Latest / bit of a Rambler / 073 Taiwan Airbnb

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073 Taiwan Airbnb · bit of a Rambler

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello. My name is Kai and I am a bit
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: of a rambler. I like to travel, learn and tell stories.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: And in addition to Ireland and Japan, Taiwan was frequently
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: mentioned online as one of the countries where camping was
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: not only legal but expressly culturally accepted. And while Ireland
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: it seemed okay, people still thought it was weirder to
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: camp than the Internet pretended. In Japan, it was very
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: normal and everyone just accepted it. So I figured I
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: would try Taiwan and was very happy to realize that
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: it was very culturally accepted to camp in public and
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: it is legally acceptable. But I also wanted that culture
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: again because it was so cool traveling in Japan and
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: everyone just thought it was cool to be a wanderer,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: and I definitely got that again once I was in Taiwan.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: So I'm just going to talk about my Taiwan trip
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: in general, which started with renting an apartment, but I
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: was my feet were getting itchy. I had itchy feet
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: and they wanted to start walking and traveling around. So,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: like I mentioned, I did start with I think just
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: an airbnb for one month, you get the discount. There's
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: always a monthly discount. Or almost always. It really is,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: like more than nine out of ten airbnbs offer a
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: monthly discount that can be sometimes sixty percent or more
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: of the apartment. I think they just don't like to
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: clean it and do the turnover service, but it's very
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: common to get thirty forty percent discount on a monthly stay,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: and I've got eighty percent discount before on the monthly stay.
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: And I also like travel more slowly, so I don't
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: want to stay in a place for two weeks anyway.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: I know that I'll barely be able to discover the
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: country and the neighborhood I'm in after only a couple
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: of weeks, so I usually like staying in a place longer,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: like two three months. Two months even feels a little
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: short to me. Three months is a pretty good time
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: for me to stay in any country or even any city.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: So I got a month in this nice apartment, and
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: the landlord and I talked okay, because I could speak
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Mandarin pretty well. At this point, I had just left
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Beijing for the first time after three and a half years,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: and my Mandarin was pretty pretty much at its peak.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: It was doing well, and in Taiwan, I discovered that
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: everyone spoke Mandarin as I understood it, which is to
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: say that I studied Mandarin using Rosetta Stone for about
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: three months after I lived in China for close to
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: a year. No, actually, I guess it was only six months. Yeah,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: And then after six months or something, I said, I
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: got to do some kind of formal course because I'm
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: socializing so much, I don't really want to go and
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: take a formal class face to face. I'd rather use
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Rosetta Stone or another language learning app. And I happened
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: to have Rosetta Stone on my computer already, and so
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: I just buckled down and every day I studied Rosetta
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Stone for one or two hours, not a long time,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: but whenever I had a chance, So like an hour
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: a day for a few months, and that'll take you
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: through a good chunk of the Rosetta Stone course. And
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: Rosetta Stone is probably still my favorite language learning program
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: that I've ever used, because the pictures are so accurate.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: They look like they're staged very well, so it always
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: looks like a real situation. But even with all of
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: the surrounding contextual, real life details, because they're all real
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: life pictures of a boy eating a cake or a
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: woman running, she's running on a trail in the forest, whatever.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: But it's very clear that the focus is not the
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: trees or the trail or whatever, but the woman running.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: And so when you learn la muher core like, you
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: know they're actually saying the woman is running. It's a
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: very well developed program in my opinion, And so an
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: hour a day for three months got me well passed.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: I'll say I was firmly established in conversational Mandarin by
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: the time I finished a couple few months, and then
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: after that few months, now that I had conversation established,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: after that point I just talked with locals for the
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: rest of the six years whatever I was in China
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: altogether and learn new words naturally just from conversations and
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: not knowing what someone was saying, or walking past a
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: restaurant usually and asking questions about the food and having
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: to learn new words and colloquial expressions made a big
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: impact at that point. But in terms of just conversational
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: and listening practice, Rosetta Stone was great. The only thing
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: is on Rosetta Stone the audio was very good audio,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: as in it was spoken very clearly and pronounced very
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: clearly and carefully and it wasn't that they pronounced it slow,
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: it was just pronounced very specifically enunciation on point. So
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: when they said I want to go to the they
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: said we yatchu gonyan, which are the correct words said
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: in the correct tone. But then I got to Beijing,
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: and not only did they have the Beijing accent, which
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: is wyatchu gonyar. You usually replace the ends with ours
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: at the end of a sentence or the end of
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: a word, so Gongyuan became gonyar. But it was like
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: the central city. So there were people from every province
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: in China and all fifty states, and a lot of
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: the towns within each state have a different accent, and
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: they even use different words for the same thing. So
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: I could get gienjiao potstickers, and they could be ja
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: jiao or za jiao or a different word. And five
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: different words for potstickers was overwhelming enough for my brain
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: to not be able to learn any of them except
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: the jienjia well like original very clear word that I
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: had learned, and even the clearest speakers in Beijing usually
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: didn't speak that clearly that I could distinguish the words
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: very easily, even if they spoke very well, the words
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: still sort of blended together. So when I got to Taiwan,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: I was shocked because their Mandarin is so clear. It's
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: like textbook perfect, like from the capital city where I
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: landed to the city or on the other side of
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: the island. I took a bus to everyone I spoke with.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: I could suddenly understand Mandarin perfectly from every Taiwanese person,
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: and I had a lot of trouble with that even
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: in Beijing speaking to people with Beijing accents after I
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: had lived there for three years, because they would just
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: speak very fluidly and dynamically, since many people in Beijing
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: are from different provinces. But there was a profound lack
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: of renunciation when speaking Beijing Mandarin. Yaou choose chuo haichu,
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: which is, do you want taxi or yo choose a
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: chu hi sirum, do you want a taxi or bus?
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: And in Taiwan it would be nio yougo chu zu
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: chu ii, sure you go gon chum. The phonemes were
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: much more clearly defined in the Taiwanese Mandarin, and it
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: was all of a sudden I could, like all not fluently,
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: but if I knew the word, then I understood what
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: the person was saying. In Taiwan, I felt like my
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: language proficiency at least doubled instantly upon landing in Taiwan,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: my Mandarin proficiency in particular, All of a sudden, I
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: could speak my full range, whereas my whole time in
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: China I was kind of confined to half of my
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: actual ability because I spent so much time and effort
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out what they were saying when I
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: was listening to people. And all of a sudden, I
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: landed in Taiwan and I could understand any word that
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: I was passingly familiar with. I just recognized it because
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: their Mandarin is so clear in Taiwan. It's so much
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: like the textbook audio that I had learned from Rosetta Stone,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: or like Pinion, which is the four Tones written in English.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Even if I had read a word in Pinion and
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: just knew the tone, I could recognize it because they
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: spoke so clearly in Taiwan. And I bring that up
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: because that they find a large part of my initial
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: stay in Taiwan, before I started backpacking around. I immediately
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: became friends with my hosts, Like right away, we had
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: a pretty long conversation. When I arrived, I actually landed
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: at the airport, and then, like I usually do, if
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: it is at all possible, and sometimes if it isn't,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: which I think I mentioned in the Japan episode, I
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: walk from the airport to my airbnb. And that can
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: take four hours. It can take a long time, but
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm used to backpacking obviously, and I feel
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: like I get acquainted with the city and country much
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: better if I walk in it that first day for
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: a while. So I like walking from the airport to
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: my apartment, and I did that in Taiwan. When I landed,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: I walked from there to the bus stop. There's one
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: long range bus stop, and that took me to the
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: town I was going to be staying in, and then
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: I walked for a couple hours from that down to
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: the little suburb that my airbnb was located in. And
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: I never had any trouble because anytime I need to
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: ask for directions, I could speak Mandarin fine with the locals,
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: and I could understand their directions fine. Even if it
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, yeah, you just go down here and
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: then take the fourth right and then go straight ahead
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: for like two kilometers. I could just understand them, whereas
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: if I had been in Beijing and someone started that,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: I would understand the first two directions, and then my
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: brain would get overwhelmed by trying to translate their accent
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: and the blurred words that Chinese people tend to talk
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: in rather than the clear specific phonemes that Taiwanese people use,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: and I just wouldn't be able to hold it all
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: in my head. Also, it was pretty easy to get
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: down there. There weren't many complicated instructions. They just had
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: to walk along ways down the road. Just go straight,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: just keep going straight, okay, man. When I got to
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: my apartment, the hosts were just so nice and excited
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: that I was there. And I think I was the
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: first American that had ever stayed in their apartment. They
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: had a spare room at the top because their daughter
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: had married recently, so like the room was available. And
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: I think the next day, or maybe the first day,
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: like I think it might have been the first day, Geez,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: I had just taken a shower and changed my clothes
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: and I was just like getting used to the apartment,
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: and the host knocked on the door and introduced me
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: to their daughter, and she was so pretty. I was
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: physically stunned for a second, which happens occasionally. I can
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: get bowled over, and that happened. I was maybe it
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: was because I was tired, or I had been traveling
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: for like two days or whatever. But a knock on
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: the door. I opened the door. My host is there
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: with her arms around the shoulders of the prettiest girl
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: I had seen in years, maybe ever, I don't know
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: she was. I couldn't believe how pretty she was, and
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: I had I was so confident in my Mandarin because
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: I had been speaking Mandarin. Everyone spoke perfect English, and
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: her daughter did too. She said, this is my daughter.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: And I don't even think I said anything. I think
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: I just was like wow or like some exclamation. And
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: then the girl spoke, and she had a beautiful voice,
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: and I understood her perfectly, but she was so pretty
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: that I couldn't speak like clearly or correctly. So now
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: I sounded like I couldn't speak any Mandarin. And she
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: she like asked something just polite, Oh where are you from?
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: And I was like, maygool America? And I didn't say,
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: like from the States. It's good to meet too. It
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: was just like May gool like said it like really poorly.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: And she was like, and how long are you going
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: to be here? Are you just visiting? And I was like, yeah,
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: tourist a month. And I was just like staring. My
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: eyes were just drinking in her entire look, her whole look.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: I wasn't oggling her inappropriately, but my brain couldn't get
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: over how beautiful she was, how truly beautiful she was.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: And I was like, okay, okay, and I started speaking
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: better sentences, which I had to like turn on twenty
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: percent of my brain for so I started speaking like normally,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: and the other eighty percent of my brain was like, okay,
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: we have to figure out how you can ask her out,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: because the other thing about Taiwanese people is that they're
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: very laid back. Even though their speech is so precise,
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: they just feel so laid back compared to Chinese people
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: in general. Like I have very cool, laid back friends
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: in China, and those are the people I am still
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: friends with even as I travel. It's always the more
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: just laid back accepting of life people in general, but
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: everyone in Taiwan has a more relaxed attitude about life.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: And we entered into a nice little conversation for a
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: few minutes, and then I asked her about something or
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: other and she said, oh, yeah, my husband really likes
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: blah blah blah blah, and eighty percent of my brain
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: was like, h oh, well, and then that all went
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: to language and then we could just talk normally because
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: I found she was off the table as a romantic partner,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: and then we just had a nice conversation. But that
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: memory still makes me laugh because there were so many
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: new things happening that first day, landing in the capital city,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: but deciding I wanted to go live on a coastal city,
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: and then walking through the town and being shocked at
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: how different Taiwan was from China. It's nothing like China
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: in the way they run everything. They still use the
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: traditional Chinese, not simplified Chinese in Taiwan, but it still
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: looks like Chinese. So there are obvious cultural similarities, but
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: in certain senses they couldn't be more different, from the
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: Taiwanese speech, to their mannerisms, to the land of Taiwan itself.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: There was just so many new things. And then I
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: had just taken a shower and I was like, maybe
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: I'll take a nap and then the door opens and
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: I'm introduced to one of the prettiest people I've ever seen.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: And my mind was just in a blur for so long.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: But once I found out she was married, my brain
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, you can talk to her like a
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: human now, no machinations necessary. How can I look cool
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: and ask her to sushi or something? Oh, she has
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: a husband, okay, so which river is actually the famous
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: one for? And then I was asking her like real
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: questions that I actually cared about. And it was only
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: a five minute interaction, but it lives in my mind
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: as such a funny introduction to a country that was
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: just slapping me with the new new things one after
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: the other, in a country I thought it would be
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: pretty comfortable in because Taiwan's close to China, and all
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Chinese people are like, oh, yeah, Taiwan's part of China.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: But of course anyone in Taiwan is like, no, We're
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: an independent country. We're nothing like China. And it really,
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: other than the fact that I was speaking Mandarin and
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: there was Chinese characters written on the signs, it felt
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: as different from China as a Western country would, as
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: any completely non Asian country would. Other than the fact
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: that they speak Mandarin, I think of it as a
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: completely different country in as far as how different the
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: culture of Taiwan is. They just don't act the same.
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: They don't speak the same, they don't use money the same,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: they don't clean things the same, they don't build things
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: the same. They have different stores, their art is different,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: their reactions to art is different. It's yeah, it just
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: feels like a totally different country to me. And I
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: loved Taiwan from the moment I landed because I could
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: speak with everyone fairly fluently, very comfortably, in any case,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: more comfortably than I had in the past three years,
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: where I was always on the lookout for which acts
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: on someone was using and which speed, which rhythm they
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: were using, even if they were all speaking Mandarin in China.
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: And like I said, it's so relaxed there. But they
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: still had a lot of the foods that I liked,
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: and they had all the snacks I liked from China
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: that I was used to, so it felt similar, but
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: just everything was much more comfortable for my sensibilities anyway,
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: And I felt very comfortable in that Airbnb for the
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: first month that I was there, so much stuff happened
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: that first month. I walked all around the city and
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: the only thing that I never got used to in Taiwan,
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: which is apparently a countrywide thing, what I eventually found
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: out were the garbage trucks. And I couldn't figure it
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: out for weeks because there would be a sound siren
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: beeping trill like dude, do do do Do Do do, Dude
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: do do, But it would be like a high pitched
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: sirens song from I can't like it would be played
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: at the pitch of an ambulance, but that same like
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: eight notes in a row going around. And it came
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: for like an hour or two in the morning and
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: an hour or two in the evening, and I heard
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: it the evening the first time. I was like, Oh,
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: that's weird. I wonder why there's a siren going around
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: this apart and then played the next morning, and then
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: the next evening again the next the morning. Nev and
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: I always just happened to be home when it was happening,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: and when I went outside, I could walk around and
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: I'd hear it sometimes, but I never saw what it was.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: And I was like, that is so weird because you
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: can hear it blocks away because I never saw the
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: whatever vehicle it was, and I was blocked, so I
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: was far enough away from it that I couldn't even
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: see it. And I would walk for a few blocks
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: and I could still hear, and oh, I wish I
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: could remember the actual tune now. It was so distinctive.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: It lived in my head for years after that. After
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: like three weeks or something, I was just like, Okay,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: let's just follow. Let's go out right when it starts
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: and follow it and figure out what the heck that is,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: because it was the only thing that really bugged me
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: about living in Taiwan, that there was this weird sound
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: for multiple hours every single day that for me kind
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: of disturbed the train quility, the otherwise perfect tranquility of
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: my city, the town I was living in. And I
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: went outside and looked around after I heard the first two,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: and I ran downstairs. Nothing on the street, and I
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: walked down a block and then I heard it again,
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: but it was far away, and I like turned where
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: it was, and I did that for ten minutes or something,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: and then I finally heard it and I just walked toward.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: I was like, okay, it's definitely in this direction, and
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: after a few blocks, I turned a corner and dude,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: and it was clearly coming from this vehicle, which was
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: a garbage truck. And that's how I found out that
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: garbage is audio based in Taiwan. Garbage collection, so they
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: play this very loud tune that you can hear from
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: I can hear from ten blocks away very easily inside
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: my apartment, because once I knew it was there, I
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: could look out down an alley and see the garbage
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: truck five blocks away and just hear it just as
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: if it was a block away, just very very clearly.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: It's a very high shrill tone. And yeah, and then
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: I just had to live with that, and I never
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: understood why they liked it, because other than that, Taiwanese
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: culture is very like pretty quiet and reserved, and they
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: like a lot of their life seems built around creating
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: a tranquil environment and being calm. But for two hours
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: in the morning, two hours in the evening, sometimes longer,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: you'll hear and you're not going to hear it as
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: the truck goes by. You're going to hear it for
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: the full two hours, because you can hear it, like
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: I said, from block away, and there are multiple garbage
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: trucks driving around, and I was downstairs about to leave one.
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: I heard the tone one afternoon, the tone of the
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: garbage trucks, and I saw the airbnb host say, oh,
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: laddi trash, and they grabbed the trash bags from their
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: house and ran outside the door to give the garbage
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: people the trash. So they keep the trash inside the
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: house until it's time to take it out. And every
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: day you hear that tone, and if you hear the tone,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: you can run outside, and the tone means the garbage
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: truck will be there soon and you can hand it
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: to the garbage people. So you can watch a garbage
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: truck go around, and people, a whole bunch of people
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: will run out of the buildings and give the trash
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: to them. Which it's the only to my eyes or
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: maybe ears disorganized societal and efficiency and commune disruptive habit
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: in Taiwan or culturally disruptive habit common habit in Taiwan,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: because they have to do it twice a day, so
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: four hours of any day is taken up with this
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: quite shrill tone as the trucks drive around. And that
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: was the only reason I was like, I guess I
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: can't live in Taiwan forever because that tone would drive
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: me absolutely insane. And I do have weird ears, as
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: in they hear things differently, I think, than other people.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: So maybe it's particularly irritating a tone to me because
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: nobody else in Taiwan seemed to mind it, and they
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: never went out when it was three blocks away or
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: five blocks away. I could hear it very clearly, but
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: everyone seemed to go out only when the truck was
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: on their street. So maybe it's just is my ears
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: are shaped just wrong for this particular tune. Okay, but
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: let's get out the door this airbnber right. I feel
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: like I've already been talking for a while and all
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: I've done is get to my Airbnb. So I'm very
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: excited to explore Taiwan because of, like I said, how
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: much I'm enjoying the culture, how much I love that
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: I can just communicate with people very easily. I know
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: there's beaches. I chose the town rather than staying in
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: the main city. I chose to go to the town
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: I did. Wait, it's not Taian, hang on, let me
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: figure out what Huan that was it? Flower Hualian Hualian.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: It means lotus flower, and so it's There's like Taipei,
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: which is a big, sprawling metropolis in the northwest, and
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: then almost midway down the east coast is the county
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: and this little city it is a small city called Hualien,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: but it's much slower paced overall. If you look on
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: the map, it barely looks like anything compared to all
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: the developed cities like Kawsong or whatever in Taiwan. But
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: I loved Hwali and as soon as I was there,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: it was the exact type of place I wanted to live,
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: developed enough that there were lots of buildings and shops
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: and places to explore in alleys to walk down. It
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: was a small city, but the city center was a
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: small area and most of it was mom and pop
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: shops and just sprawling village life rather than sprawling urban life.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: And as soon as I got out there, walking along
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: through all the Hu tongues, the little narrow alleys between buildings,
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: I was enchanted because I love who tones in general,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: and Julian the town I was in was made up
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: of Who tongues or green environment like it was either
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: the tiny narrow alleys with local mom and pop shops
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: or artisan shops, or it was a huge beautiful park,
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: and then there was the beach where there was mountains
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: to go up. It was just big enough that there
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: were still sports equipment stores, and there was big enough
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: stores that I could also get anything I wanted. But
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: mostly it was all local culture and small shops and
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: beautiful landscapes. So I wandered all around Hualian and just
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: kept finding beauty after beauty along every turn. Like I always,
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: I love walking around supermarkets, for example, Like I like
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: just seeing walking in a supermarket in a new country
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: so interesting because their staples of different types of food
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: are completely different from what I grew up with. Whatever
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: country you're in, whether it's Morocco or whatever country I'm in,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: or Ireland or Taiwan, when I get into a supermarket,
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: I'm like, this is shapes the people psyche somehow, somehow,
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: because they don't have like, okay, like China is a
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: great example, because they don't have crunchy stuff a lot.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: They like soft, squishy snacks way more than they like
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: any crunchy snacks, So potato chips, that's just not a
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: cultural thing. Having a very thin piece of nutritiously dubious
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: crunch is not super popular as a snack in China.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: What is popular something soft and juicy and very strongly flavored,
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: like a squid tentacle or something. It feels more like
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: they're modeling their snack foods after some organic food, some
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: real food, like the flesh of an animal or the tofu.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: But it's soft, it's not crunchy. And I think if
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: you have a country like the States, that a potato
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: chip is the cornerstone of snack food, and then you
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: have China, where a potato chip is this weird side thing,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: and you mostly have squishy, juicy tofu, squishy juicy vegetables,
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: squishy juicy chicken paws. That shapes I think, how you
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: see food, and of course that's going to shape how
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: you see and interact with the whole world. So I
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: always feel like going to a supermarket is fascinating for
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: me because I get to walk and see again a
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: foundational piece of a different culture, cookies in Ireland, or
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: like hard fried dough in Morocco, like the different everything
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: just feels like a puzzle piece to me. So when
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: I get to go to a supermarket in a country
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: I'm like, oh my gosh, that's what snacks are here.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: That's that part of the culture, which consequently is part
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: of every single person I'm meeting, or this is what
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: they think of booze. In Morocco. It's mostly dry, so
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: there's no booze mostly but fruit juice and one hundred
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: percent natural fruit juice made from fruits is a very
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: popular thing, and they're displayed prominently in a supermarket like
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: you would display wines in an American supermarket. So I
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: walked all around my town and I found a few
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: local supermarkets and I just walked through them for a
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: long time. It was great to see what was different
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: between Taiwan and China, but also be reassured that, okay, good.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: All the snacks I learned to love when I was
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: staying in China are also here in Taiwan. But their foods,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: they're like traditional breakfast, lunch, dinner foods were different also
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: than what I was used to living in Beijing for
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: three and a half years. I talked about the savory
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: layered crape that I got, and that's saber and there
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: is a bit of crunch in the middle. It's just
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: like my perfect breakfast they didn't have that in Taiwan,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: but they did have breakfast bars and they had it.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: It's called genbing, and it's a folded savory omelet, but
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: this one looked more French. It was softer or cooked,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: and a more fluffy omelet, and it was more rolled
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: than it was folded into a square. This is rolled
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: into more of a spiral, which is really interesting to me.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: Like such a basic traditional food as an egg pancake,
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: a crape that's so common across countries, and every country
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: decides to make it how they decide to make it,
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: and in China it's very clearly always made into a square,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: a good folded square, and then in Taiwan it was
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: always like a lazy also rectangle, but like a fluffy cube,
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: no hard edges. But they also have a bunch of
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: sauces at every breakfast bar, and you can put on
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: spicy chili or this sweet brown syrup that I never
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: figured out exactly what it is because it doesn't taste
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: anything like American or maple syrup. It tastes a little
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: more herb e or root e. That's all I can say.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: I really I don't know, but it's still very very sweet.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: It's just a different type of syrup, and that's pretty
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: common for this breakfast burrito, which in China you'd never
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: have a sweet genbing and well, I mean they do
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: have like specialty sweet ones, but that's not a common
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: breakfast food by any stretch. And in Taiwan, it's very
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: common to have this more rolled burrito, soft fluffy omelet
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: with the delicious sweet syrup poured over it. Also in Taiwan,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: there are a lot more options. You could get a
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: lot different types of meat and vegetables inside, and you
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: could tell them what to put inside your genbing. I
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: can't remember what they oh, I think they called it
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: at Chun tai Chun. I can't remember now, maybe Chunbing,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: even though that's a different thing in China. But anyway,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: it was much easier to customize and there were more
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: toppings for the breakfast bar in Taiwan. And Taiwan's super
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: close to China. It's like forty miles away from China,
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: or maybe sixty miles, but it's very close to mainland China.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: But like I said, the culture just couldn't be more different.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: And here was the most basic traditional layered folded egg omelet,
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: and it was just a completely different food in each
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: country eaten and appreciate it in different ways. I love
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: seeing those differences, and I wanted to get that omelet
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: every fricking day, just like when I first discovered the
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: genbing in China. I wanted that different genbing, the Taiwanese
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: gen being every day in Taiwan. But like in China,
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: it's pretty strictly breakfast only food, and so I would
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: always go to these different shops, and half the time
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: I would get there too late, at eleven am or
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: ten am. Sometimes they'd be like, oh, sorry, no more,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: like that's over for the day, because by then I
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: was down to one meal a day usually, so my
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: eating window was only four hours long, and I rarely
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: ate earlier in the day, But while I was in Taiwan,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: I definitely made more than a few exceptions, and I
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: was like, whatever, you're eating twice today, just so that
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: I could go out in the morning and get one
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: of these sweet egg omelets. Actually you got to choose
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: whether to put the syrup on. You can get a
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: savory folded egg omelet and it looks like a burrito,
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: but the sauce was so good and I don't really
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: like syrup myself. I don't really like maple syrup, and
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: definitely not American syrup, which is just sugar very much.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: But I loved this Taiwanese syrup and I ate that
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: on every single one I get, whether it was savory
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: or not, it just always complimented my dish. It was
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: the rainy season when I arrived in Taiwan, which was
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: another great thing because I loved the rain, and you know,
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: it made sleeping more difficult. But once I started backpacking,
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: but while I was in the airbnb, it was just perfect.
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: It was raining, like for multiple hours every day, and
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: it was never well, it was rarely a pouring rain.
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: It usually just was drizzling around and if it got heavy,
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: I could wait under an awning for five or ten
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: minutes and then it would move on and I would
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: wherever I was, I would stop into a corner shop,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: get a beer and maybe some of those pickled green
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: string beans I mentioned, or some kind of like regular
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: snack and just eat a snack or whatever until the
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: rain pass and then keep on walking and exploring the
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: town and the next thing I found. That is probably
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: my favorite aspect of Taiwanese cuisine in general. Are the
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: Buddhist buffets. Now, A lot of them aren't strictly all
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: you can eat buffets. They're just large buffet style hot
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: plates that you can choose what you like from them.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: But that's fine because they're Buddhists. So it's all vegetarian.
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: So it's already cheaper than even the already pretty cheap
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: food in Taiwan. And you can get a full plate
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: for three to four dollars. And I've even known a
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: lot of vegetarian buffets, like in Panama, they had a
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: lot of vegetarian buffets, but I don't know if it's
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: the style of cooking here or whatever. I don't know.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: Vegetarian buffets not super appetizing. We're not in Panama. But
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: the vegetarian buffets in Taiwan shocked me almost as much
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: as meeting that epiphantically beautiful girl did. That first day.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: I had a bite of the mushrooms that they cooked
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: to like taste like the texture and flavor of meat,
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: And it tasted like meat both in flavor and texture,
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: like the best stewed meat I'd ever had. And I
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: actually had to ask them that first day what it
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: was because I was so confused by my taste buds,
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: and when they told me they were vegetarian and those
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: were actual mushrooms, I was so my mind was blown.
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: It just tasted like the best mushrooms I had ever
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: had in my life. So this particular buffet was maybe
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: three streets over from my house and I happened to
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: come upon it. They're only open from four thirty to
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: six thirty or something like that, and I didn't even
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: see them the first few times I walked around the city.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: But my whole thing, like the thing I love doing
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: the most, even if I stay in a place for
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: three months, is walking around and exploring the neighborhood and
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: knowing the neighborhood well enough that I actually get a
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: slice of the culture. I actually feel like I understand
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: the place I'm living for a while. And that's what
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: discovering this Buddhist buffet that I didn't even know Taiwan
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: had at all existed. I had a list when I
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: go to a place, especially at that time, I had
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: an offline map. I looked at all the landmarks, I
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: marked them on my offline map, and then I walk
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: to them through the city. Even if it's like a
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: mountain two hours away or something from my house. I'll
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: just walk there and take random streets, and I know
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: that every time I take a random street, I'm going
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: to learn something about that country, which actually just reminded
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: me of something else now that I have to add
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: to the Taiwanese story, the secondhand shops. But anyway, that
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: is how I discovered these Buddhist buffets, which once I
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: recognized one, I was like, oh, that's what's been catching
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: my eye around dinner time, because they're everywhere around Hualien anyway,
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: not everywhere, but they're pretty common. Like every few blocks
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: there would be another one, and they all say the
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: same thing. There's what do they say, hi, which means
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: vegetable tie something. But they are all these different buffets.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: So you go in and there will be twenty to
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: thirty different hot plates set up, and you can choose
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: as much as you want from any of the hot plates.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: There's just a bunch of tongs there and it's there's
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: sneeze guards usually in stuff, but there's tongs and it's open,
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: so you just grab as much as you want. And
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: the shroom dishes were amazing. They usually had like five different.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: The one I went to, my favorite one was very small.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: There wouldn't be the room, like the entire restaurant would
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: maybe be the size of, I don't know, one half
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: of a squash court. It was very small. It was
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: like thirty by twenty feet maybe, and along one wall
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: where all the cooks, and behind that was the kitchen.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: But the room actually that you could walk into was
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: all the cooks right behind all of the hot plates,
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: and then there were four or five tables against the
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: other wall, and that was it. And I was that's
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: the first one I tried also, and I was like, well,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know if there's selection, I don't know if
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: i'll find something I like, especially if it's all vegetarian.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: And I got one. I just got a little bit
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: of everything, and they charged me three dollars the first time,
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: even though my plate was full of food. I was
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: like three dollars because I was only living on two
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: hundred bucks a month or something at the time. That's
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: all I was bringing in teaching online because my interest
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: was traveling, not teaching online. So I would just bring
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: in a few hundred a month tops. And when I
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: found out the food was only three bucks. I was like, well,
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: that's so, that's something to remember. I wonder how it tastes,
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: and then I ate the first I'll call it like
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: a steak mushroom. I guess the it and I froze.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: My mouth kept chewing, but my brain froze, and I
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: was just trying to figure out how they cooked a
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: mushroom like that, because I had never tasted that texture
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: of a mushroom before, how what this flavor was if
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: it wasn't animal fat based, because it was such a rich,
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: deep complex gravy. Mouth is water. My mouth is watering
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: right now. I just had to take a posse that
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: the mushrooms are inside, and it was just the best
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: thing I had ever eaten. And I mean that like
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: that became my favorite food once I started eating at
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: these vegetarian buffets in Taiwan. That first bite, actually that
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: first bite of the chitake mushroom, where I couldn't figure
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: out the texture or the flavor or how they made
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: any of it. I ate that bite and chewed in.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: I was like, I could be vegetarian if this was
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: the food I had, I could maybe not the rest
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: of my life, but certainly for an extended period of time,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: and I didn't become vegetarian because they had really good
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: sushi in Taiwan as well, But there was no doubt
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: in my mind. Every time I ate it, I was like, yep,
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: I could just eat this, This is fantastic. I think
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: they also had sehumk shurgi don, which they put sugar
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: on in China, but they kept savory in Taiwan. Ukshurgy
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: don is fried scrambled eggs with tomato slices mixed in
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: and like stir fried. Oh my gosh. I don't think
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: I put that in the favorite China foods, but that
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: was one of my favorite China foods. Sea hulkshurregy don
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: stir fried. I put the sea holkshurgy don mien in there,
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: but anyway, so I would get that and then these mushrooms,
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: and I could eat that every day. I could eat
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: that every day for an indefinite amount of time. I
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: don't know how long. But if it was that place,
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: with those flavors and textures, there was nothing more rich
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: that I was going to get from a cut of steak.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: There was certainly no deeper flavor I was going to
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: get the gravy that those mushrooms were inside, and not
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: to mention, the mushrooms themselves had such a depth and
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: complexity of flavor and a deeply satisfying texture, like they
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: were cooked in a way that made them tough, but
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: we like meat easy to bite through, to the point
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: that I never was like, oh, I sure could use
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: some stewed chicken with this, or stewed beef. I don't know. Yeah,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: that's a good comparison. The beef and guinness pies and
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: the beef and guinnis stews that I got in Ireland.
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: They like make that beef stew for a day, so
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: the meat's marinating for twenty four hours or whatever or
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: half a day, and then there's a guinness in the stew,
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: and there's so many vegetables, you know, there's carrots and
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: turnips and onions and all that, and the flavor is
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: so deep and complex and I was getting all of
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: that and more. It didn't taste the same, but there
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: was such an insane complexity and depth of flavor to
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: this gravy and these mushrooms. These mushrooms like just sliced
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: up chatake mushrooms that I was having. That my first
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: thought was, yep, I could be vegetarian if this was
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: the food. And then I tried all the other different
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: types of mushrooms because they cooked them in different ways.
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: Even though I think like three of them were schatake mushrooms,
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: they were cut a little thicker. For this first one
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: I'm talking about that tasted better than ninety nine percent
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: of steaks I've ever had, and the other ones were
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: cut thinner or fried rather than stewed, and they all
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: tasted very good. And then there were five or more
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: tofu dishes, also prepared in different ways with different flavors.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: Everything was savory, though there was no sweet prepared stuff.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: And then there was seaweed and lotus roots. They usually
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: had lotus roots, so there was a whole bunch of
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: different vegetables that you could choose from, and tofus and
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: mushrooms and oh man, everything everything I had, everything I ate.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: I was just like, okay. So these are the vegetarians
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: who figured it out. Like, if if vegetarianism was introduced
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: with that flavor and that history, that type of that
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: tradition of flavor and texture behind it, no one would
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: be making like routine. The stand up comedy routines would
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: have lasted a month. They'd be like, oh, you eat plants.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: And then the comedian would have tried, and he'd be like,
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: all right, that's great. That's better food than a McDonald's hamburger.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: It's better food than like a ninety dollars steak, like
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: New York Strip. It's so good the way Americans talk
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: about a filet mignon in movies, where they're really playing
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: up the delicacy of a filet mignon, which is just
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: a soft steak. But you have to like pretend filet
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: mignon is this fancy, divine, fair, is what this food
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: actually tasted like to me? I ate it, couldn't believe it.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: I went back the next day, ate more, couldn't believe
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: it again. And I have to mention, so at all
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: of these buffets, you can get as much as you want,
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: you pay for it. And even when I completely loaded
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: up my plane, I was like, all right, I'm just
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: going crazy. I'm going to eat all of their mushrooms
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: like in this stray, which I couldn't. There was plenty,
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: but I was like going to use as much as
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: I can. I still paid less than six dollars, less
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: than seven dollars probably. I think the most I ever
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: paid was close to seven dollars when I put a
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: mountain of food on my plane, and then there would
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: be two sort of coolers, the upside sports cooler size things,
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: or just as often large metal stew pots, and in
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: each one there would be egg drop soup usually, or
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: the other one was miso soup, and I loved the
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: miso soup with little chunks of tofu and hi dii
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: seaweed in there, and you could just get bowls of
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: that as much as you wanted. That was free, as
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: well as free steamed white rice with your food, which
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: was right next to those two coolers. So every buffet
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: you also had your choice of soup. Sometimes it was
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: hot and sour stuff too, which I never really like
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: sour soup white rice. And I still think I was
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: not doing any carbs at the time, so I was
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: staying away from any sort of starches at all. But
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: between the different egg dishes that these Buddhist vegetarians made,
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: some of them had an array of egg dishes like
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: three or four, and some of them didn't have egg
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: dishes at all. I don't think the one I went
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: to actually had egg dishes, but at this point I
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: was just eating proteins and fiber, so I was just
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: eating vegetables and meat for the most part. So when
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: they did have the seahonk shergee down the fried tomato
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: egg stuff, I would get that, and I'd get a
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: bunch of these mushrooms and just live in bliss for
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: as long as there was a scrap of food left
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: on the plate. And sometimes sometimes it was so good
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: that I got a second plate after I ate the
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: first one, and I would I you can tell from
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: my voice, but I would marvel at how good this
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: food tastes. I can't believe I've already hit fifty minutes
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: with this podcast. That's crazy. But I cannot explain as
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: completely as I want to how much I enjoyed these
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: Taiwanese vegetarian buffets. If you ever get the chance, try them.
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: They make the food fresh every day. It was consistently
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: mind blowing for me every single day. And not all
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: were created equal. I'll say that the one that became
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: my favorite just happened to be the first one I tried.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: But there's not a bad one, like I never went
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: to one was like they don't have anything I like,
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: all of them had some amazing mushroom dish, and all
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: of them had some amazing tofu dish, and most of
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: them had one or two great egg dishes, and they
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: all had the miso soup right there. So whatever it is,
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: you're still paying five bucks for a great meal. But
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: the mushroom dishes that my favorite one in huali En
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: were transcendent. They were unparalleled by any food I had
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: ever eaten. And I guess I was eating eggs some
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: of the time, but I mostly became vegetarian. All of
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: my main meals were vegetarian. They had row meat shops
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: there where you could get like hong Shao ro, which
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: is like a soy sauce braised marinated pork or beef,
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: and I really like Newermeian, which is like a beef
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: noodle soup. But it was I don't know, six dollars
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: a bowl for a beef noodle soup and Taiwan and
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: I got it once just to see and it was good,
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: but it was beef noodle soup, and the depth of flavor,
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: which is very deep and strong and delicious, was nothing
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: compared to these mushroom dishes. And I could get way
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: more food at the vegetarian buffet, and way more variety.
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: It wasn't just one bowl of soup. I could get
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: two different soups as much as I wanted, and the
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: rice if I wanted it, and they had you know,
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: soy sauce and pickled vegetables to put on top of
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: the rice if you wanted it. And then the actual foods.
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: I could choose from five different mushrooms with five different sauces,
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: and all the different egg dishes, and the lotus root
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: and the other green vegetables. There was just so much variety,
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: and every dish had such a depth of flavor. Oh
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: my gosh, it makes me want to go back there
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: so bad that I never stopped going. I lived there
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: for one month I discovered that Buddhist place. After five
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: days or maybe a week, I went there almost every
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: single day after I realized they were opened from four
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: thirty to six thirty or whatever, four thirty seven, I
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: don't know what it was. But I went there as
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: soon as they opened for dinner most days because I
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: wanted to get there right as the food was the
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: most fresh, and I usually did, And even when I
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: got there at seven and it wasn't fresh. It still
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: it still tasted better than ninety percent of the food
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: I'd had in my life. And I went there. Yeah,
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: for the entire time I was at the Airbnb, I
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: would go there pretty much every day, and I was
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: only eating once a day, so that was. Yeah, I
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: did go largely vegetarian. I'd say I ate vegetarian. Maybe,
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: let's say most of the week. I don't know, five
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: days a week I was vegetarian, and then on the
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: weekends I might find some new restaurant with home shower
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: or HyG row, and I am really curious how they
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: cook different hygor row, because twice cooked pork is a
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: very difficult dish to make correctly. And even in China,
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: I don't like like eight out of ten of the
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: twice cooked porks. Someone say four out of five, And
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: so I'm always interested how they cook it at different places.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: But five days of the week, I was just eating
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: this vegeta. I was just eating mushrooms, tofu greens, some vegetables,
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: and then miso soup. And I was more satisfied with
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: those vegetarian meals than most meals in my life. I
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: was completely satisfied after one of those meals and I
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: never felt heavy because it was all vegetables, so my
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: body had way easier time processing them. I was just
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: the vegetarian life was so easy to see because you know,
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: my stomach's running perfectly. I don't feel heavy after I eat.
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: The taste is amazing. I can I'm still very active afterwards.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: It's just it was so easy to be like, Yep,
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: I could be vegetarian if this was the food. Notably,
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: I did not become vegetarian, and you know, made my
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: own beef jerky and all that kind of stuff. But
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: really I could see how I was like, oh, this
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: is this is the food. Buddhist vegetarians eat like. They're
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: eating better. Their food is more rich than most humans,
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: Like all of their basic boring vegetarian dishes have more depth, complexity,
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: and fullness of flavor than most countries that traditionally stew
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: their meats for like fourteen hours with ten different vegetables.
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: Most of those stews I've had are good, but they
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: don't compare to these vegetarian Buddhist mushroom dishes that I
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: tried in Taiwan, that I subsisted on in Taiwan, and
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: even after I moved out and started backpacking around Taiwan.
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: I made a point to go to that one specifically,
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: so even though I was camping, I urban camped for
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: almost an entire extra month in the city that I
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: had my herbianb in, just so I could walk to
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: that alley and continue eating my vegetarian Buddhist delights. I'm
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: going to be shocked when I go back through this episode,
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: because I feel like I've only talked about three things
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: and I'm almost an hour in. But those Buddhist vegetarian
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: buffets deserve this amount of time, deserve this amount of
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: exaltation and exhortation. I am urging you to give a
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: Taiwanese Buddhist vegetarian buffet a chance if there's one in
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: your city, which some American cities do have them. But
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: if you have a big Chinese presence wherever you're living,
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: or a Chinatown, try and figure out if there's a
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: vegetarian buffet somewhere in there, especially if it's from Taiwan,
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: because I did go to them in Hong Kong and
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: other countries and China and they're not They just didn't
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: have the same flavor. There just wasn't that perfect balance
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: that I got, But maybe that was just my I
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: became indebted to that first, my favorite vegetarian Buddhist bffet
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: that I became obsessed with. But in any case, it's
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: certainly worth looking out. It's definitely worth giving up one
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: meal to try and see if you can find one
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: of these vegetarian Buddhist buffets, because holy cow, you can
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: see why the Buddhists attain enlightenment if this is what
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: they're eating. Oh my gosh. Okay, so let's move on.
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: I can do it. I don't have to only talk
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: about the Buddhist buffets, but okay, let's move on. Let's
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: move on the AIRBNBI was staying and let's finish that saga.
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: I kept walking around the city every day I discovered
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: a public exercise area just right down the block, maybe
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: a couple few blocks away, ten minute walk, and I
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: love that about Asian countries. There are public exercise parks
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: in all Asian countries, basically, some more accessible than others,
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: some in better states of repair than others. But Thailand, China,
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: and Taiwan especially have new, up to date, like fresh
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: coat of paint, public exercise parks every few blocks at
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: a minimum, which is so great, Like I feel so
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: much better after I exercise, just getting moved. That's why
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: I still walk every day at least, and if there's
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: a public exercise park near me, I'll do a couple
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: pull ups, or I'll do a couple sit ups or something,
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: some basic exercises. Oh, the ones in Panama had weight lifting.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: They actually had like permanently attached weights. You can move
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: around to it, just the weight you could put on
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: the back and then you could actually lift weights. That
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: was really interesting in their public exercise parks, which is
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: only I only saw that one other time in Thailand
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: and those were regular Okay anyway, Taiwan Airbnb, so I
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: was very friendly with the hosts by that point. I
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: told them like the vegetarian buffets and they were like, yeah,
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: those are really good, but we like meat. And it
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: was about New Year Chinese New Year time, which I
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: didn't even realize because it had been three and a
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: half years of me working teaching English in Beijing for
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: twenty hours a week or whatever I mean, plus all
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: the admin work, like the non teaching work, because I
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: joined as the owner of that school, so I did
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: have a lot of work per week, which sucked because
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: I liked not working, but my time it was so flexible.
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: I chose my own hours to work the non teaching
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: hours that I was already losing my sense of time,
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: and as I'm sure you can tell by this point
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: in the podcast, I basically have no sense of time anymore.
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: So I didn't even realize it was the new year,
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: New Chinese New Year. And one day I came home
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: and there was I don't know, fifteen other people besides
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: my two hosts, which were this lady and her husband.
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: Then there's like fifteen other people and they were all
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: having this huge feast. And I had been to the
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: vegetarian buffet that day and walked around for a couple
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: hours and then came back home and I walked in
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: and everyone looked at over behind saw me at the door,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: and everybody cheered said she Enia and Quila, like happy
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: New Year, and I was like, oh, wow, okay, yeah,
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: Sheinia and Quila and they were having this huge New
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: Year's feast and they invited me to sit with them,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: and I could speak well enough, but even when I'm
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: in the United States, I'm not a huge fan of
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: giant feasts with a whole bunch of people I don't know,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: and I have to maintain conversation and become part of
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: this huge group. It's like a lot of social investment
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: that doesn't pay off in my opinion. But I also
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: was very aware after three and a half years of
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: Beijing that it's important to stay social because it's really
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: easy to cloister yourself and become more socially conservative as
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: you get older, at least it is for me certainly,
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: and all the old people I know don't have any
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: new friends. So I saw this social interaction as taking vitamins.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: And I sat down at the table, and what might
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: have caught my eye before I made my decision was
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: there were many bottles of beer on the table, and
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: Taiwanese people, i'll say, do like to celebrate with beer
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: and alcoholic drinks more than Chinese people. I don't have
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: a huge sample size for that, but it just seemed
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: like a more comfortable part of the culture. They still
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: kept it healthy, like they only had them on holidays,
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: but it's very easy to go for any of the
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: largest holidays in China and you won't see a drop
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: of liquor anywhere. And they certainly had it at this party,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: and so I was a little more mollified by the
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: idea of socializing with so many unknown people in my
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: second language. If I had a spoonful of ethanol to
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: help the medicine go down, and so I had a beer,
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: and they poured me a little shot of Baigo Taiwanese
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: by Geo, which tasted as bad as Chinese by ja.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: It's this clear rice liquor, sometimes made from sorgum, and
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: it just tastes like rubbing alcohol and smells like rubbing alcohol.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: But you do very tiny, like half shots of it
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: at a time. And I was with a bunch of
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: older people, so they weren't getting wrecked anyway. I proceeded
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: to get wrecked. I just kept drinking beers and shots,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: but I was confident enough of my Mandarin. I was
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: keeping up with everyone talking, and at one point they
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: asked me if I thought my Airbnb host, who was
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: like sixty, was a pretty woman, like a beautiful physically
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: it was like a physically attractive woman. I froze for
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: a second and then said, of course, and they all
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: laughed because I think they were talking about how Americans
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: can't tell the age of Asian people, and I think
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: one guy was like, he probably thinks she's hot or
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: something like that, and then they asked me and it
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: was weird thing. Other than that one weird moment, it
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: was mostly just really fun, festive conversation and everybody asked
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: me different questions and they were like, how long have
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: you studied Chinese? I told them, well, I was living
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: in China teaching English, so I just speak it with
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: my friends. And they asked me where if you traveled
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: to and I just we just kept talking about, you know,
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: life and just regular stuff, and I asked each of
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: them where they worked and how they knew each other
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: and all this, and it was a really fun party.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: It turned into a really fun time and they had
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: the traditional bread desserts and they had plenty of beer
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: and wine for me, which after an hour and I
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: was still like, yeah, I'll have one more. They were like,
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: Americans do like to drink beer, and I was like,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: we do. It's kind of a thing. I don't have
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: a problem. It's just an American habit. And it was
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: really fun and there was even like fruit, so it
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: was like a complete meal. Like I feel like it's
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: really easy for Americans to like delve into just like
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: a whole bunch of a pile of oily meat and
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: then a bunch of alcohol, and like, that's our party.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: But at a lot of Asian festivities I've been to,
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: there always has to be a complete thing. There has
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: to be vegetables there, There has to be some kind
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: of grain. It has to be the whole food pyramid
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: going on. You have to have some fruits rather than
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: just meat and alcohol, which I still like, but I
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: understand the sense to get some fiber in there, and
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: you know, other vitamins and nutrients. And then I made
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: my faux pas, which might have had something to do with.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: Ninety minutes into the fun feast, I was pretty drunk,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: and we all had this dessert muffin, and every time
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: I tried something new that I hadn't had before, every
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: person at the table, like half of them, would independently
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: ask me, have you had that before? No? Do you
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: like it? Yeah, it's pretty good, he likes it. And
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: then two minutes later another guy wo'd be like, had
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: that before? Do you like it? Pretty? And so we
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: had these like dessert muffins, fruit muffins, somethings, and I
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: ate mine. I was like, holy cow, this might be
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: the best thing so far. And I don't usually like
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: I don't like desserts as much as I like savory food,
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: So this little muffin really surprised me and it was great.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: And I noticed the guy next to me picked up
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: my muffin and took a bite of it, and I
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: was like, hey, man, that's my freaking muffin. And I
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: picked it up and I said, hey, that's mine, and
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: I took a huge bite out of it, and then
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: he looked at me in surprise and said, no, that
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: one's yours. And he pointed to my muffin that I
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: had like put to the side and forgotten about because
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: it was too close to me. I didn't put in
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: front of me because I was probably trying to hoard it,
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: so like I put in a weird place somehow, and
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: I lost it amidst my other plates. So I had
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: just taken a huge bite out of his dessert muffin
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: and I was like super embarrassed and apologized and totally
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: thought that that one was mine. And everyone at the
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: table like exploded into uproarious laughter and they were like,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: don't worry, we have like three more trays of these.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: You can have as many as you want. And I
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: said something like thank you. I'm sure me being stupid
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: had nothing to do with all the beer, and we
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: all laughed again, and everybody had another shot, like they
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: were all schnockered for sure. They weren't imbibing tepidly, as
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: is very common in Chinese celebrations. Taiwanese people throw them back,
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: a cultural habit I was happy to discover and could
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: heartily appreciate. But none of us were particularly sober. And
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: then the feast, you could feel it winding down, like
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: we'd all had a great time. They started before I
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 1: got there. They usually eat pretty early, at like five
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: point thirty before sunset. I got back after sunset, and
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: then I had been at the table for a couple hours,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: and it sort of felt like we were all like
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: slapping our knees and like welp, And I said, all right,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: this was so much fun. Thank you so much. I
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: really liked talking to all of you. I'm sorry I
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: ate your muffin. I apologize. The food was so good.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: I'm glad I tried all of these new things, and
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: I hadn't tried a lot of new things they were
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: trying to get me to try new things, but I
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: ate everything anyone offered me in China for three years,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: so there wasn't many new things at this table, but
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: everything was made a little bit different than I was
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: used to, even if it was a Chinese dish, I'd
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: had many times and I really liked a lot of it.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: So I was complimenting the food, complimenting all the people
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: I met. One of them was like a construction worker,
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: and him and I got along really well, just talking
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: about normal stuff, probably food and drink, and I said,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: thank you, I'm gonna head up now. It was really
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: it was a great night, Genian Kwila, so good hang
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: out with you. And when they saw I was getting
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: up to leave, everyone was like nodding along with my
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: farewell speech. But when I started to get to leave,
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: everyone all like seventeen people at the table. Also, the
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: room wasn't big, so this was this was like a
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: maybe two meter wide table, maybe I don't even think
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: it was that wide, and there's seventeen chairs around it
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: with completely covered in like thirty different dishes for the
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: New Year's Feast, And so all the people simultaneously went no, no, no, wait,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: and I was like, oh what, and they said it's
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: not over. We're done eating. Now we're gonna go sing.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: And I was like, what are you talking about. They said, oh,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: we're gonna go sing Changa, it's time to sing songs.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: And this is all in Mandarin. By the way, just
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: whenever I talk about a Taiwanese person saying anything and
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: I use English, they're speaking Mandarin. We're all speaking Mandarin.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: And they said, let's go. We're gonna go sing, and
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: I was confused. And then they explained, we're going to
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: go to the King, which is karaoke. Asian karaoke is
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: called k TV. Well, I guess in China or in
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: Japan it's kind of okay, but KTV and I was like,
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: oh I because I usually hate k TV. I'm not
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: huge on karaoke in the States. It's fun sometimes, you know,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: if you're with your friends, it can be fun. But
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: I don't know a lot of Chinese songs, and I
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: sometimes there's no English words songs at all, and you're
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: just sitting in an extremely loud area. I don't like
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: super loud noises. Also, some of them are sort of
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: like drug slash prostitute dens, which I'm pretty uncomfortable with,
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: especially the prostitute part, and I'm just not interested in.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: So I was already saying like, well, it's already been
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: a lot of fun. But they were all like, oh,
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: it's really great, Like there's a place very close. We're
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: all going to get taxis there. They have international songs.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: There will definitely be songs that you can sing there,
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: and you should come. Come, And everybody asked me, and
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: the guys I had talked to more at the table
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: than other people, my host, and everyone was extolling its virtues,
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: and I just thought, yeah, you know what you already hear.
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: You're part of the feast. You're part of the New
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: Year's celebration. They're gonna have beer at the KTV for sure.
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 1: You can at least just hang out and have a
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: beer while they sing all the Chinese songs that there's
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: nothing you want to sing. And so I said, okay, okay, yeah,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: sure I'll join. Let's go, and I sat back down
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: and the entire table cheered again, and everyone took another
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: shot of by Geo, which they'd been serving along with
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: the beers. We were having the feast beers for the celebration,
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: and anytime the hosts or really anyone at the table
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: said anything mildly celebratory, they poured everybody another shot of
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: the terrible rice wine from China Rice Liquor by Geo.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: Then the taxi showed up. They put a few things away,
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: like a few of the dishes, and I tried to
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: help in the host Like the host is like the
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: nicest old grandma ever and her nice husband, and we're
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: all pleasantly drunk. And when I started helping, like she
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: slapped my hand, and everyone at the table was like, oh,
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: cleaning up, don't worry about sit down, have a beer.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: And I was like that's great. I'm way better at
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: drinking beer than cleaning things up anyway, And we all
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: laughed and they put the food away, and then the
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: taxis arrived a few minutes later, so we didn't even
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: have to wait that long. We just shot the shit.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: Everyone's drunk. So but at this point, all the conversations
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: just like, so your teacher like how many students in
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: a class? Oh, there's usually like six or seven. They like,
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: pretty good. So just as relaxed conversation about nothing as
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: there can possibly be. But when you're you know that buzzed.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: Even talking about nothing is pretty fun because you're just
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: sharing a moment with someone else. So it was a
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: very comfortable part of the celebration, kind of a rest before,
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: you know, between the wild New Year's celebration at the
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: table and make remaking all the social ties. Everyone's getting
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: to know each other again and I'm getting to know
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: each other for the first time. And then we have
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: the lull while we wait for the taxes and put
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: stuff away. Then the taxis arrived and we all piled
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: into them and I spoke with whoever was in there,
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: just kept speaking. It was great. Taiwan was the best
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: practice for my Mandarin, like long term real life practice
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: that I ever had, because I could understand everyone so well.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: I could just keep talking with people even when I
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: was a bit blitzed as I was. And we made
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: it to the KTV, which was, I don't know, fifteen
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: minute ride away. It was longer than I thought it
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: was going to be, but it wasn't a different state,
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: it was. It was close enough, and we piled in.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: They brought over a shopping basket of beers, which is
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: very common, like you can buy like twenty beers at
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: a time and they'll bring over a shopping basket of
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: those twenty beers and you can all dig in at
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: your leisure. And this was a unique KTV because it
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 1: was actually an American karaoke style open floor plan. Most
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: Asian KTVs or karaokes are separate rooms, and I thought
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 1: that's what would be doing. Each party that shows up
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: or each group that wants to sing, has their own
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: separate room, and you can have twenty rooms and you're
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: not going to hear all the other people in there,
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: and everyone sings with their own private party. That's every
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: single karaoke I had been to in China or every
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 1: KTV i'd been to in China. That's how they all run,
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: and it's the same in Japan many other countries. This
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: was the first Asian karaoke or KTV spot that had
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: a wide open room and then a small stage and
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: the screen behind it with the monitor set up in front,
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: and I was kind of surprised, but I don't think
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: I've seen that again. Actually, I just visited Taiwan Cowsung
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: last year, and the only one I was in did
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: the similar like private rooms thing, so I was more
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: nervous than usual because there was a bunch of other
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: people in there, and I was nervous and I was
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: definitely the only foreigner inside. So they gave the list
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: of songs to me, and I was like, no, no,
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: you guys sing first, and then I'll have time to
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: like look for a song that I know how to sing.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: Because I opened the binder and it was like seven
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: hundred pages, fifteen hundred page. It was so long, it
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: was it was half a foot thick, like it was
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: a huge binder of pages of song titles. But I
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: flipped through the first I was like, ninety percent of
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: them more much more than ninety percent were Chinese speaking songs.
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: And I saw at the end there were a few
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: pages of English speaking songs, literally a few pages. That's
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: still like a couple hundred songs that I could go through.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: But I was like, oh, it's gonna take me a
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: while to find one. I actually know how to sing
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: and I'm comfortable singing. So when you guys go first,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: And they said, okay, okay, and they had the woman
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: who was my airbnb host go first, and she immediately
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: chose one of the songs and she started singing, and
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: I just flipped through I'm going to see if I
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 1: can remember which song I landed on, because after a
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: couple of people sang every time, they were trying to
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: get me to go up there and sing, and I
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: eventually did. Nope, I have no record of and my
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: records are not in any sort of organized fashion, so
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: I have no idea what I eventually sang. But I
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: did choose some song because I very clearly remember being
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: nervous as the novelty foreigner and my dozen and a
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: half friends screaming at me to get up there on
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: stage and have some fun. And then but there's another
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: fifty people in the room or something, and they're all like,
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: what is that as they see the foreigner trundle his
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: way up on stage because I don't look like them,
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: And everybody listened to me, and I sang a song
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: and I made it through and I had a lot
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: of fun. I remember I had fun singing it. And
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: then I got off the stage and I was like, well,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: that has earned me more beer. I just kept drinking
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: and having a great time, but the room was spinning.
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: At this point. I had had so much because we
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: had also been doing those shots of Baigeo, which are
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: like forty to sixty percent, and everybody wanted to do
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: their own personal shot with me, so I probably had
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: at least one shot with every person around the table.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: And then I was non stop drinking beer the whole time.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: So we stayed at that KTV for a couple hours.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: At least my airbnb host sang a few songs, you know,
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: we had a lot of people and a lot of
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: people wanted to sing songs, and eventually we all started
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: getting tired and the beer was probably gone. I probably
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: drank all of it, and we all got taxis back home,
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: at which point I'm pretty sure they just pushed me
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: into a taxi between two of them, and we made
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 1: it back to the house and I passed the f
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: out and I remember passing the f out like I
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: had the only thing I had, like brief flashes of
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: what happened. I was already browning out before we left
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: for the KTV, but I remember flashes of what happened
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: that night. I remember getting into my room, looking in
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: my closet, falling onto the bed, and then waking up
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: the next day and I was like awake, and I
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: was like wow, I mean, what a fun thing that was?
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't until the end of my stay there,
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: so it was another like two weeks or something that
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: I was looking and making sure I had cleaned everything,
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: and everything was nicely cleaned up, and I looked inside
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: the closet and I suddenly had this weird vision of
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: holding a pillow in front of my face. And I
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: saw there was a pillow in the corner of the closet,
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: and I picked it up and looked it over, and
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: this is gross. There was dried vomit on it, and
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: I had another flash of vomiting on the pillow. So
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: I had a pillow, so that flash I remembered of
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: opening my closet two weeks before, after the New Year's party,
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: I apparently picked up this nice little throat pillow that
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: was in my closet, barfed just a bit on it,
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 1: not a lot, and then put it back in the
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: closet and was like ugh, and went to bed. And
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: then it dried on the pillow, and I frantically washed
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: it off very thoroughly and ringed it out as best
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: I could, and then left it there. And I think
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: it was okay, but I was too embarrassed and didn't
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: tell any of them about it. That was the most
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: horrifying thing I had ever discovered in my life. I
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: was so embarrassed that I had done that and then
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: completely forgot about it and just let a barf pillow
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: be in my closet that I never used in that
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: closet for two weeks or something two more weeks, and
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: I think I had put the pillow like face down
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: so that the barf wouldn't soak into the pillow, and
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: the top was a synthetic weave of fibers, so I
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: don't think it got of the pillow. There wasn't even
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: a smell anymore with it when it was all dry,
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: and I just washed it as best I could. I
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: washed it looked fine, damp. Look, I don't come off
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: well in this story. I'm well aware. I'm just sharing
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: what happened. And I cleaned the cabinet itself that it
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: was sitting in, and that was the only thing in it.
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: So I don't know if they ever looked in that closet,
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: but they're probably gonna look in it after I checked out.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: But in any case, I watched it as well as
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: I could, and then I left with my tail between
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: my legs. That's that true. It was just kind of
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: embarrassed that that happened, and I actually believe I told
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: my airbnb host I was going to start backpacking around Taiwan,
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: and I was going to spend a couple weeks around
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: their town first backpacking and camping, and then I was
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: going to camp and backpack around the rest of Taiwan
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: the island. But really I was just planning on urban
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: camping around that town because I knew there were so
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: many things I still I hadn't seen. I have so
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: much more to talk about on that trip, and I'm
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: way way into Taiwan already. So this will be my
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: introductory Airbnb episode to Taiwan, I guess, and then I
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: will talk about the backpacking adventures next. That's a neat
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: little segue, so sorry to end with a barf pillow,
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: but that was the last thing I did in that Airbnb.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: Frantically cleaned a pillow, dried it as best I could,
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: and placed it sneakily and quietly and hopefully unobtrusively inside
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: a cabinet where no one would notice it until it
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: completely dried. And then I strapped on my shoes I
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: was still wearing shoes instead of sandals at that point,
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: instead of diy sandals. Thanked my hosts profusely and they
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: were like, if you ever want to stay here for free,
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: if you're walking around and don't like camping, come back,
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: you can stay here. We love having you. It was
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: so nice having you. Have a great trip. And I
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: thanked them a hundred times again, and then I walked
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: out that door into my first backpacking trip. Maybe that
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: might have been my first backpacking trip. I think that
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: was the first time I camped outside long term anywhere.
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: Was Taiwan, and then I think Ireland was my first
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: time walking between city. No but Thailand. Boy, not gonna remember.
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: Not gonna remember that anyway. I'm pretty sure this was
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: my first time actually backpacking in any capacity was in Taiwan,
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: and man I was a mile away from mountains and
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: mile away from the beach. So I'll get into that soon.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening to this rambling, and
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: I will talk to you soon. Have a great rest
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: of your day.