Snorkeling, Boogie-Boarding, Sailing - it almost sounds like California living and that’s what I got up to when Morgan left to return home. I hadn’t really planned anything after Morgan left. I had spent so many weeks looking for places to show Morgan I didn’t take the time to realize I still had another week and a half of break to deal with when she returned. Thankfully Sean did.
There are always a lot of things to do in Taiwan whether it’s going to a festival, a hike, or seeing an art exhibit. So the question really isn’t if there is something going on that interests you, it’s more a question of do you have enough time to get to the place you want to go in your free time. Typically, the answer for me is no. I don’t have access to the high-speed rail which is on the west side of Taiwan, the more urban side. That leaves me with a lot less options in terms of weekend trips. Being on break changes that. On top of our list of places to visit has been Kenting (肯定), Ping Tung. It is the southernmost tip of Taiwan and pretty hard to reach. I might complain about how reachable my town is seeing as its an aboriginal mountain village, but Ping Tung County is ten times harder. For one, there is no train that goes all the way down to the tip. Instead, I booked high speed rail tickets for Sean and I to Kaohsiung (which takes the 4-5 hour regular train ride and turns it into a 2 hour train ride at most). Getting off in Kaohsiung we then bought round trip bus tickets which then buses you down another 2-3 hours to the coastline.
I was so excited and ready for a break. Sean had spent all his free time studying for a test which he took the Friday before we left so he could enjoy the weekend without having to bring his textbooks. Not to mention Morgan brought me Julie Andrews’ latest memoir so I had plenty to read as well. The bus ride was scenic. We drove through cities, little Taiwanese towns, and finally were greeted by the waving of massive palm trees as the window view cleared up and you saw the glittering ocean expand beside us. In my head I started over planning everything I wanted to do.
We got lucky and found that the bus stop was only a short 5 minute walk to the hotel and our check-in was painless unlike the French couple next to us who had never made a room reservation. I can only compare the hotel, or Chateau as it had marketed itself to foreign visitors, as being like the Dirty Dancing cabin ground mixed with the feeling of a cruise ship. Everything was brightly colored or seemed freshly painted white. There was a large dining room for buffet style serving that boasted of a singer and band during meals, a café offering afternoon tea, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find a spa somewhere in the hotel either. A large departure from other establishments we have stayed at. Our room had a little patio allowing us to walk straight from our room down to the pools, hot tub, and then the beach. Who would go in the pools you ask? Almost all of the guests seemed more content with staying in the man-made pools than taking a dip in the ocean. The beach was dotted with families walking up and down the sand donning their winter jackets, some with their pants rolled up to walk in the tide. I was in heaven.
Like little kids we spent the long weekend being the first ones on the beach and the last ones to leave. We got boogie boards and rode the waves. Sean taught me how to snorkel in what was supposed to be a coral reef, but due to my recent realization of my fear of the ocean (small, but still there) was instead the roped off section of lifeguarded ocean which had one large piece of coral at the bottom. Sean was unimpressed with it, but I was exstatic to find it while snorkeling.
We went out on a Hobie Cat (I hope I spelled that right), a sailboat. Coming from rowing I thought it would be no problem. I was dressed in a life vest and carried the goPro in a waterproof case. Sailing is a whole other animal of a being. For one, the directions were all in Chinese from the dangers that could happen (where you can potentially hit your head), to how to sit correctly on it. We began to push the boat in as the guide directed us to. This movement I’ve done before, it was almost like sled work in the gym. I was waiting to here the guide tell us when we should get up on our seat and looking around I realized everyone was already clambering on the boat. In the second of realization, I no longer could touch the bottom of the ocean and instead was exactly where the guide told us not to be (under the seat part). Holding onto the goPro as tight as I could I was halfway up onto the boat. The guide came up behind me and pretty much picked me up by the back of my life vest. I envision the whole thing to look like when someone picks up a puppy by the scruff of their neck. It felt like I had been in that predicament for 5 minutes, but going over the footage – and yes the whole thing was caught on the GoPro I had a death grip on – I was only in the water maybe 15 seconds before I was pulled out.
I was embarrassed. Sean was grinning as he looked at me having finally found another activity I’m not the best at – at least not yet. I kept trying to pass him the GoPro after that because I was much too nervous that the camera would be dropped and lost to the sea along with all the other pictures and videos I had already taken. I don’t think I fully appreciated or enjoyed the sailboat as a result of my slight mess up. I was too worried that I hadn’t understood another direction or instruction that had been said in the beginning by the guide before we left. Regardless of how it came to be or how I felt during it, I am glad to have the experience and even opportunity to get to go sailing in Taiwan.
When we started to lose energy, we took a break in the hammocks. Sean took to listening to music and promptly fell asleep as I swung back and forth reading Julie Andrews’ newest memoir. I‘ve never felt so calm and I could’ve stayed there much longer if it wasn’t for the family of children that decided to begin to fly kites and play catch near us. I was convinced I’d hear one of them say look out and get hit by the ball because my head was in my book.
Our nights were spent wandering through the night market in town. I couldn’t believe the amount of hotel guests that chose to eat in the hotel instead of walking to the different stands of food. I understand the ease, but at least foreigners should’ve taken the chance to try more varieties of the food offered here. I had my fill of garlic butter shrimp (which they skewered live in front of you before cooking – I think it was supposed to be a presentation to show how fresh everything was, but definitely stopped my appetite for a while) and sweet potato balls. Sean got an entire octopus tentacle and wanted to eat it off the stick, but the chef refused and cut it into teeny tiny pieces. It took all the fun of wanting to eat the entire tentacle out of it. I surprisingly found chicken tacos where I even could add chipotle sauce and sour cream! Tacos are virtually nonexistent in Taiwan because there really aren’t any Spanish or Mexican immigrants here. I had raspberry ice cream, despite raspberries not being sold anywhere (they were fresh too I saw them I have no idea how).
The corona virus put a little bit of a damper on the night market however, because instead of getting to eat the food while we walked around we took most of it back to the hotel room and ate it on the patio. We were stuck wearing surgical masks as we walked around. I did choose to take mine off to facilitate the eating of raspberry ice cream, but seeing as wearing the surgical masks was just a precaution, I thought the ice cream was worth it and boy was I right.
Being Taiwan, you can also easily find fireworks at night markets as well. Standing at the table I heard my own mom’s voice warning me not to get the fireworks. I had no such voice in my head as my focus switched to the sparklers. We lit them on the beach and ran around. We fooled around with the different modes on the goPro for night shooting and made Harry Potter and Doctor Strange references. It was hard to leave a place that had me forgetting any and all responsibilities. A place where I could just have fun like my vacations as a child to Lake Michigan. All good things have to come to an end.
This post isn’t meant to be a lengthy brag as it seems to have somewhat turned into. It was however the shining light in my break. I stayed the week up in Taipei. The idea was to go to coffee shops and read and edit, going to all the places I had seen on Instagram. But I found that my motivation to go to such cool places was to be able to go with someone and share it with them. I found myself spending most morning calling family back home catching up, reading a little, and then running over to Sean’s school to meet him as he finished his classes to go for lunch with his friends. We played board games at night, went to a dance club, and played volleyball. I was surrounded by people. Some I had just met, and others that I have grown to be friends with through Sean. No matter the amount of people or the things we did together I couldn’t shake a feeling. Sean kept saying I wasn’t being myself. I was being snippy and I could feel it and not really stop my sarcastic comments. Any time he asked if I was ok all I could say is that "I feel like I am in a funk." We had plans to travel to my house in the south for a festival, the Bombing of Master HanDan which I will write an entire article on, and I decided to stay down here a couple days on my own. I never really experienced any form of depression before, but I think the pressure in Taiwan both from knowing the prestige of the grant and my limited time here to get everything done has caused me to be stressed even during a break.
Being back in Guan Shan I feel much better. It’s almost as if the rice fields have breathed new life in me. Having full control and being back in my place, my home albeit a lot smaller and less modern than Taipei, had a positive impact on my personality. I don’t say this to worry any of you who read this, just to paint a more realistic picture of my time in Taiwan. It’s not all beaches and sunshine, but life is learning to find the sun through the clouds.
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