner the last night we had delectable hot pot. The entire trip we were assigned a table number, and we ate with the same people for every meal. By this dinner we had been adopted by the lady next to us at our table, and she thought we weren't getting enough to eat, so she took it upon herself to start filling our bowls and plates with choice picks from the menu. Above you can see that I'm about to gnaw on a chicken foot.....don't even ask....and below Madi is being force fed a clam. Mmmmmm.
This is the "Hot-Pot" below. There's all sorts of good things floating around in this cauldron. Unfortunately, most of them are still looking at you....and the rest are largely unidentifiable hunks of mystery "meat." There are actually some good things in some hot pots. I really like the cabbage and the beef or pork....but we at the Hobbs' household aren't very fond of the other fishy tasting delights that the hot pot has to offer. The rice was good!
Okay now, I have to explain this sign. I went into the bathroom to wash my hands after gnawing on my chicken foot....and I wasn't really feeling that well (crazy bus ride and all) and this sign just happened to be right above the faucet in the bathroom in the Hot Pot restaurant. Now tell me....is this suspicious???? Coincidence? I think not!!!!!

7 Comments:

At 10:18 PM, Blogger Mike said...

That dragon was awesome. The tub was hilarious ha ha! The throw-up room. Everything looks so cool. Maddie looks like she is having the time of her life! Very cool!

 
At 9:24 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I agree with Mike this was a great posting Krista, we laughed and thought everything looked so cool. I can't believe the Kareoke lasted so long in the bus-that must have been funny and got old I'm sure. Madison is darling and looks so cute with all the little Asian girls. We can't wait to see her in her Easter dress.

 
At 9:27 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

What are fireflies anyway? Are they really just the bugs that glow or are you talking about something else? Oh, and is soy milk good? What are steamed buns? Some type of dumpling? My stir fry was yummy by the way.

 
At 12:53 PM, Blogger Laura Lee said...

But did you ever see any fireflies?

 
At 7:49 PM, Blogger Krista said...

We did see fireflies...and I have to say, I was impressed. I've heard of them, but being from Idaho...I've never seen any. They are these little bugs that can fly, and their bodies glow. It is so weird to see them because it looks like little glowing dots are everywhere. It almost feels like your eyes are playing tricks on you because they aren't really bright...they just glow. I thought it was cool.

As for steamed buns....they are basically just rolls...but steamed instead of baked, and they usually have something inside of them, like red beans or some kind of meat...or if you are lucky...vanilla custard....or nothing at all! (my personal favorite). They are actually pretty good once you get used to them. The soy milk is good...well, I have to say that when I first got here I hated it...but after a while it isn't as bad as you first thought. I think because it looks like regular milk, your brain gets tricked into thinking it will taste like milk, so when you first drink it you are thrown off...or like me, you really don't like it. I now really like it....and the funny thing is that I now get cravings for steamed buns and warm soy milk. It will be funny when I get home and miss those things, because for about the first six months I hated all the food here and couldn't wait to get back to the states to eat some real food again....and now I am starting to panic because I know there are things I can't get back there. :)

 
At 6:54 PM, Blogger Melanie said...

That is the funniest post! Sounds like an adventure. I hope you soaked your feet in that teeny tiney tub! We have fireflies out here in the summer. They're awesome. I like how you see them and then they go out for awhile.

 
At 1:23 PM, Blogger Travis said...

I really, really miss the steamed buns. I would get a plain one every morning for breakfast cut it open and put a fried egg (or an egg-pancake thing) inside it with some hot sauce.... have a glass of hot soybean milk on the side. Oh, so good.

I'm impressed that you are starting to like soybean milk, by the way. When I first tried it, I thought I was going to throw up, but once you get used to it, it's actually pretty good. They sell it at the stores here, maybe I should buy it more often.

 

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