Taipei, Tainan, Kaoshiung
I just give you some quick news
I’m well arrived in Taiwan, Taipei city. I had a really good welcoming from my family at the airport, after a long travel lasting about 13 hours. The plane wasn’t too bad, with a screen in front of every seat, but my neighbor had her feet really smelling bad and spoke as loud as if she was deaf. The attendants were really pretty and refined, speaking impressive English. Funny thing, as we were in the sky was showed on our screen a nice stretching exercise, but totally inappropriate for a flight trip…
The food in the plane was quite ok, and I watched many films, such as Ratatouille, the beauty and the beast, Tarzan… yeah I know it was a bit Disney time! :)
I arrived completely dead, since I didn’t get a real night, indeed there are 7 hours of difference between France and Taiwan, so I arrived in Taipei at 10 O’clock as it was 3 in France.
The flush in toilets are automatic, everything’s written in Chinese… ok, I’m in!
I speak a really weird “chenglish”, but for now I managed to be quite understandable for my family. It’s just a bit frustrating, because I really would like to have a real conversation with them but I still can’t. Why Chinese is that so difficult??
The weather in Taipei is rubbish. Raining all the time, and needing rain coat and pullover. What the heck!
My aunt from Australia arrived the day after my arrival. She is funny! We ate a lot of good things from here, as for example something they call “suasuago”, kind of Vietnamese fondue with lots of vegetables, meat and noodles. Sooo good. We even went to a mountain in the North of Taiwan, to taste some seafood.
Almost everything is so cheap here! Food and clothes, taxis and metros… I am really scared every time we take a taxi, because we are not obliged to put the seat belt at the back, therefore a majority of taxis do not have any seat belt..
At least, the metro is awesome. No ticket paper, the ‘ticket’ is a plastic coin that you have to give back at the end of the trip. We are not allowed to eat, to drink or to smoke inside. So the metro stations are really clean! That’s a good system.
People here sleep on very hard beds; I have the impression to sleep on a piece of wood. But I got used to it now. We went to a hair dresser saloon, to get some head and shoulder massages. I went also to a foot massage lasting about 30 minutes!! I feel a bit uncomfortable, because I’m not used to get some, but it’s cheap and fucking relaxing.
I taught my cousins how to play Jungle Speed, it was really funny and I’m glad they enjoy it. And I learnt how to play Mahjong, it’s cool, even if I haven’t understood everything of the rules.
In Taipei we went to my aunt’s best friend’s place, a huge and beautiful apartment with lots of people. For the first time of my life I’ve seen members of my family a bit drunk :P, and also the tallest Chinese guy since I’m here!
I spent some time in Tainan, at my uncle’s family place, to celebrate the Chinese New Year’s Eve. The weather is really better there. The sun shines, and fortunately it shines because the house is equipped by solar panels that warm the water… No sun, no hot water… and an un-delightful cold shower!! -_-‘
For the New year, I got many red envelops, that’s cool :) and have seen many of my cousins and my grand mother after 9 years in Kaoshiung, South of Taiwan, I couldn’t recognize them!!
Now I’m back to Taipei with the rain. I’ll try to visit a bit…
