Devin, Rich, Jacqui, and Brandyn at the entrence to Taroko National Park on Taiwan's east coast.We’ve been very lucky to have so many visitors here in Taiwan. Way back on March 21 we received a new batch from Devin’s side of the family: Jacqui, Rich, and Brandyn, Grandmother Leemoi and Great-Great Aunt Vyolet. For eleven days the five members of four generations learned about our daily life in Hsinchu, explored Taipei, and circumnavigated the entire island of Taiwan via bus a train. I can’t capture all the excitement in one blog post, but please enjoy some highlights!
Jacqui and Rich arrived from Minnesota a full day before Brandyn, Grandma Leemoi and Aunt Vyolet after airline problems in California (that story is a whole other blog post). Devin and I met the two-some in Taipei and visited some top tourist destinations, including the National Democracy Memorial Hall (formerly Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall), the botanical gardens, and Long Shan Temple. In a radical departure from the previous five months of Minnesota weather, Jacqui and Rich enjoyed wearing t-shirts and not shoveling snow.
The California-based trio finally joined us after a 48-hour travel ordeal. The next day we tackled the National Palace Museum. Following lunch, Devin brought Jacqui, Rich, Brandyn and Grandma to the top of Taipei 101 while myself and Aunt Vyolet pursued our mutual interest in Chinese art with an English-language tour of the museum’s bronzes, ceramics and jade-work.
Devin and I showed the gang around Hsinchu. Our visitors got a taste of our favorite restaurants.(We don’t know the Chinese names, but instead refer to the small shops by their signature dishes: “Cold Noodle,” “Beef Noodle,” and “Thai Food”). Rich, Brandyn and Aunt Vyolet toured Hsinchu’s Municipal Glass Museum, while Jacqui delighted Devin’s students with an appearance at school. For Devin’s six year olds she is a surrogate mother, so Teacher Devin’s mother was like mommy squared. Devin’s oldest children grilled Jacqui with questions such as: “Was Teacher Devin a good girl when she was little?” “Was Teacher Devin a good student?” and “Did you hit Teacher Devin if she got bad grades?”
Devin and I got Hsinchu back to ourselves when the quintet left mid-week for a four day tour of Taiwan. Using a mix of High Speed Rail and tour buses, they stretched from Taiwan’s central Sun Moon Lake, south to the second largest-city of Kaohsiung, all the way to land’s end in Kenting, then half-way up the East Coast through Hualien. The tour, from all accounts, was relaxing and very informative. Lodging and lunches were at nothing less than four-star hotels.
We stowed-away on the tour bus for a wonderful trip through Taiwan’s famous Taroko Gorge. Our bus snaked through narrow, cliff-hanging roads
with white marble walls stretching up to the sky on either side. After a great lunch at a five-star hotel, Devin, Jacqui, Brandyn and I scaled a five-story pagoda with mouths gaping at the incredible scenery – white rock topped with green trees floating under a brilliant blue sky.
Our spot for lunch in Taroko National Park
The quintet got out of Taiwan safe and sound, with just a few warnings of extreme jet lag upon returning back to their real lives. Devin and I were grateful for the visit, and all the adventures. We’ll see you in America!
The next weekend we spontaneously decided to go to Tainan and saw posters all over the city for their lantern festival, which held its final day while we were there. I had seen something about it on television (in Chinese, though, so I didn't really understand), and we decided we should go. As we have found happens with most holidays and sight-seeing spots in Taiwan, everyone descends on the locale at the same time, crowding public transportation and making it far less pleasant for Adam and me. But, as it turns out, this time everyone was right. The lantern festival in Tainan (actually held a 20 minute train ride from Tainan) was a huge food and light spectacular. From the overpass at the train station we could see the expanse of the fair, far larger and grander than we had expected.
The festival was so large that we couldn't possibly see all of it. The maps and information were, of course, in Chinese, but things were definitely organized and grouped into categories. We started with food, getting some great, and not so great, snacks that would typically be found at a night market. While we ate at a large table where small children gawked at us, a huge fireworks display started at the top of the hour, set to music. Luckily we had seats where we could see them while eating and didn't have to push through the crowd.
Next we found an art-y section, with large installation pieces that were all illuminated from the inside, including gigantic clothes hanging on a clothesline and some underwater-ish looking lanterns. After that we moved on to a section that had home-made lanterns that had been submitted for judging. They varied from looking like they were made by small children to looking nearly professional.
In the commercial I had seen on TV there had been a giant rat so next we decided to look for that. It was hard to miss, more that three stories high and between two other monstrous lanterns, the rat even had smaller lanterns inside it that blinked different colors. When we reached the top of the hour again, a dialog began between the huge lantern characters that we didn't understand, but culminated in an ear-splitting organ song that played while the rat began to spew smoke and rotate on its platform. While the song was playing, we also noticed that there was a field of lanterns in rows to our left that lit up and seemed to dance in time to the tune.
Having seen a sign that said “Religious Lanterns,” we next wandered over to see what that might entail. There were lanterns and sections for nearly every major religion, including an enormous Jesus that rotated 360 degrees atop a pavilion that had another Jesus with a flock of animals surrounding him. The Matzu area had smaller figures that waved their arms and turned, and another area had a dragon that you walked through and then stepped over flaming coals as you exited a second dragon head. Adam and I weren't quite sure what the purpose of walking through the dragon was, but we did it anyway. A little extra luck in the new year can't hurt, right? There were so many stands in the religion area we couldn't stop at them all, and we couldn't even identify some of the religions!
Before the clock came around to the top of the hour again Adam and I went back to the field of lanterns so we could stand in them while they blinked. They were amazingly timed and choreographed. After the song that played while the rat turned, the Isla Formosa song was played. Many of you probably aren't familiar with the song that the tourism bureau puts on all of its commercials, but we have heard quite a bit of it here, and were treated to more dancing lights while an 8-minute version played.
At that point we'd spent more than two hours walking in dusty gravel with crowds and decided that, after a quick trip to the bathroom, it was time to return to Tainan. It was easier said than done, though, since we were at the opposite corner of the festival from the train station. Having picked a route back, we then ran into a giant turtle, a lake, a hot air balloon tied to the ground that you could ride about 100 ft. up, and another, bigger, field of lanterns. This larger lantern field had red and yellow lanterns that, from the observation deck provided, spelled out TAIWAN PEACE.
The whole experience was vastly different from anything we could see or do anywhere else in the world and made me appreciate living in Taiwan a little more. It was even worth the pushing and crowding at the train station to go back. Although we took a lot of pictures, like so many other things we've seen and done, the pictures barely do justice to seeing the sights in person.
No matter how close our hotel was to the subway, Adam and I figured that we spent 1/3 of our waking hours on public transportation getting from one sight to the other. We've both visited and lived in other major metropolitan areas, but Tokyo was ENORMOUS. We spent the majority of our time in Kyoto visiting temples and shrines, so we decided to focus on the more metropolitan aspects of Tokyo, not that we could escape them by any means. Since it was so big and we couldn't see it all in our limited amount of time, we made a list of things to do and tried to check off as many as we could. Here, not necessarily in the order we did them, are some highlights off the list:
I guess it's a Japanese thing. After a bit of searching, we poked our heads into a Manga-kissa, where people can rent a cubicle with a chair and computer or video screens, some DVDs, video games, or comics, and even shower up before they head off for home or work. It seemed intriguing enough to seek out, but there wasn't anything to look at other than the racks of movies and the check in counter.
Wow, it's even bigger than I'd imagined! Since they do it on every travel show and talk about it in every travel book, we had to visit the Tsukiji fish market. We woke up super early in the morning but still missed the fish auctioning. In the last few weeks they have actually passed a ban on tourists in some of the sections of the market, so we were lucky to get to go when we did. The tuna are even more gigantic than I'd imagined, and after staring in awe at the huge frozen headless beasts we explored the wholesale market area. I consider myself fairly well versed in sea life (and sea food), but there were many creatures that I couldn't name as we passed through the closely packed stalls. Adam and I both almost got run over by mini-trucks and tiny forklifts, slipped on the wet and icy floors, and snapped as many pictures as we could.
Science, animals, and history, all in one building! We spent one afternoon in one of the many museums situated around Ueno park. Not everything had great English signage but some of their displays were amazing, including thousands of specimens of bugs, birds, deer, and even a water buffalo! Another section had interactive physics displays similar to those you can find in other science museums, and one section gave a history of technology in Japan, from computers to cars to robots. Adam's favorite robot was one that would serve tea, then turn around and return to the start once the teacup had been lifted. The docents even let him try it out!
So many stores, but we weren't there to shop. Famous for the crazy clothes and make-up, the Harajuku district was a must on our list. Even though we had to go on a weekday and missed out on most of the Cosplay and craziness of the weekends, Adam and I got an eyeful of the outfits in the store windows. There wasn't much to do but look, since we definitely weren't there to buy!
Almost as good as a toy store. The Sony store – 4 floors of electronics that they let you touch! We tried out cool cameras, MP3 players, headphones, laptops, HDTVs, and even got a peak at the Rolly. The Rolly plays music and dances to it (wirelessly, of course), but the entire presentation was in Japanese so we're not quite sure if it does anything else. I hope so, otherwise it's just an awfully expensive dancing speaker.
It's tall...that's about all. Since I've never been to Paris or seen the Eiffel tower, I was excited to see the Tokyo Tower, which is even taller than it's inspiration. Walking up to it at night was pretty spectacular. It was all lit up both on the structure and from the ground. Unfortunately it's in an area that is otherwise businesses and residences which means there's nothing else to do when you're there. They also constructed a building at the base which kind of ruined the look of the tower. And, it cost WAY too much to go up to the top considering we'd seen the city from a higher vantage point for free the day before. We decided it was a very nice, tall, well constructed tourist trap, but I'm glad I got to see it.
Above: Nara's Daibutsu-den hall, the world's largest and oldest wooden building. The enormous Daibutsu Buddha sits inside.
sometime after midnight. Kenting is at roughly the same latitude as Hawaii, so we were greeted in the morning to the sights, sounds, and sun of a beach paradise less than five hours from our home in Hsinchu.
We were lucky enough to stay at the Kenting Youth Activity Hostel, which is built in the style of a Fujianese fishing village and located on a secluded peninsula a short walk from downtown Kenting. To make the walk even shorter, we rented scooters for the weekend and spent Saturday exploring the whole south-east side of the point. We even took a short but picturesque trek to the southernmost point in Taiwan. Riding a scooter along the coast in the sun was relaxing and rejuvenating, and even proved to be tasty when we stopped at a roadside stand selling baked yams that had spent untold hours caramelizing in their own skins in a huge clay oven. Otherwise the food was the only disappointment of the trip, since we were forced to choose between various tourist traps attempting to cook anything but Taiwanese food. The culinary experience left something to be desired and made us quite grateful for the food we'd left behind.
the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial (recently renamed the National Democracy Memorial Hall). After that we took a subway ride to Longshan Temple, probably one of the most famous temples in Taiwan because of it's size, location, and beautiful waterfalls and koi-fish in the front.On New Years Day, we queued-up to view the embalmed body of Ho Chi Minh. This quintessential Hanoi attraction emphasizes the incredible reverence and love the Vietnamese still feel for their national father. After a long, bureaucratic process, we silently walked by President Ho as he peacefully lay in a bath of orange light.
Sadly, my time in the country was particularly colored by the poverty of those around me. Devin and I were frequently confronted with the reality that the average Vietnamese earns just US$ 50 a month. Our Caucasian faces gave vendors cause to follow us down the street, hawking oranges, bananas, pastries, bottled water, books, motorcycle rides, taxi rides, and marijuana. Seven-year old girls stood alone on street corners at 10:30 pm, offering pitifully, “Sir, gum? Sir, you want to buy chewing gum, sir?” Five months in comparatively egalitarian, westernized Taiwan had not prepared us for this.
With two degrees in American History, I found it impossible not to continually reflect upon what the Vietnamese call the “American War.” It was more than mere academic fascination - Devin’s father and three of my uncles served in Vietnam during the 1960s. The conflict continues to divide American politics, and probably will as long as the Baby Boomers keep running things. Today, the Vietnamese have neither a democracy nor a workers’ paradise, and we have nothing to show for the terrible price paid by US soldiers.
Vietnam left a deep impression on me. I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to visit. I’ll spend a long time reflecting on those four days.
Above: Devin reclines on our junk as we come close to one of Halong Bay's 3,000 islands. Any monkeys?
Above: Back in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum.
