Soaking up the life.
Well, I've been really busy. This is supposed to be a, "what's coming soon," post, but I feel a ramble sinking in.
Hmmm, why am I so busy? Well, I'm working from 8:00AM - 7:30PM, 3 nights a week, and 8:00AM to 9:30PM, 2 nights a week. I have a Taiwanese girlfriend... cultural Armageddon (wow, I spellt that rite the first tyme!). I'm so not used to this stuff. She hasn't been exposed to Western culture and plays by Taiwanese/Asian rules for dating. Wow, she's fantastic. Whatever she can't do, she's willing to try, I can pick her up with one hand, and she drives me insane... 99% in good ways. Anyways, she's a native Taiwanese, meaning her family was here before the Chinese and the Japanese, living in the mountains. I went to one of her friends' weddings and that was like stepping off the plane at day one. No one spoke Chinese, let alone English... well, most of them spoke some Chinese but mine was much better than theirs. They spoke Taiwanese. Candy's mom doesn't speak Chinese, just a little bit, so going to her mom's house after was interesting... on the good side... her mom thinks my Chinese is great as she may not know the difference.
Candy and I went to JiBen, close to TaiDong on the East coast. We got up early and took a train, rented a bike (motorbike) and as we're whipping down the highway along the mountainside, a Taiwanese lady rides up along side and asks if we need a hotel, etc. I was going around corners, and so was she... about 6 inches from my bike, freaky stuff. She wasn't bothering us, she was talking to Candy (on the back of my bike) about hotels and stuff. Well, she hooked us up in a super hotel with natural hot springs for really cheap, it was fantastic. Fresh air and a fantastic spa. Tin the spa, there were 5 marble hot tubs that had different colored water, different colors for the different herbs. Pink is my new favorite color, Jasmine, mmmmmm.... so relaxing. They had a steam room where the steam jet blasted through a bale fo herbs and just made the place heaven, there were some shower nozzles on the wall to cool off so you didn't even have to leave the steam room. They also had other natural hot springs where it started at one pool and moved down to the next pool, there were ten pools at different temperatures, some had massage stations, these pools were made of stones and were very comfy. There was also a gigantic swimming pool with no one in it... makes sense.
We decided to come back a little earlier the next day and changed our train ticket to a few hours earlier, they had no seats. No problem, in Taiwan, if they have no seats, it only means that you don't get a seat, you can still board the train. We got onto the train and found a "nest" between the second and third cars, we nestles into the little spot between cars where the cars join. I went to the caboose to get something to eat, there was a lady with some lunch boxes, cheap food, edible. After little while, the conductor grabbed me and told me to come to the second car, he had a seat for me, I gave it to Candy. He came back and asked why I was in my "nest" again, I explained that I had given the seat to Candy. He found me another seat with a car full of Buddhist nuns and told me he had gone to Vancouver last summer to drive bus during the transit strike. I promptly asked him who the heck was driving the train!?!?!?! The nuns laughed. He asked me to come to the front of the train and I asked if I could drive. There's not much to a train... scary. There's one throttle lever, a red button, and a green button. Oh, and a pull cord for the horn. Trains don't seem to grant the driver/conductor a sense of control. If something was to come on the tracks, or maybe an oncoming train, I'd really like to be able to swerve, or hit an ejection seat button, or maybe even thrusters on the bottom of the train to jump the other train. I went back and chatted with the nuns and had a fantastic time.
Next post, staff trip to AliShan, complete with Poison Ivy, Water sports, cliffs, bamboo kitchen utensils and beer steins, naked Indian dancing, and not all dancers were Indians.
Hmmm, why am I so busy? Well, I'm working from 8:00AM - 7:30PM, 3 nights a week, and 8:00AM to 9:30PM, 2 nights a week. I have a Taiwanese girlfriend... cultural Armageddon (wow, I spellt that rite the first tyme!). I'm so not used to this stuff. She hasn't been exposed to Western culture and plays by Taiwanese/Asian rules for dating. Wow, she's fantastic. Whatever she can't do, she's willing to try, I can pick her up with one hand, and she drives me insane... 99% in good ways. Anyways, she's a native Taiwanese, meaning her family was here before the Chinese and the Japanese, living in the mountains. I went to one of her friends' weddings and that was like stepping off the plane at day one. No one spoke Chinese, let alone English... well, most of them spoke some Chinese but mine was much better than theirs. They spoke Taiwanese. Candy's mom doesn't speak Chinese, just a little bit, so going to her mom's house after was interesting... on the good side... her mom thinks my Chinese is great as she may not know the difference.
Candy and I went to JiBen, close to TaiDong on the East coast. We got up early and took a train, rented a bike (motorbike) and as we're whipping down the highway along the mountainside, a Taiwanese lady rides up along side and asks if we need a hotel, etc. I was going around corners, and so was she... about 6 inches from my bike, freaky stuff. She wasn't bothering us, she was talking to Candy (on the back of my bike) about hotels and stuff. Well, she hooked us up in a super hotel with natural hot springs for really cheap, it was fantastic. Fresh air and a fantastic spa. Tin the spa, there were 5 marble hot tubs that had different colored water, different colors for the different herbs. Pink is my new favorite color, Jasmine, mmmmmm.... so relaxing. They had a steam room where the steam jet blasted through a bale fo herbs and just made the place heaven, there were some shower nozzles on the wall to cool off so you didn't even have to leave the steam room. They also had other natural hot springs where it started at one pool and moved down to the next pool, there were ten pools at different temperatures, some had massage stations, these pools were made of stones and were very comfy. There was also a gigantic swimming pool with no one in it... makes sense.
We decided to come back a little earlier the next day and changed our train ticket to a few hours earlier, they had no seats. No problem, in Taiwan, if they have no seats, it only means that you don't get a seat, you can still board the train. We got onto the train and found a "nest" between the second and third cars, we nestles into the little spot between cars where the cars join. I went to the caboose to get something to eat, there was a lady with some lunch boxes, cheap food, edible. After little while, the conductor grabbed me and told me to come to the second car, he had a seat for me, I gave it to Candy. He came back and asked why I was in my "nest" again, I explained that I had given the seat to Candy. He found me another seat with a car full of Buddhist nuns and told me he had gone to Vancouver last summer to drive bus during the transit strike. I promptly asked him who the heck was driving the train!?!?!?! The nuns laughed. He asked me to come to the front of the train and I asked if I could drive. There's not much to a train... scary. There's one throttle lever, a red button, and a green button. Oh, and a pull cord for the horn. Trains don't seem to grant the driver/conductor a sense of control. If something was to come on the tracks, or maybe an oncoming train, I'd really like to be able to swerve, or hit an ejection seat button, or maybe even thrusters on the bottom of the train to jump the other train. I went back and chatted with the nuns and had a fantastic time.
Next post, staff trip to AliShan, complete with Poison Ivy, Water sports, cliffs, bamboo kitchen utensils and beer steins, naked Indian dancing, and not all dancers were Indians.
posted by Colin at 8:31 PM
1 Comments:
So enjoy your blogs! Thanks! This place sound wonderful.
Breta
Post a Comment
<< Home