Flight to a new life. Happily not, "fright of my new life!"

Stifling humidity and heat woke me up this morning. Day two in Taiwan and it is hot. Traffic speeds by outside the window of my new home. Beeping scooters, small trucks and cars speed by with individuals intent to go somewhere fast. Wearing only boxer shorts in the attempts to cool off, I am sitting on the couch easily remembering the adventure that was yesterday, a positive foreshadow, I hope, to this new experience and alternative life choice. Dapple, Dacota's speckled cat curiously smells my things and is skittish of my presence. It seems that she is used to her alone time during the day. Perhaps we will become the best of friends and my presence during the day with her will be something she longs for. She did manage to come up and used my hand as a claw and teeth holder. She really is sweet but the bloodied hand attests to her violently playful nature.


After the amazing send off from Portland, I arrived in Seattle to type the first post. It seemed the Fortuna spun a favorable path for me and I walk upon it. After the few hour wait, we boarded the “Cadillac of the sky”plane consisting of double decks with a ceiling height of seven feet, rows seating twelve people and spanning some 70 times. If I remember correctly it was a 744. The plane was a monster in the sky, no doubt about that, and I sat down next to an old Asian couple who immediately started talking with me. It turned out they were US citizens who immigrated from Vietnam directly after the ending of the “war”. They were returning on a semi-annual trip to visit family in the southern part of Vietnam. From Ellensberg Washington, this elderly couple still actively worked and sought out beautiful places in the world. I did not directly ask about their work situation, but neither were retired and could afford to go on flights for months at a time and not impact said work situation. The only information I derived was that were self employed; hustling drugs is my guess. Ha!. Wouldn't that be something? If they were some Vietnamese mob bosses and yet were so sweet. We chatted about this and that throughout the entirety of the flight which actually made it pretty cool. I had hoped to just watch movies and be anti-social, but these folks were really sweet and interesting. We received our first meal right away, at around three in the morning, and they were nice enough to have a vegetarian meal for me. It wasn't great, rice and veggies with fruit and this weird jello-type thing which was clear and had wolfberries suspended in it. As I found out later, it is usually the policy to only change around meal types on a round-trip ticket; however, they made sure that I had food throughout the trip and were really nice. People started falling asleep around me but I was entirely too amped to sleep at this point. When the guy sitting next to me got up, he was quiet and kept to himself resulting in us not speaking to one another, I followed suit. The prettiest flight attendant I'd seen on the flight was standing in an area close to the bathrooms keeping a watchful eye on her sleeping flock and I struck up a delightful conversation with her. She studied German and sociology at her university and even took a year studying abroad in Germany. We talked for over half an hour about places she'd been, places she'd recommend visiting, and about me and my interests until she had to get back to work. With some energy spent, I finally made it back to my seat after some wondering about while waiting until the guy I sat next to stirred so I didn't wake him out of sleep by crawling over him. I rested, somewhat fitfully because it was a damn airplane for crying out load, even though it was larger than most, it was still cramped with very little room to move or change positions. With my sweatshirt hood around my face, yeah I have a weird affliction that causes me to keep a pillow over my face in order to sleep, sleep came and went for about eight hours. More went than came but at least I was out of it enough to pass the time. I made an impression on this girl, for when walking through the cabins doing her job she would give a glance over at me now and then. I actually remembered receiving the glance before our conversation but thought it was because I was the whitey on the plane. After walking around a bit, various other white folks littered the plane, so it turns out she actually thought I was cute. Still unconvinced by this revelation, the old couple next to me kept informing me that she was interested in me and fluttering with me. Apparently then didn't think I was a bad-boy either (even complete strangers know that I only have a white-belt when it comes to the “girl language”) and tried to hook us up. Like I said before, this old couple was great. They were my “wing-men” (I think I used this term correctly. I am pretty bad at the dating scene and a few episodes of “How I met your mother” is my only reference to the word) and were so funny to keep bringing her back over to our area for one reason or another. Rumored that, "by simply being a tall, skinny, blond, pale male I would be flirted with" seemed remote at best. Nope. Totally true. It turns out was the reason I received the vegetarian meal and was treated so great on the flight was because she thought I was cute. I'd have to be honest at this point and say that this is a new phenomenon for me. Because of my flirting with this girl, sleeping, talking with the old folks, and eating food, I was barely able to watch a single movie before we landed. It seemed really quick, and I didn't even drain the entirety of my iphone's battery. My past trip out to Wisconsin seem just as long.

Getting off the plane and through the airport was a breeze. There were almost nobody in line at immigration and they passed me through without even having my new apartment's address. Since I didn't have a phone to contact Dacota, I thought I would be hosed. No. She let me in with only slight hesitation. Customs seemed to consist of the honor system, and even though I had nothing to declare, walking through the “Nothing to declare” exit into the lobby with no question regarding the contents of my luggage seemed like a leap of faith on behalf of Taiwan. Luggage collect, immigration, and customs in under fifteen minutes in a foreign airport. Not too bad I'd say. So I waited in the arrivals area for an less than an hour for Dacota to arrive. Airports are the same everywhere it seems, and there was not a single hesitation by me, no nervous feelings, no surprise by the people and their actions, both employees and visitors alike. People are definitely just people, all over the world.


Seeing Dacota, in Taiwan, brought the whole thing real (not believable mind you, just real). We took a bus from Taoyuan, to Taipei and then a train from Taipei to Keelung where we spent the day. After a long process we arrived in Keelung at 10 am. I arrived in Taiwan at 5:30 am. We dropped off my bags at previous co-worker of Dacota's apartment. She actually had a really cool place, with a beautiful view of temples and the city. He dragged all of my luggage up six flights of stairs with seemingly little help from me. He is awesome! After unloading some of the contents from my very heavy backpack, we took a scooter around on some errands before our intended jaunt out of the city towards the famed hot-springs Dacota foretold. Riding with my arms around Dacota, scooters, cars, buses, trucks, bicycles, and pedestrians because like go-cart obstacles and we tore-ass through city streets. It was extreme. Very Skyler-esk. I didn't shit my pants, but a lesser man would have. We stopped to get gas, grab some betel nuts, some water and umbrellas, and to get lunch at a temple. Lunch was amazing and I got a huge bowl of spicy noodles for $2.50. While in the temple restaurant, Dacota struck up conversation, in Chinese, with the staff and an outgoing lady who was curious about us. At this point, I realized my sparse Chinese vocabulary is worthless at best. After ordering food, (all in Chinese characters) and having a conversation, the contents of which had to be translated to me, I became impressed with how well my twin spoke after only a single year out here. One point to note, which is incredibly hard to describe, and that is the smell of the city. The air in the east smells so different than the PNW. Cooking food coupled with sewer (not sewage but sewer), exhaust, oil/gas/petroleum chemicals, tobacco smoke, smog, and millions of people's scents is only the tip of the iceberg of smells I could detect at one time. It is both pleasant and not, and, although different than the smells of Shanghai or China, it is similar enough to warrant a mention.


Scootering, or is it scooting?, out of town was a psychedelic trip of colors, textures, adrenaline, and amazement. Super extreme. I will get used to it but my god is it scary. As we sped out of town we came across the ocean to the east. Towers/exhaust stacks from power plants stood out one way while fog encrusted tropical forested hills stood on the other side. People swam in a makeshift harbor (or possibly just swimming area), janky boats floated to and from unknown places. The ocean crashed onto rocky outcroppings and pebbled beaches. Continuing on, we blew by smaller townships, cars screaming by us, and I held on for dear life until we arrived in a graveled area containing a few cars. After de-scootering, we started the hike. Popping my betel nut cherry (literally you have to pop the top off) its stimulating effect caused increased awareness of the setting. Indescribable density of plants surrounded the well-worn path, beyond hills and small waterfalls, taller and looming hills with even more forests were barely visible in the fog. A stream flowed beside us of blueish-white milky water making the orange rocks stand out magnificently. We crossed the river on a path of rocks and started climbing in elevation. Humid, hot, and out of breath, I labored on. Dacota trucked up this like it was nothing and for good reason, it was a daily ritual for months of his life. Something starting sticking out, a scent that I couldn't identify until clouds of greyish smoke hit us. “Sulfur fumes from the steam,” Dacota informed me, and we walked down the step bank towards it. I had given him a hard time about a plastic bucket he carried. Now I saw its purpose. He crouched next to shallow areas of the steaming sulfur water and collected mud from the river bed. While he did this, I looked at a smoking river, florescent green and neon yellow deposited rocks, and beautiful tropical plants. Returning a quarter mile downstream and downhill, we took a natural stone staircase down towards the river. Walking around a corner, an other-worldly image of blue-white steaming pools filled with elder Taiwanese citizens enjoying the warmth of sulfur, superheated, water. The pools were created by two streams intersecting, a hot water stream from where collected mud and a stream of cold water sourced from a 15-20 foot water fall some 100 feet away the pools. We took our cloths off down to bathing suits, or rather Dacota wore his bathing suit and I wore shorts. I didn't even think to bring a swim suit to the hot-springs. Ha! Amazing how the mind works. I forgot to mention, as soon as we got to the river it started to rain. To start off the experience, we went and stood under the waterfall, which was both bliss and freezing at the same time. Grabbing our umbrellas with went over to the pools and entered into heaven. A perfect spot on earth. A natural pool of completely opaque water, hot with some cooling drifts making it perfectly regulated. The pool we sat in was perfect for my height and just my head stuck out while resting on the fully on the bottom. Due to water chemical and oxygen ratio, buoyancy didn't exist. A small stone I picked up from the bottom instantly sank when I let go of it. Moving around was also funky because the body and newton's laws that I have been used to were all skewed. It was fun and intensely relaxing. Every twenty minutes or so we would get out and douse under the waterfall and return under our umbrellas in the pool. The umbrella was a great idea for both the rain and the sunshine. No need to worry about sunscreen, or covering the head to protect against possible acid rain. Various groups and people came and went and the three and a half hours we spent there were something I will remember until my dying day. An old man (now dubbed old-man Taiwan, would go from sitting in the hottest pool to the cold spring water pool from which fed the pools. Insanely hot to freezing. And it wouldn't just be for a quick dip. He spent like twenty minutes in both places, content to be in both states of the experiential condition. He also had an umbrella with six feet drape/curtain around it, and used it as a mobile changing station. His traditional circular bamboo hat made him stand out as a unique old man even more. Dacota discovered a tradition by observing and talking with the the elderly people who frequented the pools which consisted of ending the hot-spring dip (ride. I like hot-spring ride better) by spreading the sulfur mud on the skin, waiting for it to dry, and then dousing in cold water, either under the falls or in the cold-water pool. With umbrellas over our heads we waiting for the mud to dry and then quickly ran over to the waterfall and doused for the last time. Magical was the only word I can use to describe it. Absolutely Magical.


Our scooter ride home was painful. Moving at 40 miles an hour, the rain and water picked up by passing cars shot like bullets into our eyes. How Dacota managed through it and got us back home I am not entirely sure, but he did, like a champ. We changed into my dry clothes brought from Oregon and went out to dinner at his favor restaurant in Keelung. “His lady”, as he called her, owned the place and we walked in and were greeted with loving hospitality. Immediately I felt the warmth of this women's heart. All the dishes looked and smelled amazing and Dacota chatted with her for a minute, explained who I was, and that this was my first day in Taiwan. Watching Dacota have these conversation is amazing. Not understanding a word and watching a whole conversation pass by is a humbling experience. The food arrangement was similar to a buffet and so I load up my plate with all sorts of food and headed over to have it weighed. (This is a typical method out here. You pick out as much food as you want and pay for it by weight) This wonderful lady insists that she treat us to our meal and we sat down and enjoyed one of the best meals of my life. I intended to take pictures of the full plate but finished all the food before the thought even crossed my mind. She, her sons, one of the cooks, would come over and chat with us and it was just wonderful. “His lady” brought us over a special herbal tea that we would not have been able to purchase. It was something for the family, and the gist was that she thought of Dacota like a son. She also brought over some type of curry dish she made (a mixture between Taiwan and Japanese curry. Two things I didn't know existed!) It was totally different than a Indian curry and was absolutely amazing. Carrots, potatoes, apples, onions, tomatoes, daikon, and something else were in it and it was out of this world. As we were leaving she also brought us over a ripe sugar-apple. The experience made me want to cry with the generosity and love expressed. She was truly a very special person.


We visited the night market and bought a vegan ice (shavings/cream??) that was peanut flavored and out-of-control delicious. It as so good. Dacota got some toys for Dapple and while we were in the shop, we pet a long-haired Persian tortoise-colored who was deaf. She was so cute and very friendly. We took a taxi to the train station and took our train to a connecting city where we waited forty minutes. During this time I was getting cranky and tired. Dacota who had spent the past few nights finishing school reports early so he could come and get me had left Hualien at 2 am to get to the airport and pick me up. We both were on edge. After a few betel nuts and green tea however, we cheered and amped back up and had a great trip on the expedited train and arrived in Hualien at 11:30 pm.


The cab driver who took us from the train station to the apartment was super cool and we drove through the rain and night markets homeward bound. After a brief introduction to Dapple and my new home, I fell asleep to the sound of late night traffic and rain. Nine hours later, I am superficially reporting about a day in Taiwan. Never could I possibly recreate the experience with words, but with hope you, the reader, might be imaginative enough to reconstruct the events with a small portion of accuracy.