May 7, 2008

Week long trip to Taiwan ⁴

by Tim Lee • Culture, Food, Holidays, Life, Travel

Ahh, finally an update. Sorry it took so long. Things have been pretty hectic thus far, and has prevented me from having the time to sit down and go through all the photos I’ve took, and really, without photos, there really isn’t any point in talking about my trip to Taiwan. Let’s get started, shall we?

I arrived in Taipei at 6:45 Taipei time after a grueling 19 hours of flight, plus an hour at Anchorage. My trip from Boston to NYC was successful with no delays and engine breakdowns this time. I did have to taxi my way to Laguardia airport to pick up my luggage, but that’s another story for another day.

First thing on the agenda, as set by my sister Tina, was to go visit the elementary school: 金華國小. Unfortunately, all of my teachers has now retired, so I didn’t get to see any of them. My sister’s school music teacher was still there however, so we went to visit her. Some of you have already seen a similar photo from the same angle from my trip to Taipei three years ago. Taiwanese schools are huge. There are around 10 classes for each grade. Note that the building wraps around to where I’m standing, it’s a big school.

Now that visitations are over, time for some great food. Behold, Beef noodles! A staple Taiwanese food if there ever was one. This one is from 永康牛肉麵, which is a pretty famous place. It was pretty packed at lunch time, on a weekday too. We shopped around for the rest of the day, and then headed home for a good night’s rest. That night, I battled bravely and managed to eradicate 4 mosquitoes, which caused me considerable damage — 5 humongous bites (one bite was 10 cm in diameter) that itched like crazy. One mosquito was unfortunate enough to be caught in a pretty darn good slap. It was a good slap alright, I accidentally put a little hole in the wall when I swung, I was really angry at the time. Ooops.

The next day we visited the beautiful campus of National Taiwan Normal University (Don’t ask me why it’s called “Normal”, I would never translate it that way), it’s best known for its Teacher’s College (Heather!!!). In fact, the name 師範大學, contains the character “師”, which means “Teacher”. Here’s a statue of the funding father of Taiwan, in which is re-decorated in a very tasteful way to celebrate the University’s Drama Festival.

At night, my sisters and I met up with Anna’s friend Amanda for some more shopping and catchin’ up. We decided to get our fix of $120 NT (= ~$4.00 CND) Steak and Egg and Pasta, which comes with all you can drink soup and tea. I devoured the thing in seconds, and probably drank at least 10 bowls of soup, it was so good, I’m drooling just thinking about it.

Taiwan is a fantastic place to be. The city is amazingly beautiful. I feel grounded when I visit, as if I took out an old box from the attic that contained childhood, and everything comes pouring back, the little things I use to enjoy as a kid, the frustration and the satisfaction of killing those darn mosquitoes, the great food, the funny aunties and uncles… it’s very distant, yet very familiar.

When I returned to Toronto, I felt discombobulated. There was a day when I feel like Toronto was my vacation, and my home belonged in Taipei, it was a strange, and scary feeling.

Taiwan update continues tomorrow, you can get a sneak peek by going to my flickr! Enjoy.