Author: Angela

Have you not always longed for a necklace like this…? Complete with thermometer and everything.

The traffic in Taiwan is interesting like in many Asian countries. The scooters are everywhere, carrying anything and driving fast. Taxis have a tendency to pass a whole line of cars waiting for a red light and just stop in front of everyone in the middle of the cross roads after the pedestrian area. These guys would not be very popular in Sweden but here no one seems to be very upset.

Red lights does usually not stop anyone. When walking across a street you should never start walking immediately when it turns green because there is always someone who decides to drive through the red light. There is also a small difference between Taipei in the north and Tainan in the south. One taxi driver explained it very well to our chinese colleague, Kezhao. He said that a red light in Taipei is a warning but in Tainan it is only decoration.

The houses on a typical street in Taiwan are narrow and tall, much like town houses. Commonly not more than maybe 3 meters wide. On the ground floor it looks like a garage with a metall door that can be raised all the way to the ceiling. In most cases there are some sort of commercial activity on the street level and I guess that they live upstairs. It might be a restaurant, garage, mechanical work shop, hair salon or any type of shop selling a wide variety of things, from clothes and watches to motors and scooters.

Sometimes it is hard to figure out what they are up to. Often the place just looks like a normal messy garage but if you look closely you can see some kind of product laying around. Business does not always seem to be very good and there are usually no particular opening hour. So to make sure they do not miss out on any customers they simply move their livingroom halfways out on the street. It is not uncommon that you have walk around some people watching TV on the sidewalk.

It can be tricky to walk down the streets of a Taiwanese city. The sidewalk is full of scooters, cars, tables, trash or anything really that they can not (or do not want to) fit in the house. You simply have to step out into the street and risk being hit by a car or racing scooter.

Often the same type of shop is clustered in one area. The other day we found the wedding area, several streets only containing shops selling wedding clothes. When we turned around one corner there were instead only jewellery shops. We had to walk several blocks before we found any type of restaurant which we were really looking for.

I did not get the Hello Kitty Suite. I am so disappointed!

Chicken butt shish kebab. Mmmm…

In Sweden the laws for how to behave in traffic are very strict. Here in Taiwan what you see in the picture is a common sight. Two adults and two kids on the same scooter and only the adults are wearing helmets!? Adults have to wear helmets but obviously not children and there does not seem to be any rules for how many people you are allowed to be on one scooter.
Would you treat you family like this in the Taiwanese traffic??