Uncategorized – Page 12

From one thing to another

This is the last thing I saw in Taiwan before I left:

And this is the first thing in Australia:

My holiday has started.

Leaving Taiwan for new adventures

My stay in Taiwan has quickly come to an end. Tomorrow I leave and will travel around Australia and Fiji for 3 months before it is time to go back home again.

It has definately been an adventure to work almost 5 months in a country which is so fundamentally different from where I live. The Taiwanese, I have found, are very friendly and helpful when they can. The language makes it difficult many times. I have not had much time to learn and often people start talking to me although they must realize I do not understand. They can talk for a long time usually it all ends with laughter but sometimes they seem somewhat irritated. Normally they give up and walk away, like the police officer who pulled me over for speeding on the freeway…

It does feel nice to leave but there are some things I will miss also, especially the food. I know it is a bit contradictive but I will miss the things that are also the biggest difference from home and the things that makes it hard to be here in the long run. I am still fascinated by the infrastructure, the houses, the traffic and the total adoration for small cute things (Hello Kitty). Like how many seem to move their livingrooms partly out onto the street, the fantastic Taiwanese left turns (you sneak over just before it turns green or simply ignore cars driving straight ahead) and the shops which sell loads of unnecessary stuff with cartoons on them. Maybe it is not so surprising, the things I recognize from home I have probably not noticed very much.

What I will not miss is the lack of fresh air and calm and relaxing outdoor areas. The mountains in Taiwan are beautiful but far away from Tainan.

Well, it is time for new adventures…

Snacks

Fragrant crispy entry. What is that? Sometimes it is difficult to know what to buy in this country. How do you avoid everything that tastes like dry fish? This one looked particularly promising. Best tasty! Click on the image and read all the text. Crispy crispy good flavour. 🙂 Actually it was one of the better snacks I have had since I came to Taiwan.

Necklace

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

Red lights

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.

Walking down the street

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.