It’s not that scary, is it? You walk in, motion some scissors at your hair and hope for the best. In Korea, I actually walked in with a picture of Posh Beckham and Shawn with David Beckham to get haircuts. This time we thought we could do it without the visual aids.
We got haircuts a while ago at a salon up the road. Apparently, this is where our neighbour Christine’s sister gets her hair done. She told us what “number” hairdresser should do our hair. We had #3!
I would suggest taking a Chinese speaking friend. She definitely came in handy!
Here’s a play by play of the events:
1. Walk in and disregard the fact that every person in the room has stopped what they are doing and are staring at you.
2. Motion for a haircut using scissor actions.
3. Sit down and use your best charades to decide on a style. Hairdresser runs over to my Taiwanese friend for translation.
4. Drink some complimentary tea while your hair falls to the floor.
5. Start to fall asleep because the hair dresser is meticulously measuring and cutting each strand.
6. All of a sudden, the hair dresser leaves and another employee comes over and starts massaging your back. Surprising and a little painful, but nice nonetheless.
7. The masseuse comes back with a bottle of soapy water and starts to shampoo your hair. You are still seated at the chair while this is happening.
8. You go to the back sink and lay down. After rinsing, a hot towel is placed on your hairline at your forehead and on your neck.
9. You go back to the seat to receive your head massage.
10. After, the original hairdresser comes back to make a few last minute changes and styles your hair.
11. You are now finished. After what must have been about an hour and a half, you have had a haircut!
The pros: The whole process cost about $15.00 CDN. I’ve had haircuts at home that weren’t even noticeable and cost twice that. I guess if you don’t want the pomp and circumstance of this experience, you can go for a simple haircut at another salon for only $3.00! I also appreciated the fact that my hairdressers took their time and didn’t rush. I’m pretty sure that they get paid differently than in Canada. Also, tips are neither permitted nor appreciated.
The cons: Shawn, being a male, is used to having cheaper haircuts. He didn’t want the massaging and shampooing and all that pampering that I so thoroughly enjoyed. I guess he can go to the $3.00 place instead next time!
Monday is Teachers Day in Taiwan, so to all the edumacators on this here island- have a great day and may your students spoil you (or at least listen in class today). It's sure to be a great day for Melodie- it's her first pay day. Happy Teachers Day, indeed!
Today we went for a hike at Youth Park with our neighbors, Samuel and Christine. The mountain was only a 15 minute drive from our apartment and the entire hike just took an hour and a half or so. Up until recently it's been too hot to go hiking (and Taiwan has a lot of awesome trails) but the humidity hasn't been too bad lately so it was a perfect day to go. It was a good bit of exercise, the trail was well-developed and there was some nice scenery on the way up.
The way up involved all these stairs! It wasn't as bad as maybe it looks.
We saw some local insects on our hike. I thought this butterfly looked pretty cool with his black and blue coloring.
This spider was the size of my head! And I have a big melon-head!
Samuel said that there's a man who hikes to the top of the mountain at 3am every morning to make tea for all the climbers who will visit over the day. He doesn't get paid for this or anything, it's just something he likes to do. What a good guy- does he make coffee too? In the shelter at the top, regular hikers leave their own cups in plastic bags (see the above picture) so they can enjoy some tea after their climb. There was also a lady selling dumplings at the top of the mountain, so we had some of those as well.
After spending the afternoon reading and doing some lesson planning, we caught a ride with Samuel and Christine into Taipei to visit the Linjiang Street Night Market, which is right next to the Taipei 101. They were supposed to be visiting Samuel's parents' for supper but instead they decided to show us around and eat a secret supper with us before going for supper number 2.
We had rice noodle soup, a side of tofu (AKA "dofu" in Taiwan) with a really nice sauce, a plate of pig intestines and a plate of pig cheeks. I don't know how they get us to try this stuff, but for some reason it's becoming kind of fun to eat these weird things we know we'll never get the chance to try again when we eventually leave Taiwan. The intestines were really chewy but didn't taste offensive in any way, and the cheeks just tasted like pork. If you're really interested in trying intestines this was the place to go, because the stand we went to prepared them 4 different ways. Viva la choice!
All it took was a simple "what is this?" before our neighbors scooped up a big bag of them for us to try. The black things are a shell and you break them open to eat some type of nut or maybe vegetable? They kind of tasted like a cross between a string bean and a potato. I prefered the cheeks.
Next I sampled something a bit more recognizable: some mini chicken burgers! I tried a mexican burger and a thai lemongrass burger. They were $19 NT (60 cents) each.
Mel had an oyster pancake. It's made of oysters (obvs), pancake batter, eggy, and glutonous rice with a delicious thick, savoury orange sauce. $50 NT ($1.30)
My favorite snack of the night (we also got some cream-filled cakes and a candy-covered fruit skewer but had a brain fart when it came to taking pictures) was an ice cream springroll! The guy who made it had a cube of peanut brittle on his cart about the size of a cinderblock, which he shaved and layered on a wrap made of rice paper. Then, three scoops of ice cream were added with some fresh cilantro and it was wrapped up. It was absolutely awesome... can't wait to have this again! $40 NT ($1.10)
So- Mike, Caroline- sorry we were late Skyping with you tonight. As you can tell we were incredibly busy eating intestines. I'm sure you understand- it happens all the time to the best of us.
On Saturday, Mel and I returned to Fulong a little bit older and a little bit wiser. Instead of traveling 30 minutes by bus then train to Taipei Main Station we took a bus for 10 minutes to Banchio and caught the train to Fulong from there. When we got to Fulong, we walked 5 minutes up the road to a free area of the beach instead of paying the outrageous price of $80 NT ($2.25) to use the main beach. I like that we're getting these things figured out, it makes me feel like I'm learning the ropes.
Most major areas of Taiwan are locally famous for one type of food or another. Fulong is famous for its bento box meals. When you get off the train you can hear ladies shouting "bento! bento!" and you can buy them right on the tracks or walk directly to a close-by restaurant (which we did). The little box is stuffed with food- some braised pork, rice, cabbage, seaweed, a little fish, a little sausage and a tea egg. Even if you don't like everything in the box, for $55NT ($1.25) it's a great deal and I thought the pork was especially awesome (I went back for a second bento later in the day).
On our walk down to the beach we passed by a house which was drying some little fish on their front step. If I had known that we were going to be passing by a free dinner I wouldn't have blown that dollar on my bento box!
The free area of the beach turned out to be just as nice as the area you pay for. Actually, it might have been even better because there was more room to swim and there was about 1/10th as many people. Above is a picture of the still-very-awesome "other" beach.
It was such a nice day to go to the beach! The temperature was perfect and even when it started to rain for a few minutes in the afternoon the sun was beating still down on us too.
We got a work out from the surprisingly strong current (but not toooo strong or anything) and the waves which were fun to bob around in (witness Melodie "bobbing" above). The water was so clear and blue and warm and great.
When we took the train back home we found out that we had booked tickets for a train which is just like the ones we ride on the subway. There are 3 classes of trains that you can book tickets for in Taiwan, but we had just bought our tickets for the next train leaving. There were no seats on the train when we got on, but we figured that along the way people would get off and seats would become available. Wrong! More and more and more people just kept getting on and nobody ever seemed to get off. I have never seen such a PACKED train, but it was Saturday night after all, so people were naturally just heading into Taipei for the night. Needless to say, when we got home it felt awesome to curl up in bed and watch a movie ("Into The Wild"- we'd both just finished reading the book) and then we Skyped it up with Rufus (and Dayna was there too). To take it easy on our tired bodies, we got up this morning and relaxed by taking... a hike up a mountan :) But that's a story for another post...
- Arby's and Quiznos. My two favorite places to be fed unhealthy food.
- Sidewalks that don't double as parking spaces
- SNOW ...mwhahahahaaha!!
- Old ladies dressing old. While the men are pretty conservative, older women still look pretty hip. I saw one wearing a t-shirt that said "it's all good in the hood" the other day and last week I saw a lady pushing 60 with a t-shirt that had a pot leaf on it and it said "F*** off" on the back! I choose to believe that these ladies don't know what their shirts said.
- Free plastic bags at the supermarket. They're $1-3 NT depending on where you go.
- Bars. I've seen like 1 and it was lame. I know they're out there, but they don't seem to be as common as they are at home or in Korea.
- Stores open before 11am
- Stores closing before midnight
- Oprah :(
- Houses, lawns
- Expensive postage. It cost $11NT (30 cents) to send a postcard by airmail to Canada.
- Drive Thrus
- Fruit punch
- Available seats inside any cafes on a hot day. Those seats are spoken for, son.
- People listening to music when they walk down the street (probably for fear of being run over if they can't hear)
- Hats that aren't oversized and made of straw
- Garbage cans. It's amazing how long you'll have to carry your food wrappers sometimes.
- Eating on buses or subways. It's a strict no-no and if you get caught there's a fine. We were chewing gum on the subway once and a lady tapped Mel on the shoulder and showed her a pocket translator which read "can receive fine for chewing the essence". We awkwardly chewed our "essence" more discreetly.
- Toilet paper in most public washrooms. You're supposed to bring your own or buy it from a vending machine out front.
- Agreed-upon spelling. We live in Sinjhuang but it can also be spelled "Hsinchuang"or "Xinzhuang". I've seen Taipei spelled "Taibei", Danshui as "Dansheui" or "Tamshui" and Bali as "Pali". It can make googling things quite tedious when you have to search 3 different spellings of a place name!
- Horse heads (you KNOW I brought it but it's been too hot to wear that rubber death trap!)
- People waiting very long for a subway train. They go by every 2-3 minutes.
- Bikinis on the beach. Well, maybe you'd see a few but the main fashion seems to be to wear your street clothes in the water.
- Churches
- Inflatable furniture. Seriously, where can I find a blow-up sofa? I'm not blowing $400 on a couch and wicker chairs are not comfortable.
- Heaters. We only have A/C and no heater of any type. I don't think this is going to be an issue.
- Dogs on a leash
- Pizza without corn and peas
- Ovens. We have a big toaster oven which I used to make cookies... they were a little flat but still tasted good.
- Discarded receipts (the receipt lotto draw is tomorrow!)
- Liquid vanilla (it's powdered)
- Quarter Pounders with Cheese on the McD's menu
- Wooden walls. It's all concrete here.
- Shawn and Melodie wearing anything more than shorts and a t-shirt. Seriously, Mel hasn't worn a sweater in 5 weeks. If you know her then you know how amazing this is.
- Godzilla. And I was sure I'd have seen him by now.
- Jellies in about 50% of all drinks sold at the supermarket. Sometimes they're gelatin cubes and sometimes it's aloe chunks, but I bought an orange pop today that was the consistency of half-set orange Jello. Although I could hardly get it to pour out of the small hole in the can, I still don't really mind the jelly chunks. It's like Orbitz never really went away!
- Is it starting to rain? Nope, just air conditioners always dripping on you from above.
- Scooters
- A family of four riding around on their family scooter (a 50/50 chance that the kids are wearing helmets)
- $100 NT ($3) scooter helmet stores on every block of every street
- All roasting chickens are sold with the head attached :(
- Bread sliced too thick for a toaster (why!)
- Popular cutesy cartoon characters selling everything. Among the most popular: Butter Lion, Doraemon, Hello Kitty and Domo. I really like Domo.
- People saying "WEI" in a loud, nasally voice. It's how you anwser the phone.
- Just as many bags of "pea chips" as potato chips for sale at the supermarket
- An interesting garbage system. Every day at 6:30 we go downstairs and put our trash bags in the garbage truck as it slowly drives by. They're never late and you always know they're coming because the truck plays Beethoven as it approaches. So beautiful and a good way to meet your neighbors.
- Pet stores and scooter repair shops on every block.
- School uniforms. It can make it really hard to remember your students' names when they all wear the same clothes every day. Mel had to take pictures of her 100 or so students holding up their nametags so she could remember who is who when it comes to doing her bi-weekly student reviews.
- Loads of stray cats and dogs. The cats are really timid, but the dogs are friendly, mellow, and sometimes seem to hang out in packs. Our neighbors have adopted 3 really nice stray dogs who now live on our roof.
- KFC hot dogs
- DFC chicken.
- Ready-to-go beef hearts at the grocery store.
- Locals wearing sweaters, jeans, hats and using umbrellas on the hottest days to avoid any possible tanning.
- Temples, temples, temples. Like on every street.
- Awesome t-shirts
- Lots and lots of people burning paper money in trash cans on the side of the road.
- Your temperature being taken before entering any major public space because of H1N1
- 110 volt plugs. The same as at home! I was able to bring my Wii :)
- Billboards selling unrealistic "dream weddings", which Mel's boss tells us is what every young bride in Taiwan wants. In this picture you can see the bride and groom entering the wedding from the ceiling which appears to be held at the Academy Awards?
- Seal Oil pills at the pharmacy. Imported from Canada. Does Paul McCartney know about this?
- American chain stores: McDonalds, Pizza Hut, 7/11, Starbucks, Cold Stone Creamery, KFC, Dunkin Donuts, T.G.I.Fridays, Outback Steakhouse, Subway, Blockbuster, Burger King
- Canadian chain stores: sadly, no Tim Hortons, but there are a lot of Roots stores. I saw a polo shirt there for $110 and moved on!
- The health claims of American food blacked out with marker! Cheerios is LYING to us as home!
- Monks
- TEA! Milk tea, bubble tea, tea tea tea is big business
- Facebook magazine?
- A really good variety of cheap restaurants selling international foods.
- 80 cent beer!
- Duck/Pig blood popsicles
- Noodles. Lots and lots of noodles.
- People doing funny spontaneous stretches and exercises on the street. Please note that none of these exercises look like they could ever result in physically toning anything.
- Yummy street food! Custard filled cakes! Thai pork and rice wraps! Fruit smoothies!
- HUGE BUGS in your living room (it was the size of my palm!)
- Assigned seating at the cinema. If you want to pay a bit more you can sit on a sofa!
- It's legal to drink beer on the street... anywhere. But nobody does.
- Really, really nice and helpful people. One guy took us to an address we were trying to find which was 3 blocks out of his way. The other day Mel was waiting in line for the bathroom and someone in line ahead of her let her go ahead to take the last "western-style" toilet. The people here are so nice.
- CASH. I don't think they do debit.
- Tiger Woods doing really creepy razor ads
- CNN is the "international" version, which means no Anderson Cooper *sob*
- Boy bands. Super Junior (from Korea) seems to be the most popular. On their lunch breaks our students are often seen practicing dance routines from their videos. I think a lot of kids here aspire to be in boy bands.
- Signs everywhere, bringing very awesome things to your attention.
Sooooo when I woke up this morning I checked online and saw that it was 2 degrees at home! Ouch! On a completely unrelated note, this afternoon I decided to go to Baishawan beach in Northern Taiwan. Easier said than done, since I was going solo and couldn't find any proper directions online besides "go to the last subway station and take a bus." What bus?! But somehow I did manage to make my way there by bus, then train, and then another bus. It took a little over 2 hours, but I really wanted to check out this beach and I'm glad I did. It was about 35 degrees but since I was on the coast a light breeze made the weather comfortable. The water was wavy with a strong current so you couldn't go out too far but it was as warm as bathwater and great to bob around in. It would have been great for boogie boards!
There was a a really wavy area (not where I was swimming) that people were actually surfing in. I don't think I'd ever actually seen someone surf in real-life before.
One of the best parts about the beach is that there's a walking trail as well, so you can do an easy hike around the coast. It was beautiful.
There were about half a dozen guys with fishing poles about halfway along the trail. It made me wonder what I'd just been swimming with.
I wanted to find a good spot to have a snack (AKA some Mr. Donut brand donuts) and when I saw this thing (above) I decided I had to walk through all this tall grass (snakes!) and climb up all these boulders to eat my strawberry donut next to this fort (?I'm assuming?)
The view, donuts and the photo shoots were great. After I climbed back down I took another dip in the water before heading back home, where some dumplings from Mel's boss and some cakes from our neighbors were waiting for me. I can't wait to bring Mel back the Baishawan (probably this weekend!)
On Saturday we continued our museum tour of Taiwan (we're waiting for it to cool off a bit before we can do outdoorsy stuff) with a visit to the National Palace Museum. The National Palace Museum is one of the most important and most visited museums in the world. All of its' artifacts are from ancient China, and there are so many pieces that less than 10% of the collection can be seen at one time. All of these treasures were moved to Taiwan to keep them safe during a civil war in China in the 40's but since they were never returned and Taiwan isn't really part of China (depending on who you ask), a lot of people consider all of these Chinese treasures to be stolen. With admission priced at only $4.50 there's a lot of stolen booty to be seen for one low price.
All of the exhibits are labeled in both English and Chinese, but not unlike the National Taiwan Museum it was really just a lot of old plates and scrolls and we found it pretty tedious after a while. Although the museum was massive and there were some interesting exhibits, it felt like we were looking at the same types of things room after room. A lot of the pieces were really old- it really made us realize what a long history Asia has compared to our own- because there were objects dated 6500 B.C.E! There were no photos allowed which has never stopped me before, so I did manage to grab some shots of my favorite exhibits. Please enjoy this photo tour:
An ancient pillow... made of concrete?! Considering how hard the beds are here, I suppose this makes sense.
A meat-shaped rock. This was seriously listed as one of the 5 most important things to see. According to the label it looks "just like boiled pork". I suppose so...
"Earthquake-proof" cups. Hopefully when we eventually experience our first earthquake I'll be drinking out of a vase to avoid any spills.
I really liked these guys. They were massive.
Undoubtedly, the highlight of our visit was the jade cabbage! That's right, the most famous and beautiful object in the museum was a jade CABBAGE. It was the only exhibit that required waiting in a line to visit (though we timed it right and didn't have to wait).
It was truly a wonderful cabbage, with bright vibrant colors. Although I longed for a photo shoot with this amazing piece of art, security was too tight around this valuable object to whip out my camera (the above image is provided to you by Google). Upon leaving the jade cabbage room, you have the opportunity to buy miniature jade cabbages, cabbage pens, cabbage cell phone charms, cabbage coasters, cabbage everything. Mel and I totally bought a miniature cabbage ornament which brightens my day just by looking at it in our living room.
The grounds of the museum were really impressive.
We caught a bus back to the MRT station and grabbed some lunch at our favorite toilet-themed restaurant. I'll never get tired of sitting on a toilet while eating out of a toilet.
Then we headed home to get some snacks at the night market and play Wii. When we got off the bus in Sinjhuang we could see that some sort of performance was going on at the park. This is the same park that had the chanting monks, trannies and pig butchering the night before. It was a bit more tame Saturday, as we were treated to a Chinese puppet show. It was like turning on Mr. Rogers in the wrong language. What a great day.
