take me home country roads. to the place i belong. west virginia mountain momma. taiwan. how to speak of it. for one, i was there too long. too long is now officially defined as anything over a week. if i can't do it in five days, i probably don't want to do it anyway. that's the new rule of thumb for traveling. the other one is, i need beaches, and sunshine. then again, perhaps i was mixing up the notions of traveling and vacation, because there is a difference. traveling is for business, or for enrichment and new experiences. vacation is for fun. it's not that i had a bad time, i had a good time. it wasn't mind blasting, rip-roaring fun (especially after george, enid, carolyn left) but it was a time. beats out sitting on my ass in san diego for two weeks, that's for sure.



i have to say, post-taiwan trip, i feel like i did alot. as i sit down to recap my time there, i feel like we did things all the time even if it was in short spurts. then again, trying to fill fourteen hours of the day can be a daunting task when one is as boring as i am. thanks to enid's tremendous hospitality, we had a place to stay in taipei for about a week (thanks enid!). her house is centrally located so we could pretty much get to anywhere in the city pretty quickly. this luxury has led me to the (probably false) conclusion that taipei is not a big city. taipei reminded me of new york a little too much, which wasn't entirely unexpected. urban vertical sprawl is urban vertical sprawl regardless of what language you slap onto the signs.



the subway system was nice. incredibly nice. clean, cheap, efficient and quick. like the bread stores. another big part of my trip. if someone could replicate taiwan bread and bring it here, i can guarantee sales of at least two breads a day for the next forty years. that's a verbal guarantee. and my word is as strong as oak. don't laugh.



the taiwan of my youth is now much cleaner. trash does not always litter the streets, trees process foul CO2 much more efficiently and sway in unison, cars whizz by less chaotically, people bump you with a tad more concern and care, scooters scooted semi-less-sporadically. i was impressed. i was expecting a dirty smelly old taiwan and all i really got was the smelly. even the weather was decently cooperative because we got a few days of beautiful sunshine in-between putrid rain and storm clouds. the air quality is terrible though. dust dust everywhere. and mites. (mites james!) my eyes were constantly itchy and scratchy. nothing can match the clean pure air of a world power like the united states i suppose. wearing contacts in taiwan is killer. poor chinese kids, caught up in the catch-22 of needing contacts to be cool but then being forced to gouge their eyes out every three seconds during decisive social moments.



the mosquitos won a few quick diversionary battles early on in our trip, but then we got wise to their guerilla tactics (or is that mosquirilla tactics? shoot me). victor theorized that showering before bed would help prevent bites. inventive georgette tried the no shower approach and indeed, victor was proven empirically and emphatically correct when george got stung all over the place. luckily, i escaped with only five or six huge bites on my face and none anywhere else. at least people wouldn't notice them right? bitch ass mosquitos. so glad i didn't visit taiwan during the summertime, that would have been all out war. victor killed a few perpetrators with an electric fly swatter the last couple of days so we came home conquering heroes. mosquito nets are a nice invention, props to whoever did that. and yes, the little green mentholatum nurse is your best friend in taiwan, no matter what anyone else tries to tell you. i'm gonna break down my trip below by sub-section, because you need to know. because we ain't going back to taiwan. as much of a necessary experience as it was, this time next year, we'll be chilling out in tahiti or the caribean, even if wild on says antartica is the next new hot spot.