AHHHHHH..... H1N1

After our local news networks shifted from 24/7 H1N1 coverage to 24/7 Michael Jackson coverage we stopped hearing so much about the disease in New Brunswick, at least. But H1N1 is a big deal in Taiwan, and with new cases popping up everyday the country is trying to prevent a massive outbreak.


When we arrived at the Taipei airport we had to go through a quarantine station which just sort of checked our temperature as we walked through a gate and all around the city you can tell that the government is trying to educate people about H1N1. The subway stations all have posters telling people to wash their hands, to stay home if you’re feeling sick… all that kind of stuff. There are hand sanitizing stations everywhere, though I’m glad I brought my own hand sanitizer from home because the stuff they provide here smells like strong bug spray and makes my hands itch. As well, everywhere you go people are wearing surgical masks. No, they aren’t all doctors, they’re just being responsible because they might have a cold themselves or someone in their family might.


We all know one of the best ways to catch a cold or flu is from our co-workers or classmates. Well, last week all of the summer students were sent home from Mel’s school because 10 of them had tested positive for H1N1! Supposedly it was fine for us to stay on campus, though… As a preventative measure, effective yesterday (Taiwan’s first day of school for the new year) all students are having their temperatures taken before they are allowed on school grounds. Any students with a temperature over 37 degrees must wear a face mask and if their temperature is over 37.5 degrees they will be quarantined. If more than 2 students from the same class show symptoms within 3 days of each other then classes will be cancelled. These policies will probably pretty effective in preventing cluster outbreaks, though nothing’s stopping the infected people from hitting the town, coughing on your KFC and passing it on.

So far none of us sacrificial foreigners have shown any signs of sickness, but we did kind of wonder what was going on when we headed back to the dorms on Sunday night only to find the foreign teachers’ offices roped off like this:


Hmmmm…

Update: On campus this afternoon we saw a teacher teaching at the front of the class with both a surgical mask and a headset microphone on! Wonder how the sound quality was there. And also, we went to a department store tonight and before we were allowed to enter we had to let a worker spray our dirty hands with antibacterial spray. At least I assume it was antibacterial spray....

Taipei Fine Arts Museum/Pixar Exhibition

On Saturday, Mel and I went to the Taipei Fine Arts Museum to see the 20 years of Pixar exhibition. The exhibition debuted in New York at the Museum of Modern Art and has been shown in quite a few cities since then. It was a chilly 41 degrees, and even a quick 10 minute walk from the subway station to the museum left me sweating in places I didn't even know could sweat.


There were TOO MANY PEOPLE at the museum. All of the art and exhibits were on the walls and there was a never-ending line of people navigating the room along the walls, slowly reading everything. We weren't interested in reading everything ("Cars" for example, isn't really my favorite movie) but if we didn't stand in the line then there was basically a wall of people between us and the art. Despite my moaning, the artwork that they used to develop their movies is damn cool, and I would have proudly mounted any of it on my living room wall. I'd highly recommend this exhibit to anyone.


We got to see a bunch of the story boards used to create the films plots. I've always like the animated short with the funny birds on the telephone wire as seen in the storyboard above.


How to make a peeg.


All the Finding Nemo pishies.


Wall-E storyboard. One of my favorite movies.


Loved UP!


After we'd seen all the Pixar stuff we grabbed some lunch at the cafeteria. There was no english menu, but I found a way around that by taking a picture of the sandwiches we wanted and then just showing the cashier so she could fetch them for us. All those chinese classes we took, and we never thought to learn the word "sandwich"...


The rest of the museum was really cool too. This was the only picture that I was able to take before they asked me to stop taking pictures bwahaahaha. The art was really modern, sometimes lewd, and definitely cool. It was my type of gallery.


There was some unfinished construction going on in the basement. We peeked through the door to discover why the construction might not be going so quickly: someone's sleeping on the job!


After we were done at the museum we walked back to the station. On the way there, there was a man selling ice cream from a trolley for 30 cents, so I bought one and it was awesome. I managed to drip some of it on my khaki shorts, though, so I walked around for the rest of the day looking like the foreigner who forgot to eat with his bib. We passed by lots of obviously crazy people in jeans and sweaters... it was over 40 degrees. I don't know how they could stand wearing so many clothes. Or how they don't wind up with heat stroke. Anyway- we grabbed some Thai food before heading home and then cooled off with a delicious shaved ice, fruit, yogurt and ice cream dessert. I'd had shaved ice before and didn't really get it, but this stuff was great. In the evening we went out to our new favorite restaurant, Fish Noodle, where our bill was labeled VIP and the drinks were free! Must have been because I was with Small Face.

Longshan Temple and the Danshui Lovers Bridge

Melodie and her fellow teachers didn't have to work on Friday, so we used the surprise day off to do some sightseeing around Taipei. After breakfast and a trip to the laundromat (not so easy when everything's in chinese, but we had sweated through most of our clothes so it had to be done!) we traveled about 15 minutes to Longshan Temple. None of us knew anything about the temple, but when we arrived we saw a pretty impressive and colorful piece of architecture.


There were a bunch of tables and on them people were leaving offers... including some Lays chips, cookies and orange juice. Mmmmm Buddha's favorite. A lot of people had sticks of incense to wave around while they prayed. Luckily, there was a holy shop on site where you could purchase the chips, incense, etc.



After a delightfully air conditioned lunch in Ximen we headed to the end of the subway line, Danshui, where we passed by a lot of squid-on-a-stick carts to get on a boat to the Lovers Bridge area. Lovers Bridge is pretty iconic around here... you see it in a lot of ads, and it was a pretty nice place to visit. There was 50s music playing, a bunch of cafes and restaurants to stop at, and carnival games for the kids to play. The bridge itself was probably just built for touristy purposes because while it's pretty happening on one side, the other side of the bridge just had a big seafood restaurant and a bunch of old boats.


We grabbed a beer and enjoyed it on a bench (50 points for being able to drink in public areas!) As the night went on the bridge lit up with different colors and it was all very nice.

On the trip home we were all pretty tired from covering a lot of ground over the course of the day, but none of us were as tired as this fellow:

Thirsty? Enjoy A Drink Of Hot Water

You know how some people say that it’s best to drink a warm beverage on a hot day? Well, I didn’t think anyone actually did that until I moved to Taiwan. In a country where it hasn’t been under 35 degrees in the day since I’ve been here, all of their water “coolers” dispense hot water. That’s right, the “cooler” in the above picture doesn’t say “100” because it’s 100% cold- it’s 100 degrees! Mmmm, how refreshing. At first I thought I just didn’t know how use the machine correctly! However, if you go to any store to buy a drink it’s always refrigerated. So do they like it hot or not? To get to the bottom of this, Mel quizzed her Taiwanese boss:

Melodie: I noticed that all the water dispensers here only have hot water.

Boss: Yes

Melodie: So do people not like cold water in Taiwan?

Boss: (laughs) Oh, Canadian teachers always want cold water.

Modern Toilet Restaurant

Since we were in the mood for some fine dining this evening, we travelled about 20 minutes to Ximending and visited Modern Toilet Restaurant. Actually… we hadn’t planned on eating there; we had just travelled into the area to see a movie when we stumbled onto the restaurant. You might remember that I had listed Modern Toilet as one of the top 10 things I wanted to do in Taiwan, so since we knew we’d never be able to find the place again if we tried (Ximending is a MAZE of stores) we decided to eat there tonight.


As far as theme restaurants go, this one is pretty good. Your chair is a toilet bowl (and yes, the seats even lift up), the table is two sinks pushed together with a glass top over them, and our table also had a nice faucet coming out of it which led to a shower head a few feet above us. In the corner of the restaurant was a pleasant gift shop area where you could buy little plush poos and such.


I ordered the coconut chicken, which tasted very nice and was served in a toilet bowl. On the side was a little salad served under a brown poo lid, some rice, a miso soup and a cold tea served in a bed pan with a curly straw. I paid an extra dollar so I could keep the bed pan. It just seemed like the perfect souvenir.


Mel ordered a Japanese hot pot which was also lovingly served in a toilet. It was really hot (temperature-wise) and when it only seemed to be getting hotter we investigated to find that they’d lit a butane burner inside the toilet bowl but under the food. We had to ask them to turn the burner off because it was way to hot to eat!


Dessert was included and it came in the form of two lovely little ice creams served in a urinal. The best part was at the end of our meal when I went to the washroom and I walked through a whole restaurant full of western toilet bowl seats, I walked past the washroom sink which was also shaped like a western toilet bowl, and then the toilet for us to actually use for our business was… a squatter. Luckily, I wasn’t there for that kind of business.


After the meal, Mel and I went to see Inglorious Basterds which was awesome and even came with bonus subtitles.


Before heading back to the subway we walked around Ximending for a bit. It’s an awesome shopping area- it’s just packed with cool clothing stores and food stalls. It reminds me of my beloved Myongdong market in Korea, and something tells me we’ll both be dropping a lot of coin there sometime in the future. But tonight we just window shopped. After all, I went home with the best purchase of all: a bed pan/cup with a curly straw.

2-28 Peace Park And The National Taiwan Museum

Today I took a break from madly refreshing employment websites while Mel is in training (her training=Facebook, btw) and I decided to head into Taipei to do something a bit touristy. I’d read that the 2-28 Peace Park was nice, so I got off the subway at the NTU Hospital stop which exits directly onto the park grounds.

The 2-28 Peace Park was named to commemorate a tragic massacre which occurred on February 28, 1947 under KMT rule after a long period of Japanese occupation. Basically, there was a protest, the KMT killed a bunch of the protesters, and the violence continued for another 8 days resulting in 28,000 deaths. For 40 years any discussion of this massacre was forbidden. So, yeah… it’s a pretty heavy topic and it’s nice that the park stands today to show a bit of respect to the lives that were lost.

The grounds pretty much resemble that of your typical park: lots of grass and benches where people were eating their lunches. The centerpiece of the park is the above monument.

There were also some impressive traditional Chinese looking structures around a pond.

There was absolutely no peeing permitted in the park (because you need a sign to tell you that?)

After I was done sweating it out at the park I decided I needed some A/C, so after being cornered by a tea saleslady (“I give you very good deal! It give good memory! And you never need sleep”), I headed to the National Taiwan Museum which was just behind the park. The museum was only $20NT (60 cents) but at that point I would have paid a million NT for a place with air conditioning :P

I can’t say that it was a very interesting museum. The exhibits on the first floor were both in English and Mandarin but the rest of the place was basically all Chinese. There were a lot of ancient rocks, dresses and cups on display if that kind of thing tickles your fancy.

There was a display on the history of soy sauce.

And this “jew’s harp” was on exhibit.

Everyone’s favorite: the moulded gourd!

The top floor had a nice but small gallery with some wildlife art (my favorite is the above canvas).

Afterwards I grabbed some lunch at Taipei Main Station and headed back to Mel’s campus. And I knew just where to meet her:

C'mon October!

"High discomfort" until October, eh? I can believe that. Oh, and Mom... I'm going to need a shipment of deodorant soon.

What The Heck...

...is this thing we saw floating around in a pond on the weekend? My guess is a jellyfish of some sort, but I'll give 50 points to the first person with the right answer!

Fulong Beach

A pleasant note posted on the inside of a bathroom stall in Fulong. I did indeed leave with a smile.

A hot and sunny Saturday on an island… sounds like time for a trip to the beach! Before we left home I’d read that Fulong Beach is the nicest beach close to where we live in Taiwan, so on Saturday we woke up a little after 6:00 (gotta get over this jet lag!) headed to Taipei Main Station and bought round trip train tickets to Fulong. Buying them was the easy part… the tickets were printed entirely in Chinese (how rude for a Chinese speaking country!) with just a few random numbers listed on the tickets for us to speculate on what they meant. We got a worker to point us in the direction of the right platform to wait at, but since there were trains coming and going every few minutes we weren’t sure which one to get on. We eventually found an English guide booth on the platform and the guide told us our train was coming in 15 minutes and then kindly pointed us in the direction of the 7-11 for some breakfast.

It took just a little over an hour for us to get there, and after paying our $2 admission we crossed over a bridge and onto the beautiful beach. The beach was a little peninsula of golden sand in the Pacific Ocean and the water was warm and refreshing. The scenery was awesome, with lush green mountains and colorful temples in the distance. I can’t believe I live so close to this!

These guys were so greased up, and who can deny their awesomeness? Baywatch, eat your heart out.

Everyone was sitting on the muddy part of the sand where the tide would go in and out, which we didn’t understand because everyone knows laying in the sand is the best. Well, after we got out of the water we figured out why: the sand was scorching hot after a few hours in the sun. By lunch time we felt quite scorched ourselves, so we showered with some complementary soap (in showers sponsored by Dove) and walked towards the train station for some lunch at a small restaurant. I had a peppered beef with rice dish and Mel had honey pork with rice. Each came with some oniony meatball soups that were delicious. I have to say we’re really enjoying the food here and haven’t had a bad meal yet! In contrast, I recall my first meal in Korea was a chicken stirfry topped in a thick covering of quivering fish scales, and in Spain I somehow found myself with a tuna pizza. So far: Taiwan=win.

We took the train back into Taipei, which turned out to be a bit tricky thanks to some worker in Fulong telling us to switch trains in some place called Chi-du and then when we got off in Chi-du the workers there told us to quickly get back on the same train before it left. In Taipei, we spent the night in a really cheap DIVE motel called “Golden Dragon”, which we were happy to find had cable TV and A/C.

We were dead hot from our day in the sun so we napped the evening away until around 8:00 when we walked down to Dadaocheng Wharf and caught a nice view of the city on the water. We’d actually gone there to see a fireworks festival that we’d read about online but although there were loads of people there, there were no fireworks to be seen. I still have no idea what went wrong with that, because the next day we checked online and there was an article about the amazing fireworks that went off at 8:30. Someone’s playing a trick on the foreigners!

So, Fulong Beach was awesome. You can bet we’ll be back there… but maybe we’ll wait until the heat dies down a bit in November. You should see my lobsterific back… ouch.

Taipei 101 And Other Touristy Stuff

I hope the early bird truly does get the worm, because in Taiwan our butts are up by 6am, daily. I feel like we’ve kind of adjusted to the jet lag, but neither of us are able to sleep past 6:00. This can pose a bit of a problem because nothing here seems to open before 10:00 or 11:00am, but you can always count on good ol’ McDonalds to be open for breakfast. On Friday morning (our first full day here) we dodged a million scooters to walk about 10 minutes down the road to our local McDonalds. As you can tell from the above photo we were truly happy with what we were served. 3 pancakes, sausage, hashbrown and coffee for NT85 (about $2.25 Canadian) and NT65 for an egg mcmuffin and coffee (approx $1.75). This has got to be cheaper than buying groceries.

Mel’s Taiwanese co-worker gave us instructions on how to take the bus to the subway station. When we got there we bought easypass (frequent rider) cards and took the subway into the core of Taipei. I have to say I was really impressed… it was only about 20 minutes total from the school into Taipei, and it cost less than a dollar for the whole trip. The buses and subways are in English which really help as I haven’t yet been able to completely absorb the entire mandarin language in 24 hours as I thought I might.

After we got off the subway we walked around the grounds of the Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, but it was really too hot to hang out outside, so we headed for the Taipei 101.

The Taipei 101 is either the first or second tallest building in the world… I don’t have the internet right now so I can’t look it up… either way, it’s tall. It is 101 floors high, if the name of the building didn’t already give that away.

The first 5 floors are a shopping area, but the type of shopping was a little rich for my blood. It was all Prada, Louis Vuitton business, and who needs that when you can buy the rip offs for 1/100th of the price a few blocks away! In the basement of the 101 there was a grocery store called Jason’s (the first good thing to ever come of that name!) which sells anything you could really want. In Korea if we wanted to get North American food we would have to travel 90 minutes and buy it on the black market and it was really overpriced. At Jason’s there was a much wider selection (I can’t really think of a thing I can’t buy…) and the price was about the same as at home. In a country where food is about 1/3 of the price as at home I’m sure the locals think it’s expensive but it makes me happy. We must have spent an hour in the store yelling “OMG they have Tostitos!” “Holy crap, ceasar salad dressing!”

After lunch, we went to the 101 observatory and enjoyed the view. It wasn’t as smoggy as I thought it would be, but there was definitely a haze. Blame that on the (with humidity factored in) 42 degree weather!

I learned something new: there’s something that exists called a “damper” and in towers like this it isolates vibrations from potentially damaging earthquakes or other weather systems. Luckily, the good people at Taipei 101 took the opportunity to interpret their damper as a cutsie anime character called Damper Baby, and they sell Damper Baby stuff everywhere. He’s awesome and is available in 4 fun colors. Please enjoy the above photo of yellow Damper Baby in front of the actual damper.

After we popped our eardrums coming down the elevator, we went to a nearby department store called New York, New York. There’s even a blinged-out Statue of Liberty outside. We didn’t buy anything, but we did have fun poking around the Toys R Us and the Daiso, which is a Japanese dollar store full of ridiculous products, but I’ll write a full post about that awesomeness later!

We then walked back to the Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall because from the top of the Taipei 101 we’d noticed a garden and pond area that we hadn’t noticed earlier in the day and we wanted to check it out. By that point we were disgustingly hot and we’d already used a full pack of oil blotting papers, so we decided to go inside the Hall to cool off before heading home. Everything was in Chinese, and though they offered us an English guided tour we declined because were way too hot and tired to pay attention. We’ll go back someday.

That is pretty much the story of our first full day in Taiwan because when we got back to the school Mel and I both crashed. I don’t think either of us were really over the jet lag and we’d really tried to do a lot for our first day. I think we had naps and then went out for supper but I can’t say for sure, because I was definitely zombie-Shawn by that point. Either way, I have to say so far so hao.


PS: hao= good