Thanksgiving: next time, give thanks away from home!

As an airline employee, I have standby travel privileges. That means I can fly on any flight with open space. It also means that it is impossible to fly when demand is high, like Thanksgiving weekend...only there's a caveat to that.

Most of us think Thanksgiving is the busiest travel weekend of the year, and that's true domestically. Flying internationally is a completely different story because most people only fly home - domestically. It means that I have a better shot at traveling internationally on Thanksgiving than at any other time of the year. I haven't purchased a full-fare ticket in a long time, but logic would suggest that tickets for international travel are priced very low during Thanksgiving, if you're so inclined.

I have taken two trips during Thanksgiving week so far: once to Curacao (Netherland Antilles), and another to Taiwan. In both instances, I was happy with my decision to get away, and in both instances, I had interesting Thanksgiving meals.

In Curacao, I stayed with a friend who lives there, and we ate at his parents' place. From their backyard, we had a great view of the countryside. We had a server to keep our champagne glasses full, and there was a display of food that probably took 10 people all day to make. From yams, to real cranberry sauce (as opposed to that canned stuff), to a variety of vegetables, to a humungous turkey that was marinated the best way possible, and to the many pies and desserts, I'm not sure I was ever more thankful for my Thanksgiving than I was that day.

In Taiwan last week, I ate "Thanksgiving" dinner in central Taiwan in a resort area near the Sun Moon Lake. I was a bit disappointed not to have Turkey, but I wasn't expecting Turkey to be served in Asia. What I didn't expect was to be served "some sort of seafood", as my wife described it as the dish was served. It was VERY fried food that could have been tentacles of some sea creature, but very much took the shape of an insect. I didn't find out until after I finished that I ate fried bees, but it was a fairly good dish. I can't really describe it at all. It tasted like sweet fried food. There was no texture beyond the fried batter that made this dish unique. Thank goodness.

Hell's Kitchen Cont'd

Taipei

Behold. These are the images of my in-law's kitchen in Taipei:

And honestly, what more can I say? My mother in law is perfectly content with her kitchen. If you ask her if there's anything wrong with her kitchen's setup, she'll be completely forthcoming and tell you that there's nothing that should change. No irrationally there...

If I offer to clean up, my mother in law will get upset. I can understand that - we all want our personal space. If I offer to buy an organizer, she will get upset - why waste the money? The irony of it all is that the floor throughout the house is completely spotless. There's not a spec of dust on the white linoleum floors.

What You Say About My Momma? Politics in Taiwan

Because the presidential election for Taiwan is on March 22nd, I found out some interesting things about the politics in Taiwan. The Taiwanese are political fanatics - the soccer hooligans of politics, or maybe worse. Americans are typically criticized for not caring much about politics, as evidenced in our low voter turnout. How are we different from Taiwan?

I follow elections and politics, but I usually take the election process for granted because, well, my one vote has a marginal impact on an election involving more than 100 voters. I also know that, regardless of how I feel, or who I desire to win, the next president of the United States won't destroy our country. Even if an idiot was elected - or George W. Bush - there will be enough people around him or her to help make the proper decisions. Any party elected will have economic and political advisers to steer the country in the same general direction. And if they try to pull something like Hugo Chavez has done and kick out of the foreign companies, then I'm pretty sure a presidential impeachment would occur.

Now let's take a look at Taiwan. Well, the problem stems from how you even define "Taiwan" as a political state. Is it a subsidiary of the Republic of China, as China would claim, or is it a separate country entirely that would secede from China if there weren't missiles already pointed at the small island. Therefore, there are two parties that exist:

The Kuomintang (KMT), who wouldn't mind establishing a relationship with China

And the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), who generally believes that Taiwan should be completely independent of China

Why does this matter? Because the more friendly Taiwan becomes with China, the more foreign investment that will occur (good for economics), but the less likely that Taiwan will remain independent. The fear here is that China will use Taiwan's resources until the country is in shambles (bad for Taiwan). When people think of the KMT, they think of this option. If Taiwan embargoes all business relations with China, then Taiwan is independent, but the economy suffers a great deal. This is the DPP's platform.

(yes, the positions of these parties are very oversimplified, but there's no need going into detail about politics in a travel blog)

And no one likes each other. I mean, that's the impression you get when you read about an all out, bench-clearing brawl between legislators of both parties.

And they're willing to die if their party isn't elected.

So, to develop a culture that takes politics very seriously, take a country with a growing economy and place it next to an oppressive superpower. Thanks, but I think I'll remain complacent with American politics.

More Random Thoughts During My Last Day in Taiwan

• Green tomatoes not only are edible, they're tasty! They won't give you food poisoning because they were genetically created to remain partially green, or so I'm told.
• If you hear a lot of courtesy flushes coming from the bathroom, you know there's an American in there. As I've mentioned before, most toilets in this country will clog if a bunch of toilet paper is flushed at once. You are left with two options: either throw your dirty toilet paper into a one-gallon trash can located in nearly every bathroom here, or flush a small amount of toilet paper at a time (hence the five courtesy flushes by Americans refusing to change their ways - thank goodness)
• Beginning April 1st, chicken's blood no longer will be shed iin front of everyone shopping at the day market. It is now safe for Chick-Fil-A to introduce their Taiwanese fried chicken and dominate the market.
• I'm going to miss having great sashimi whenever I want. You can buy it from almost any food store here.
• The forecast called for rain every day this week, and every day was sunny for most of the day. The most rain we had was for 12 hours between Monday night and Tuesday morning. So don't be deterred from the weather forecasts in the spring.
• Walking on the trails around Yang Ming mountain may be one of the most memorable experiences here. On a suny day, we climbed a few thousand feet into the fog of Yang Ming mountain. You really can lose yourself on the walking trails. The only thing you need to pay attention to are the huge piles of cow dung from the wild cows that roam the hills. You won't get this kind of detail from Lonely Planet guides!
• I will not miss the driving in Taipei. The scooters have a lane on the right side of the road, and they weave through traffic whenever they are moving faster the cars. Because of this, I have closed my eyes and prayed while changing lanes more times than I ever have in any other driving situation. I not sure why you don't see pile-ups on a daily basis.

The Day Market

In the states, most cities will have some sort of market on the weekends during the summer months. At these markets, you can buy all sorts of crap, from fake jewelery to knock-off purses and ties, to fruit and vegetables, as well as some fish and meats.

Taipei seems to have these markets on a daily basis, and they are much more of a focal point to the day to day purchases of the city folk than they are in the US. And why not, everything is incredibly fresh. I bought a pineapple that actually made my tongue hurt because it was so acidic. Orange juice is fresh squeezed. The fish was just plucked from the waters the day before. And the chicken - well, many of the stands have crates of chickens and a wooden barrel for all to see. Use your imagination, but let's say that the live chickens are placed inside the barrel for some time and metamorphize into a perfectly roasted chicken when they are removed. Did I mention that I'm attempting to become a vegetarian for the next month?

Seriously...

The market vendors, like most stores in Taipei, don't start selling until 10-11am. BUT, stores stay open late, so I feel this is a good thing for my lifestyle (I am not a morning person at all). So I called this entry the "Day Market" because the market is opened well into the evening, but it evolves into the "Night Market". I have not yet been to the Night Market, but I hear that it involves more sweets and snacks than the Day Market. Hopefully no chickens will be harmed in the making of the Night Market.

Gimme That That That Nut

I took a trip to the eastern side of Taiwan the other day, and upon entering the city of Keelung, I noticed something on the side of the road. It was a small, free standing room made completely of glass, with green neon lights decorating the corners. Inside was - can you guess - a scantily clad girl who would run over to the cars that stopped in front of her little store. It turns out that shops like these are all over Taiwan and they all sell betel nuts. Yup, just nuts, nothing else. These nuts are stimulants and are often consumed by taxi and truck drivers to keep them awake during their job. I'm sure the occasional businessman will make a pit stop after work as well, but he may throw away the betel nuts after the transaction has occurred because this stimulant is known to cause oral cancer. Otherwise it seems to have the same effects as coffee. But hey, I'll take a scantily clad woman over Juan Valdez as my stimulant's spokesperson any day...

(the title comes from the lyrics of an Easy E song - the rapper from the group NWA; since I work for the airline NWA, and the title fit nicely with my misperception of what the green neon lights signify, I thought it worked well here.)

Icewine Goes Great with....Fish?

We went to a Japanese restaurant last night and ate a ton of seafood. Eating Japanese in Taiwan is way better than what you get at a Japanese restaurant in the US, maybe that's obvious, but the reasons why may not be. The obvious reasons why are Taiwan's proximity to Japan and that, like Japan, Taiwan's main sources of food come from the ocean. The less obvious reason is that Japan occupied and befriended Taiwan during WWII, leaving behind a culture in Taiwan that is distinctly Japanese. This is unlike the Japanese restaurants in the US, which quickly realize that they need to Americanize themselves in some way to be successful, usually resulting in smaller food portions, higher prices, and less availability of foods.

There were 7 of us who went to this restaurant. Here's a breakdown of what we ate:

• An appetizer, 3 plates, of salmon roe and sweet beans (not sure what they were, they were black)
• 4 dishes of sashimi. A "dish" would consist of 6 pieces of fish, and we had salmon, tuna, and some mystery fish.
• 4 dishes of baked eel. Each dish had two pieces that were 4" x 6".
• 2 mystery fish, completely in tact, with a mean looking snarl on their faces. Tiny fish that were maybe two inches in diameter and 8 inches long. Tasty but bony.
• 1 Shrimp roll. 8 pieces in total.
• 4 dishes of Misoyaki, which is a fish of unknown origins, baked in soy (I think).
• Yet again 4 pieces a mystery fish, rolled in some mystery roll, served in some mystery broth (try ordering that).
• Two huge plates of vegetables.
• 4 plates of Shrimp Tempura: each plate consisting of 3 large pieces of shimp, deepfried, and served with deepfried vegetables.
• Two hand rolls: 1 sea urchin, 1 asparagus and shrimp.
• A hot pot of food. A clay pot filled with miscellaneous vegetables, fish, and tofu.
• 7 teapot soups. They literally serve you a teapot and you drink the broth. When finished with the broth, there are miscellaneous pieces of fish inside that you eat. Apparently this is a very popular and traditional Japanese dish, but I've never seen it before.

And the bill? $130. I've eaten for two at a Japanese restaurant in the US and easily spent over $100. I can't imagine what this bill would have been in America.

We also had a fantastic icewine, served somewhere between the 5th and 6th servings of fish. It had to be fantastic because any sweet wine that was less than fantastic would have ruined an appetite if drunk during this meal. My father-in-law receives gifts from customers all the time and he usually leaves the gifts to sit in his office and rot (I'm going to teach him ebay this week). One of the items was an icewine, and he wanted to drink it as soon as we sat down. Luckily I was able to have it chilled for 15 minutes before we unleashed the dessert wine onto our pallets.

2004 Peller Estates Vidal Blanc Icewine; Private Reserve

From the winemaker: Lemon yellow colour with enticing aromas of honey, caramelized sugar, spice and golden pineapple. Intense flavours of mandarin orange, peach, marmalade and sponge toffee. A medium to full-bodied dessert wine with lingering notes of honey and candied orange all perfectly balanced by firm acidity.

TravelGuy says: yup yup yup, the description is spot-on, though I think the "intense flavours" section is a bit much - I didn't taste this, but then again, it could have been the omega 3 fatty acids from my food that was inhibiting my palate. Yeah, that's it. I did love this wine and wish I could try it again with something sweeter than fish.

Google Shopping result: $50; and that's for a 375ml bottle. Ouch. Worthwhile? Maybe, but I am not worth that much at this point. Glad that this bottle was free.

Hell's Kitchen

Unfortunately I did not bring the cable to connect my camera to my computer. So I'm reserving this space on my blog for a site that is not easily described in words. I'm talking about my in-law's kitchen, and although I am told that almost no other kitchen in Taiwan looks this way, I feel it is a result of the very Taiwanese notion of frugality. So the description belongs in this blog.

I will add the pictures later.

A Can of Worms

I had a grammar school teacher who made us memorize all the animal phylums. At the time, I think there were 17 and I remember the "worm" phylum making no sense. My college biology professor pretty much explained that the worm category isn't supposed to make sense - it's where scientists place everything that doesn't fit neatly into the other phylums. Hence the phrase, "a can of worms" (it's also my feeble attempt to include a link to something no one in Rochester has heard of but will find this interesting). So I give you the random things I've noticed in the past few days that weren't substantive enough to write about on their own:

• Three sheets of toilet paper will clog any non-commercial toilet in Taipei (read the "Bathroom Etiquette" post for more insight on this one).
• Public toilet seats are heated. This is so very important in a place where the temperature in March is already above 70F.
• Dentists wear sandals without socks (I think this would be a health code violation in the US), but wear the standard mouth guard. Maybe this isn't such a terrible thing.
• People driving on scooters will wear a fairly heavy winter coat and sandals...?
• People shopping indoors wear scarves. It's 70F, I'm wearing a tee shirt and I'm sweating.
• Taiwanese recycle everything. I'm not clear how this works yet, but the kitchen trashcan only holds a gallon or two and the trash bag hasn't been replaced since I arrived 3 days ago.
• "Go" is a popular game played by the father-in-law and looks like a bastardized version of "Othello". I play the simplified version against my wife and lose 3 times in 5 minutes.
• I'm not going to get much sleep tonight. The shopping district across the street from where I am staying is celebrating the spirit of their market. That means two things: bad karaoke and firecrackers. I love that they celebrate on a Sunday night. At least I would have if I went to college here.

Rules of the Road

My father-in law flat out can't drive. He hits the breaks when everyone around him is speeding up. He makes wrong turns. He often is honked at, and is inevitably overtaken by nearly every car that pulls up behind him (which is, to say, many drivers). There are many narrow two-way streets in Taiwan that require a car to move towards the curb to let another pass by. He turns onto one of these streets and notices a car already at full speed coming towards us and says, "that car was here first, it should wait first". The other driver must have thought we were playing a game of chicken. My in law didn't notice anything odd about the other driver's sudden swerve out of the way. Screeching tire noises mean nothing to this man.

I don't blame my father in-law, really. He has a few things working against him. One is that he didn't learn to drive until 5 years ago. His home is within walking distance to work, so he never needed to drive, and today, he only drives occasionally on trips to the countryside, or for shopping at the RT Mart (the Taiwanese version of Wu-Mart, while Wu-Mart is the Chinese version of Wal-Mart - try harder, people). So very little driving experience is one factor.

The other factor is endogenous to big cities such as Taipei. Like any other major city with heavy traffic on the city streets - New York and Boston come to mind - people drive a bit recklessly. There are few universal rules you need to follow:
1 - never hesitate or else everyone will pass you and you will get more flustered
2 - never leave more than 2 feet of space between you and the car in front of you or else you WILL get cut off

And that's pretty much it as I see it. Everything else is every-man-for-himself where the most aggressive person not to get into an accident is rewarded. Now there are two main differences between driving in the east coast US cities and driving in Taipei:
1 - There has been an emphasis in the US to give priority to pedestrians. That's not the case in Taiwan. If you step out onto the street, cars will drive faster to pass you.
2 - The scooters. Oh how I hate the scooters.

I had a chance to drive around the city and it's pretty obvious that the scooters follow almost no rules. They drive between cars, on the shoulder, and at a stop light, they drive past all the cars if you give them space.

What I found most interesting is that I was honked at only once in the hour I drove. Now I'm pretty sure I scared the hell out of a lot of scooters and other vehicles because I like to claim my territory. Scooters like to drive besides you in your own lane. I like to push them into the line of parked cars along the side of the road. Cars would try to cut me off, but would find themselves stuck when I didn't allow space between me and the car in front of me. I also liked crossing three lanes of traffic to make left turns. And none of this extremely aggressive driving elicited a honk. Only when I slowed down well before my turn because I was unsure of where I was did I get the horn.

So I think Taiwan encourages reckless driving, while it penalizes conservative careful driving. For my father-in-law, he never stood a chance because he would start out by driving conservatively, get honked at, and then he would speed up and miss his turns.

My Dog Ate My Homework

Did you ever tell the teacher that your dog at your homework in grade school? A good many of you have, which is why the excuse never works. Teachers are expecting it, and very likely, they will scowl at you, maybe even make an example of you by making you lead the discussion in class that day.

In third grade I used a variant of this excuse. It was the "cat peed on my homework" excuse. The truth is, my sister's cat really did pee on my homework, so instead of having it sound like a poor excuse, I brought the evidence with me to class. I put the Ziploc back with the yellow, wet, still smelly papers on my teacher's desk and I was excused from all class discussion for that day. I might as well had the day off.

But the dog eating stuff is what has destroyed my ability to see over the past month, and it has eaten a hole in my wallet because Ive had to buy two new pairs of glasses in that time. I visited my parents in New Jersey about a month ago and stayed overnight. When I woke up, I found my rimless glasses in shambles. Apparently, the German shepherd, Maddie, knocked my glasses off a chair and proceeded to run them over while chasing the cat around the house.

Fast forward two weeks. I wake up on a weekday ready to go to work, only I can't find my new pair of glasses. Oh that's because my corgis have found them on the living room table and decided to play the wishbone game - you know, let's snap them in half and whoever gets the larger piece has good luck for the day. Due to being underage, the corgis in this crime shall remain nameless.

So what does this have to do with the theme of this blog? Maybe nothing, but I decided to go out and buy a pair of glasses while in Taipei. And if you purchase glasses, this should amaze you: I received an eye exam, frames, and lenses with glare reduction for $100. The two pairs of glasses destroyed by the vengeful dogs had cost $750!

To be fair, the frames aren't all that cheap. I got lucky and found a pair of frames that were on clearance and were good quality. It's the free eye exam and the $30 spent on the glasses (with glare reduction as a standard) that is amazing. Next time, I think I'll go to framesdirect.com, but the frames, send them to Taiwan, and have them complete the glasses. Unless shipping is $100, this has to be pseudo-arbitrage.

Non-English

My wife's family doesn't leave the house until 1:30PM on weekdays. Well, the dad works a regular job, so he leaves in the morning, but the mom is a day trader and watches the stock market on TV until it closes. Thank goodness for her that it closes earlier than 4pm I guess.

Stocks are flashing across the screen and I really have no clue what's going on. To be honest, it's not much different than watching CNNMoney, and although I do understand finance, I never understood CNN Money. Why waste time day trading when you can throw your money into the S&P 500 and pretty much gaurantee a 10% return? Well the in-laws seem to make good money doing this, so maybe I'm out of touch...

Anyway, I decided to walk around town while the market was still open. To my suprise, anyone I walked up to would start speaking to me in Mandarin. I'm thinking, why the hell are they trying to speak to me in a language that I probably don't know? Why aren't they trying to speak to me in English?

If the situation was reversed, my thinking wouldn't be. Why the hell would a foreigner in the US try to speak to me in a langague that isn't English? Don't they know its rude to expect me, an American, to speak a different langague?

Idiots.

Running Around the Block

Did you ever go for a run and everyone you pass is staring at you? Maybe in a bad dream. Very likely if you're female (and if you have a good figure, I'm sure you've gotten even more extreme reactions), or a guy running through Dupont Circle. Ahem. Well it happened to me today. I'm the only pale white guy I've seen so far in this part of Taipei, so I am the strange looking one.

How do you say "hey ladies" in Chinese?

Bathroom Etiquette

Okay, a quick post about my shower in my in-law's bathroom.

What I mean to say that I took a shower in the shower room, which happened to have a toilet and a sink. Let me explain the layout.

The room is roughly 6' x 3', completely tiled, and the door into the room is waterproof. On one of the 3 foot walls is a towel rack. The door is located at the corner of the 8 foot wall, and two feet away on this wall are shower controls and a the shower head. Directly across from where the shower is pointing is the sink, AND ELECTRICAL OUTLETS.

I also noticed the toilet is called the "shower toilet". No, this isn't because it's located right in the middle of a freaking shower (though ironic). The toilet actually sprays you in the ass with water to clean up after you poop. I guess this makes sense - a wet cleaning probably is better than the dry clean you get from toilet paper...

But I keep imagining a lazy guy taking a shower while doing his business on the toilet, getting "showered" in every direction.

Oh, and as an aside, aparently the pipes cannot handle toilet paper. This is even better - a guy steaming up the shower room (let's not even bother calling it a bathroom) with his toilet paper sitting next to him in the trash can. That's what you call fresh.

What Everyone already knows about Taipei (besides most Americans)

Before I keep going with this blog, let me just say that my observations aren't news to most people (and that's why I expect no one to read this!), and they are my impressions, from an American who likes hyperbole way too much. Enjjoy!


The trip from TPE airport to my in-law's home gave me my first glimpse of Taipei. For a city of 10 million, the skyline is rather low - and yes, as an American, everything is benchmarked to New York City. My wife tells me that the city was built this way because of the frequent earthquakes in Taiwan.

If any of you are familiar with the world's tallest buildings, it brings us to an interesting question: why the hell is Taipei the home of the tallest building in the world? Yes, the irony of the skyline is that practically everything is 5 stories tall, and then you end up with this building that towers over everything else. Does recent technology make this building immune to earthquakes? I really don't have any answers, so I guess this is a flaky post. I'm going to have to do some research on this one and update.

The other noticeable feature of the city are the homes. In Manhattan, everyone lives in high rises. In North Jersey, some people live in high rises. When you get even further away from New York city, to Morristown for instance, almost no one lives in a high rise. In Taipei, it doesn't matter how far away from the city you are, everyone lives in buildings clustered together to hold thousands of people. It's crazy, and its EVERYWHERE.

And I've Arrived (in Taiwan)

I arrived in Taiwan last night and instantly noticed that I must start a blog. I travel a lot, and when you travel, you notice many differences between the American culture and everyone else. Well I am in Taiwan now, so that will be my focus. Let's see how good this goes. Let's see if I ever make more than one post...