So great.

Meanwhile, we had an incredible Sunday with our friends Jessica and John and Malcolm Jongedijk. Jessica’s sisters organized a trip up to the coal mine museum in Pinxi. We actually went here a few weeks ago, but this time we went in the evening, skipped the new train, the street food, the shopping, and rode an old coal mine train into the hills to see the spectacularly active fireflies. Then we made huge Chinese paper lanterns, decorated them with our wishes and thanks, stuck kerosene-soaked papers inside, lit ‘em on fire and launched them into the night sky. It was soooo beautiful. It will be one of our experiences here that I will remember forever. So thanks again Jessica and John!

Here are some accompanying pictures:

We had tea at a fantastic outdoor/indoor cafe before heading to the museum.

Lavender tea, herb tea, and mint table water.

Writing wishes, drawing pictures. And there's Jessica!

John and I held down the balloon as it filled up with hot air...

...and let them go! Everyone sent them off at the same moment. Glorious!

Good Job Team!

Today I had my 3rd wisdom tooth removed. My doc had warned me that because it’s a horizontal impaction in the lower jaw, the surgery would be more complicated (he had to cut the teeth into pieces and remove more bone). Before the procedure I asked him some specifics but he declined to give me any real answers, which I fully realized was for my emotional stability, but still I wanted to know. My doctor is really awesome, and I’m so glad that I have him on my team. His English is great, he’s very patient, and he’s really really nice. He talks to me throughout the surgery, and today he even indulged me with some extra anesthetic.
After some intense, rigorous, sustained sawing and gouging, he sewed me up, packed some gauze in there, and wiped all the iodine off my face. At which point I realized that while I could still kinda feel some vague pain in my jaw, I couldn’t feel him wiping my face. And then I realized I couldn’t feel my tongue, lips, my chin, my cheek, or part of my ear. Hahahaha!! Hilarious….ehhe. I thaid thankth very muth, twied to athk a few more quethtions, and then took off.

I’m actually surprised at how effective acetaminophen has been in helping with pain. It’s amazing stuff.

For dinner we went to our usual post-operative “foolish” noodle place. Nick waved his arms around, mimed pulling a tooth, made exaggerated chewing motions, widened his eyes and crossed his arms for No, and then pointed at me to explain the situation to the staff. No chewy things for her, she’s just been under the knife. To my surprise, they totally understood, and helped me pick out some soupy-things that I could manage. I love that place.

Coming up: Our friend Tom’s stag party (to which of course, only Nick will be attending).
More parent’s night preparation, and….I think that’s all.

Love to everyone, b

Remedy

This is a ginger tea that I drink copiously when I get sick, which is often. It’s mostly sugar, thick chunks of ginger, and a dried plum? that is common in Chinese medicine. You just take a couple of these, drop them in some boiling water, and enjoy. I believe in this stuff, and will bring LOTS of it home with me when I return to the states. I think a generous bag cost me NT200, or about US$6.30.

Dou Hua Dessert

More ginger. My new favorite dessert: Dou hua in a ginger soup with green beans and soft peanuts. Not sure if its good for a cold, but it’s freaking delicious. Dou hua is made of soy beans, and has a denser texture than tofu. The dou hua is the white stuff you see. It’s not sweet, but everything else in the bowl is. The perfect balance. I really love the use of beans as a sweet ingredient. They must boil the beans in sugared water? A bowl of this will run you about NT35. or about US$1.10.

Pho in Taipei

Here is another good choice, “pudding”:
It’s surprisingly good. Like a jelly-ish version of the western kind. This one was neopolitan flavored, floating in a sweet clear “soup” and I added some red bean tapioca to liven up the texture.

You can get pretty much any kind of food in Taipei. Well, haven’t seen any Ethiopian. I really really miss Ethiopian food. Or decent cheeses. Hmm….anyway, you can get most things… but it’s not always very authentic. Or what I’ve been led to believe is authentic…in Seattle. Hm.

Back to it! Here I am, in front of a not-so-delicious bowl of pho. This place was supposed to be really good, but I have to say, the beef broth was sadly un-beefy. Which is weird, since Taiwan is famous for beef noodle soup, which has a broth that is, no matter where you get it, beefy and delicious.  Here, Nick had banh mi, which he says was the best sandwich he’s had in Taiwan. I believe him.

The most common type of sandwiches here consist of 2 to 4 slices of thin, uber-white bread holding together tasteless corn kernals, something called pork floss, which I can describe as a brown, dusty, stringy, salty “stuff,” and massive amounts of mayonaise. barf. You can also find tuna instead of pork floss. There are other kinds of sandwiches available here that are SO GOOOD. They just feel really unhealthy, being of the burger and mayo variety, and we try not to eat them too often.

Here is one of my favorite soups, especially after oral surgery: In Chinese they call this foolish noodles, because they’re so simple. Noodles in a separate bowl for us to share, and another bowl of plain broth, and some goodies (an egg, a fish ball with pork inside, and these beautiful little noodle envelopes of pork). We pour some soy sauce (not like kikkoman’s) over the noodles, mix them up with some green onion, and alternate bites: noodles, then soup, noodles, soup.

I don’t know what it is about each individual part of this meal, but it works together perfectly, and each part is in itself absolutely delicious. We can’t figure out what it is about the noodles, they’re just noodles, right? But I swear I could just eat them alone, with nothing else. The fish ball is perfect, not at all “fishy” which is really difficult taste to avoid in Taiwan, and the pork mixture inside is perfectly and mysteriously seasoned. The pork envelopes are Nick’s favorite part. The skin is delicate and tasty and the inside is always perfect mild porkiness (no fucking bones/gristle either!). We’ve speculated. Could it be some magic variety of MSG? Or as my friend Christine grew up calling them, Yummy Sprinkles? We won’t accept this theory. It must be something else, we assure ourselves. Enough talk, behold!!

Foolish Noodles

Next up: It’s called Pocari Sweat and it tastes like Gatoraid, but I like to think it’s the sweat of a ridiculously cute little animal called Pocari, that might be something like a Pika. Nick thinks Pocari is the name of a god. (Psh.) Anyway, it’s not very good.

On to more normal fare. These next photos came from a night when Nick’s family was here. My friend Daniel took us to this really great spicy hot pot place. It wasn’t so much spicy as mouth-numbing. It was so delicious.

We'd like to take Rebecca and Jason here

And here’s our table, pre-food.

Snacking before the meal

And the hot pot! Half is spicy aka numbing, half is traditional.

Hmmm hot pot

We needed an extra table

And here is the dipping sauce stuffs:

Cilantro, red pepper, green onions and shaved peanut

An appetizer, spicy peanutty glass noodles

We had an awesome evening, Thank you again, Daniel. : )

Here was our school/family dinner. Teachers attending: Rebecca, Julia, Joyce, Donna, Bonita. Then there was Steve, and our friend Tom.

Sorry if I left anyone out!

Some of our favorite dishes:

A typical table

San Bei Doufu, aka, 3 Cup Tofu

Well, I’m gonna leave it at that for now. There is much more to cover. Like an additional post on street food.

_b

Alan Pipes is HOT

Good thing it's mostly pictures, cause my version is Chinese

Not like actually seeing the machines at work, but still good

I thought I’d write another short theme-less post in an effort to get back into the habit of regular postings.

First off, our week started with the usual meeting with our Chinese co-teachers. Except that this meeting was interrupted by a loud spraying sound outside the windows of our school. Later, many  cockroaches were seen belly-up near the street grates along our local streets. The annual slaughter has taken place. as it always does, when the weather starts to get warmer.

We’re so weak, we are looking forward to the predicted cooling on Thursday. Even this pitiful 79F got us sweating up our classrooms. Add humidity, and you’ve got one hell of a morale-screwing reminder of the coming summer.

In other news, I bought some red pants this weekend. Nick bought some purple sneakers. I fear we have been taken with a kind of fashion fever that can strike those who live here. You buy lots of awesome, one-of-a-kind shit here, look all snazzy walking around Nan Kan, and then you get back to the US and some stranger tells you that you look like a peacock. We shall see.

Because the weather is getting warmer, we suspect the pool in our apartment may be heating back up. This means swimming again and feeling generally healthier. We’ve been frequenting the gym as well (well, so far mostly Nick) and I’ve been taking a dance/exercise class with the ladies from my school.

We went to the driving range last week with our co-worker Steve, and our friend Nicky, who is a pro golf instructor here.  He gave us some tips, we drank a few beers, and headed to Nicky’s apartment, where I would have a realization that will likely haunt me for the rest of my time in Taiwan.

And that is: we were totally and completely ripped off when we settled on our apartment. Now that I have seen what a remarkably similar monthly rent can get you here, I feel betrayed and restless. Nicky’s apartment is Japanese-style, NEW, with super high ceilings, tall windows, a sunken den space, a sunken bedroom space, and a lofted storage/chill area. I can’t really explain how awesome it is, except to say that now I feel like cracking some MotherFing skulls.

Which leads me to my next update: our recent return to the Sopranos saga. What a freaking awesome show. We’re in the 5th season now. And thanks to my mom, who some years ago, before I’d been introduced to the show, blurted out from her bathroom that she couldn’t believe they killed ****, I totally know how it ends. But that’s fine. It’s still great. Nick is copying all the seasons to his hard drive.

Well that’s all for now. I’m looking forward to possibly practicing my swing with our coworker Elsa and her boyfriend Tony. Also I’m looking forward to my next bowl of chua-bing, and to cleaning our shit apartment, solving Steve’s pseudo-Rubik’s cube again, and fewer mosquitos due to the warmer weather.

Love, b

PS I had my first food-related “illness” in Taiwan. I mention it because lots of people ask about food safety here. Well, it happened. Only the food wasn’t bad, it just had something in it that was incredibly strong-flavored and happened to make me feel like barfing. Even thinking about the taste right now is making me gag a little. So strange, everything looked familiar, and a whole lot like a particular food that I really really like, so I stuck a really huge piece of this roll in my mouth, took two bites, and suspected a serious problem. I excused myself from our crowded table, hurried past the other restaurants and manage to spit out the stuff onto some railroad tracks before I actually vomited. Then I had a few heaves on my way back. From then on, small bites to test new foods. (Even if they look super tasty.)

But enough of that. We’re back, so who cares?

Our usual routine has been the same. I got out of bed at 9:40, checked my email, stressed momentarily about my taxes, then got dressed, clocked in at work at 9:57, sat around thinking drowsily about class for 10 minutes, then taught for 60 minutes, ate the school lunch (fried rice, steamed chinese spinach,  a tea egg,  and a carroty-porky stew), headed home, obsessed over a pseudo-rubiks cube, drank some yogurt and orange juice (my cure for pretty much constant irritable bowels),  took a cat nap, checked facebook, back to school until 6.30, ate the school’s boxed lunch (fried pork, rice, steamed spinach, tofu) then ate a baked sweet potato Rebecca gave me, went home, downloaded some movies (Wall-E, The Incredibles, Persepolis) watched clips of the Daily Show’s Even Stevphen segment and I’m now considering what to do next. (Should work on finances.)

Nick is over at Steve’s having a beer and unwinding from the week. I didn’t feel up to hanging out tonight, especially since we’ll be getting up early in the morning.

Tomorrow Nick and I are going on a little day-trip with a few of our Chinese coworkers. I feel so lucky to have been invited along with these friends. I will write about it more later, when pictures have been taken.We’ll be heading north east, to a town in the mountains near Keelung. I’m very excited, and I hope for good weather.

Nick’s parents were here for a week, and there is much to say about that, but I think it’s best if Nick did the writing, so I’ll leave it to him. In a nutshell, we had a great time: toured Taipei, visited Hualien, ate lots of muaji, and saw Taroko gorge. There is more, and you’ll be reading more about it here soon.

More interesting news coming,

love, b

Central and Southern Thailand

After an extremely stressful flight during which I was unsuccessfully drugged and had to get drunk before I could calm down, we landed in Thailand.

Most people advised us to get the heck out of Bangkok our first day so that’s what we did. Our first destination was Koh Tao, an island in the Gulf. We took a night bus to Chumpon, and an eaaarly morning speed boat the rest of the way. We ended up staying on this really awesome beautiful laid-back non-party beach where our co-teacher Steve used to live and work.  It wasn’t overcrowded, and the visitors were mostly German, Swedish and English. (I think we met 4 or 5 Americans on our entire trip) The beach is home to 9 or 10 resorts that certify scuba divers and a few that don’t. We loved it there, but eventually grew a little bored with the lack of things to do and decided to head to the Adaman side of the peninsula of Thailand.

To get back to the mainland, we took a night “sleeper” boat. It was wooden, about 300 years old, and slow. But kinda charming. It had a totally open cabin, even down to the gigantic engine (loud). There were probably over 100 people on it, all trying to sleep on tiny mattresses of unspeakable filth. I can’t believe I didn’t see anyone getting sick, as the first few hours were a little choppy. After midnight the sea was like the smoothest road you’ve ever been on. We could see phosphorescence in the water near the bow, stars in the sky, and we passed many many fishing boats out with no running lights whatsoever. Freaking dangerous, man! Coming into Surat Thani was kinda neat, seeing the tankers and cargo ships, and being greeted with fireworks at 5.30 in the morning. (Just like home!!)

We stopped first for a few days in a huge national park called Khao Sok, where we had an unpleasant run-in with some marauding monkeys (hiss hoot scratch!), and took an inflatable canoe down the Kaho Sok River, which was, regrettably, extremely dirty. We saw some snakes sleeping in the trees, some Dutch guys trying to knock out the snakes, some great bat-filled caves, and attended a triple-tarzan wedding in the jungle, complete with elephants, a feast, and leopard-print outfits for the happy couples (white dudes + thai chicks. surprised? neither were we).  The limestone rock formations in Khao Sok were totally stunning, but we didn’t really get out much. Nothing there was accessible without a paid guide+paid transportation. I’m so sorry for that. On the bright side, we met some great people there and had the pleasure of enjoying their company for a day.

Next we took a bus/boat to Ko Phi Phi, which is where all the tourists go after their direct flight into Phuket. We sort of knew what we were getting ourselves into, but not really. The island itself was really beautiful, but the town was a big meat-market party scene. Ick. And super expensive for our budget (which was small). We took a snorkeling tour around Phi Phi Don (the big island) and Phi Phi Ley, the smaller one, known for being the site of filming for The Beach. The best part about the tour was riding in the long tail boat, which was exhilarating. Much of the coral in the area has been destroyed by the tour-group speed boats or fishing boats which drop their anchors anywhere. This was a problem we saw everywhere we went in Thailand. The local boats were good about hooking up buoys that were already anchored in safe locations, but I’m sure the coral will be gone soon. On Phi Phi I enjoyed the best coconut shake I was destined to drink while in Thailand, and we also had the pleasure of meeting an amazing Swiss woman and her adopted Pakistani son. Spending an evening with them and hearing their stories was really an experience. I won’t forget them soon.

After the spectacle that was Phi Phi, we headed north to a placed called Railey. The beaches were not very nice, but we were really just looking for a place to unwind again, spend less, and have more space to ourselves. I had some idea that because Railey is known for rock climbing mostly, there would be a different kind of crowd there, but I was wrong. There was less of a crowd, but the nicest beach there was packed, and we didn’t stay for more than 10 or 15 minutes. (I had also burned the shit out of my back on Phi Phi.) The highlights in Railey were the delicious Indian food cooked up by our bungalow-owner, the Muay Thai match put on at a local bar (mostly staged, of course, but still entertaining), and the Diamond Cave, which was really amazing.
After Railey we contemplated spending part of our last 4 days in Chiang Mai, which we heard from everybody was a must-see. But considering the day-and-a-half train ride from where we were, we didn’t think we’d have enough time there to enjoy it. Instead, we resolved to leave behind the beach life and get some culture in Bangkok.

Despite what everyone says about the city, we totally loved it. The food was great, the temples were outstanding, the taxis were pretty cheap, the tuk tuks were super fun, watching the early morning stragglers on Koh San Road was interesting (an arrest! a beligerant Englishman! a beat-up Ladyboy! a dude who lost his cousin!) and the weekend/night markets were the best we’ve seen in Asia (Both Chatuchak and Lumpini made Shilin look like a garage sale.) We rode the river boats (super efficient public transportation), saw the world’s largest reclining Buddha (very large indeed) and watched Avatar 3D at the Siam World IMAX and agreed it was by far the best format to see it in : ) . There were spicy cockroaches and scorpions to sample on the street, a jazz festival in the park, and plenty of opportunities to get completely ripped off (I’ll remember you next time, countless thieving tuk tuk drivers). Bangkok is fantastic.
The only downside was when someone who shall go unnamed left my camera and nearly all our photos from the trip in a taxi. We tried our hardest to get it back, but we weren’t given much help, despite the fact that we knew the taxi company and the driver’s name.
Our final adventure was when we were bumped off our flight home because of overbooking (End of Chinese New Year!). We weren’t upset at all, KLM was great. They put us up at the Radisson in Bangkok, we had free meals, and free shuttles to night markets. It was great.

After arriving in all the crowded spots in the South, and before we got back to Bangkok, we kept thinking how much we’d like to turn around and go back to Koh Tao. I hope when I get the chance to go back, it’s as crowd-free and beautiful as it is now.

There is so much more to write, but it will have to wait.

Take care, and thank you everyone for you patience as we get back into the swing of things with the blog.

-b

Ps. please send positive thoughts to the people suffering in Haiti and Chile. I’m so grateful Ryan and Molly are safe.

Unfortunately, because of the old girl’s age, it also means a 15 minute wait while the engine warms up before we can drive more than 35 feet.

Just yesterday I drove the 8 km to the hospital to have my stitches removed! In the rain. I was wearing an ultra-crappy poncho I bought at 7-11, and half-way through the journey it split so completely, the only thing still attached to me was the hood, which I had tucked under my helmet.

On Sunday we took the scooter to a town called Yingge (pronounced Ingkuh) that is famous for pottery shops and factories. We didn’t get to see the museum, but we did explore the old ceramic shopping street. There, we got to see some beautiful art, and we even got to throw our own pieces on a wheel! The shop will glaze it, fire it, and send it to your home, all for only 250NT, or about 8 bucks! Wonderful : ) I hope we go back!

Some remarkable scooter model names in Taiwan (not in any particular order):

1. Dew Dew

2. Man Boy 90

3. Urban Fuzzy

4. Heroism

5. Jog (Is Fascinating to You)

6. Herself

7.  Duke

8. The Epochal Scooter

9. Attila

10. Cutie Horse

11. ChaCha 90

(Nick may edit this list later, pending further discoveries)

Our scooter model name? Cabin. I wish it was more exciting. I’m thinking of painting our scooter gold, which is the color of spray paint that I have in the apartment. I also bought a leopard print helmet to jazz things up.

Pictures to come!

I slept pretty well, all considered. But I woke up needing to pee and saw my puffy face in the bathroom mirror. Hilarious!

Big right?

Today I’ve had very little pain, but I can’t open my mouth much and talking and chewing can be dangerous with the stitches and all. I missed school today as a result, but I got lots of work done around the apartment. I aired the clothes out on the deck since the sun was out and shining and got some more laundry done. I cleaned the bathroom and swept everywhere, and I’m leaving the dishes for Nick.