It Thinks About Nothing and Speed Earnestly

"It Thinks About Nothing and Speed Earnestly" is Mike's favourite new"Chinglish" adorned t-shirt he picked up in a Night Market in the bustling scooter-land of Taiwan. This quirky country always has us giggling and surprised by everything, from the Chinglish we read on the shirts of old women (won't go into detail on that one), to the odd ingredients laying in the bottom of our bowls of soup (duck blood or frog eggs), to where we end up with our hospitality club hosts when we thought we understood something totally different (grandpa was just as surprised to see us as we were to see him), to the stories behind the moral murals painted on the temple walls (yes, she's cutting out her own liver to cook for her ill mother-in-law's medicine) to what pops out of the toy vending machines. I just got a keychain of a plastic fish dissected with all its innards labelled for cooking instructions. I think that might have come from Japan, but that is representative of Taiwan as well, as there are strong Chinese and Japanese influences here, as well as Korean, Taiwanese aboriginal, and south-east Asian, not least obvious in the culinary delicacies. We are still trying new things with every meal, even McDonald's serves a burger with a bun made of rice instead of wheat. Taiwan has Mike singing karaoke, Carli-Ann eating spicy Korean kim chee for breakfast, and both us hiking in white gloves with towels draped around our necks. We will return from Asia transformed!
We are now in Ken Ting, a white sand beach town in the far south tip of Taiwan, after bouncing for the first 15 of the 25 days we have in Taiwan between generous invitations from hosts within a 150km radius of Taipei. Peggy and the bright-smiling crew of her bookshop in Jhubei invited us to stay in the grassroots bookstore for a few days. We couldn't imagine an atmosphere where our needs were more completely met: 1) air-conditioning, 2) gourmet organic meals prepared by the chef in the little restaurant in the bookshop (they were all impressed with the smoked salmon and cream cheese pizza Mike prepared for them from his NZ cafe recipe), 3) the answer to every question at our fingertips on the bookshelves! Everytime there was a word we could not explain we pulled down the Chinese/English dictionary, an ingredient we did not recognize we found a cookbook with photos, a historical query there were many books to reference. And at night we had sweet dreams of learning Mandarin by osmosis as we snuggled in our sleeping bags between the book shelves. And when they were not busy serving customers organic beer and world literature, we followed the chef blazing his way through the morning market for his ingredients, through the incense burning prayer ceremonies at temples, and grinding our own tea at a traditional Hakka restaurant. Thirty minutes crushing tea leaves, sesame seeds, peanuts, and pumpkin seeds with a mortar and pestle before our thirst could be quenched; it was a bit cruel really. But our night out with them at one of the many KTV buildings was the lychee on top of our shaved ice: karaoke and a buffet in one of the 100 rooms catering to the crooning Taiwanese, an experience we couldn't leave this country without.

We returned to Jhong-li a second time at the invitation of Mary, the owner of the fabulous Thai/Chinese restaurant that Han and Ching had taken us to a few days ago, to be her guests for a delicious feast specially prepared for us in her home with the company of many friends and neighbours (our first karaoke experience), and the escort of her beautiful daughters with their charming Vancouver exchange student English skills. They took us out to their friend's snazzy club after the huge dinner, but they didn't have to get up for the 6 hour hike at 6am the next morning that Mary's neighbours led us on! There was more rapelling than walking, but the mountain and steep valley views were worth the sweat that we had to wring out of our shirts.
The next two days we recovered in the tranquility of the Buddhist temples nestled into the mountains at Shitoushan (one of the dozen temples houses guests), dining on vegan fare with the serenely smiling nuns and monks, with only their peaceful chanting floating out of the delicate phoenix and dragon decorated temples over the misty valley. Until the typhoon off the east coast came rolling in, but it was far enough out to sea that it only lashed at us with a terrific electric thunderstorm. Susana in Jhunan hosted us next, bringing us to the Lotus Festival where we dined on many preparations of the seeds, flowers, roots and leaves of this beautiful flower that blooms this month, and around the culinary and historically fascinating villages of her region. She wove the stories of murals and carvings in the many temples for us, and helped us purchase ghost money to burn in the ornate kilns for the ancestors and good luck for Mike's university future, and made sure we didn't sample the luscious food on the altars as an offering to the gods. The ancient capital of Tainan was the only city so far we explored on our own, and then Scott and Grace and their two boys, Norman (11) and Jagger (7) gathered us at the train station at Kaohsiung to participate in several days in the lives of the Peng Family. I can't spell their Chinese names, but it was fascinating to hear the reasons they chose their English names! We had a great tour of Scott's office and neighbourhood, met the extended family, and the boys were wonderful tour guides around Dream Mall, Taiwan's largest. And it is much more fun messing around in the elaborate Asian game arcades with kids than just the two of us! And Scott escorted us to the dentist for a cleaning at a fraction of the cost we would have to shell out in Canada. Now we are on our own again, but still people are so friendly and Dave leant us his English/Chinese dictionary, so wish us luck on our final 6 days away from home!
Signing off,
The Avenger, Me Got the Neutron Bomb
(that's what my new baseball cap says :)