June 30, 2024. Halfway through 2024

Taiwan + HK

Well, here we are. The end of the road, in one way. And the beginning of another. Maybe my situation at present isn’t best served by a road metaphor. Either way, I’m sitting in seat 33D on Hong Kong express, bound for Tokyo. Tomorrow evening I will meet a dozen or so fellow Northeastern students, beginning a month of travel, cohabitation, and study together. I jumped the gun a bit with my reflection when I left Vietnam, and I’m hesitant to delve too deeply into introspection now. After all, I do have almost a full week of solo time at the end of the school program, it’s not like I’ll never be alone again. For now, I’ll hold off on some big watery delvation into my mind. And to be honest, I’ve had quite a tiring (though not draining!) last 24 hours. I’m not sure I have it in me to do the whole last six months justice. Knowing me I’ll get through with my Taiwan reflection and give it a crack anyways. Stay tuned…

You heard me right– Taiwan! That’s where I’ve been for the last 8 or 9 days. I’m not sure I can think of a moment of blogging this year when (oh wait, yes I can. But whatever, I digress) I’ve been in a deeper blog-hole. That’s what I’m calling it, the thing of when you have racked up a cache of cool stories and haven’t put them in your blog. Forgive me if my recap is lacking the delicious literary tang you have come to expect from this blog. 

The flight from Saigon began unremarkably, besides my obtainment of a window seat. This came in handy the moment the flight became dramatically more interesting, as we began to crawl up the west coast of Taiwan. The country, plopped on a medium-sized oblong island off the coast of China, is a bit lopsided. On the west coast is a string of several dozen large cities that leak into eachother. In the middle, relatively wild mountains. On the east, also mostly mountains! As we approached Taipei, nestled in the far north, I drank in a sweet tour of the whole island, lit up at night, tip to tip. What a treat!

My first night in Taipei was mostly logistical, as I promptly caught a bullet train back south to KaohSiung City, the bottom-most city of Taiwan that serves as the country’s primary port, the next morning. Before reaching my destination I hopped off the train in TaiNan for lunch and a tour of one ot Taiwan’s cutest cities, so says google. Pretty cute indeed! In KaohSiung I walked around, had some insane food, and appreciated their beautiful waterfront, complete with some of the most interesting architecture I’ve ever seen. I planned to head back up to Taiwan the next day, and I did. The main train station was either a 25 minute train ride, or a three hour walk away. I chose the walk. It took me through a part of KaohSiung I had not yet seen, including through their gorgeous modern art museum and sculpture garden, as well as around the Lotus Pond, a small lake with several gorgeous temples sitting in the water, accessible by long walk ways on stilts. Super cool! One really nice young person who spoke Mandarin, English, and Italian gave me a free mini-tour and taught me a bit about Taoism! As I exited the walkway of one temple, an older guy flagged me down and asked if I wanted to do some karaoke with him, and I said sure! It seems like daytime karaoke in the park is a pretty common hobby for older folks in Taiwan. I was a happy audience for a few well-delivered Chinese tunes, and then butchered a bit of Backstreet Boys to return the favor. The older guy I met, James, paid for my song, as well as offering me a bottle of cold water. Super kind. 

I arrived in Taipei later that night after another ride on the bullet train, excited to spend a while in one place for the last leg of my trip. I’ve been trying to take it easy, and mostly succeeding, but having a whole week in one place is something I’ve not done since Belgrade. It was so nice. I really like Taipei. It’s a super fun mix of chaotic and bustling with safe and clean. The transit is amazing, there’s tons of parks and gorgeous towering monuments, and long running paths. The architecture is also incredible. Where an apartment block would be boring or depressing in many other cities, those in Taipei each have their own twist, their own little flair of character. I love it. There’s also a dozen or so night markets, one sampled on each night I had in Taipei. My favorite was RouHe, followed by NingXia. They’re packed rows of street food vendors each peddling their own delicious treats. Taro balls, scallion pancakes, corndogs, sweet potato puffs, grilled corn, sausage, noodle soup, rice with braised pork, and dumplings for days. My stomach literally just grumbled. 

I filled my days with moderate vigor, still taking it slow. On Monday I toured around downtown, including a trek to Taipei 101! What a cool tower. That night I did a great long run, the first time I’ve done more than a few miles since the marathon, which felt great. I’m really looking forward to gettign back into a more regular running routine. On Tuesday I did a great walking tour led by a couple of Taiwanese independence activists, and learned a bit about the modern and ancient history of Taiwan.  On Wednesday I had a mega walking day, and visited the National Palace Museum, which had some really cool modern exhibits as well as a mind boggling display of relics from different Chinese dynasties. I got to see the highly acclaimed pork stone! Look it up if you don’t know what it is. On Thursday I did a great hike with a super good friend I made in the YangMingShan national park north of the city. Karim and I (he’ll get his own paragraph) took a mishmash of busses to the park, submitted the tallest peak in the area, and hitched a ride back, all in time for a hot dinner! Friday and Saturday were very calm, just visiting a few areas I hadn’t seen, resting, and doing some school work. 

Karim is awesome. He’s from Morocco and has been travelling for 16 months, and is planning another year. Super cool guy, great advice and an awesome approach and mentality with travel. He mostly does longer stays, volunteering in hostels, not leaving a place before he really wants to. I asked how he avoids burnout, and he said that volunteering and having some structure, work, community, and stability really is recharging, as well as saving some money on housing and often food. Karim was also just awesome to talk to and learn from, super cool conversations about politics and all kinds of topics. I met another person, Izzy, who’s done a string of NGO volunteer positions all over the world, with the same benefits. I have no complaints at all about this trip, but I think that I would not do another trip of such frantic nomadicism. As well, gaining some experience in different NGOs could be a really good way to widen my horizons, practice languages, and potentially build a career. On that topic, I’ve recently been thinking about higher education. I have been searching for a cross-cultural psychology masters program, which doesn’t exist. However, I just today realized that anthropology is essentially the same thing, so I’m now browsing anthropology masters programs! We’ll see

Enough of that goofing around. Back to my account of stone-cold events. I left Taipei Saturday night, yesterday, headed to Hong Kong with a flight of about 90 minutes. Upon arrival I promptly found a bench in the airport to doze on for a few hours before exploring Kowloon on my 15 hour layover. I slept soundly, deeply, and well. NOT! But hey, that’s the price of an awesome little adventure that I signed up for. Hong Kong is wild. All of the buildings are just confusingly tall. The city is huge and chaotic, but with a good bit more order than Southeast Asia. In terms of rule-based-ness, I would put it somewhere between Taiwan and SE Asia, leaning towards the latter. It was very odd to hear Cantonese, especially after a week of getting to practice my mandarin (so awesome and fun, I definitely got a good bit better in just a week, crazy how it came back in little flashbacks). When overhearing, I’ve always differentiated Cantonese from Korean and Japanese by thinking of Mandarin that I can’t understand. Turns out I can’t understand it in Hong Kong either. To be honest, the weird sleep did not set me up to be my most present self, squeezing everything out of Hong Kong that I could. That’s okay. I’m still super grateful I was able to get out and see it for myself. It’s the kind of thing you can’t pass up when you get the chance. It’s not a huge place and I feel like I got a decent vibe check of the place from my handful of hours there. A couple things– awesome baked goods, super cool $2 coins, tons of double-decker bus lines, old timey red taxis, and a huge arsenal of sharp, modern skyscrapers both in Kowloon and on Hong Kong Island. 

Well, that about sums things up. I told you I wasn’t going to reflect, and I’m sticking to it! Next stop Japan!!!