Quick Motorcycle Drive

Matthew and I like to go for drives on the motorcycle on our days off and when the weather is nice. We had been wanting to go to Dahu; they are famous in Taiwan for their starwberries. During our drive, we pulled over in a park (Chishuiqi Park). We had to check our map. The park looks like it would be a nice walk; with plenty of paths. Even though you see plently of dogs in Taiwan, most of the time you seen them tied outside of someone's house. But, during our 30 minute stop, we saw numerous people come to the park to take their dogs for an actual walk. I was impressed. The other nice thing was that the park had installed a blockade so people couldn't just drive their scooters along the path, so this park's walking paths really are only accessible to walkers.

We continued on our way up a big hill, and we took another quick break in Nantou atop the hill. There we found this small temple with a view looking down on the city.

Hanging out at this spot was a little bird and it wasn't afraid of people in the least. Matthew and I were sitting on a bench just enjoying the view and trying to figure out the best route to get where we wanted to go. Out of nowhere this bird comes and sits right beside us, then starts flying around in our faces and sits on Matthew's hands, which scared the crap out of him. The bird continued to try and sit on his lap, his shoulder, almost anywhere it could land. It was a bit scary because I kept thinking one of us would accidentally get an eye poked out because it was so close to our faces when it would fly around. I think it is just used to people and may perhaps be regularly fed by them. After feeling paranoid over our eyeballs' safety, we hopped on the motorcycle and left. It wasn't long before we decided to turn around because it started pouring rain. If you have ever been on a motorcycle in the rain, it gets cold, fast. We were only about half way to our destination anyhow. We decided to try again on another weekend.

Glass Museum/Temple & Old Lukang

Matthew and I took the motorcycle to the nearby town of Lukang (about 30 minutes north-west) and met up with a bunch of my co-workers (all girls). One had driven her scooter and the others took a car. We started our tour of the small town at a glass museum. Lukang is known for having a glass factory and it is also used as a museum and shop. It wasn't very apparent from the outside; it just looked like a plain building that could pass as a factory, and there were no signs anywhere to indicate that you could visit it. I suppose if you go with locals they know these hidden things.

The shop had many items made of glass, everything from sculptures, to vases, to jewellery, to random little knick-knacks. The museum part was interesting, but a little bit confusing. There was a section that felt like we were in a model home; with a kitchen and bathroom. Perhaps they were trying to show off the countertops, but it felt more like I was in a Home Depot in the faucet section. There was an unusual number of shower heads and kitchen faucets on the wall. But all in all, it was fun. They even had this device with mirrors inside and you could look through at each end. The end result?

 

Outside of the glass museum there is a glass temple. It looks, for the most part, like any other Chinese temple, but it was pretty open to the outdoors. We got to talk to a worker/tour guide there who really wanted to practice his English. He told us lots about the temple and then just talked about random things that dealt with travel, family, and English.

You enter the temple and there is this big fountain between the entrance and the place of prayer, the fountain part is open to the air, without a roof. People came in the temple and did a short prayer first, before walking around the fountain to the main area. I threw a ton of money in that fountain becuase Matthew wanted the 'perfect picture' of me making a wish. Can you see my coin in mid-air? It's to the bottom right of that cauldron. The tiny shiny speckle is my coin!

After the glass museum and temple, we headed into the city. One section of the city has remained the same as it was built a long time ago. They never renovated or demolished this part of the town, and the buildings look the same as they did when first built. Originally this part of the 'old town' was one town, but eventually became known as two separate cities. The people of each city didn't want to be known as one city and no longer wanted to share everything. So, they built a wall to split the old town into two halves. However, there was only one well for the people on both sides, so they built the wall into the well to split it into two halves. Each side of town could gain access to water from one half of the well.

The water well is not in use anymore but it is still there and is a big tourist spot for pictures. In the old town there were plenty of little shops and many woodworkers selling their crafts. After we spent some time exploring, we headed into the city centre and ate a ton of food; trying all kinds of things. Unfortunately I'm not even sure what it all was. We soon got rained out and headed home.

Snail Hunting! UPDATE

As you may already know, after a rain shower Matthew and I will go for a walk and look for snails. I have already posted about this particular hobby, but unfortunately I was not able to post any photos of the gargantuan snails here because we lost all our photos when Matthew's tablet broke. Alas, I have an impressive snail for your viewing. Enjoy!

I am not sure, but we seem to find many snails near dead ones; possibly eating them. I am unfamilair with snails, but apparently there are some species that will eat dead ones, but in most cases snails will eat the shells of other dead snails as it is a high source of calcium. In this picture there was only one snail and what we believed to be an empty shell.

I Want to See the Sea!

Before we bought our motorcycle, Matthew had asked me where the first place I wanted to visit was. My answer? The sea! Unfortunately, I did not get my wish as it was not the first destination. In fact, after owning the motorcycle for more than a month, did I finally get my wish. The sea is not that far from where we live; only about a 20 minute drive westward.

I can certainly tell you that I never tire of any source of water. I just find it so relaxing. We headed there in mid-afternoon and stayed until after sunset. Almost everywhere on the coast you can find tons of oyster farms, the same as what we had seen in Chiayi on our bike tour.

There was a huge wall between the sea and the land. On the one side is the South China Sea with the oyster farms, and on the other side is a bunch of farm land.

Part of the wall has been renovated and now serves as a beautiful walkway inaccessible to scooters and other two wheeled vehicles. They put up barricades and stairs which is necessary. People here drive wherever they want, on the wrong side of the road, down bicycle paths, etc. So I was a bit impressed that they had built the pathway at the top of the wall without any ramp; it's unlikely someone will try to drive their vehicles going up stairs. The pathway seems to be very long (I'm not sure where it ends) and runs directly alongside the coastline so you always have a view of the sea.

We didn't really do anything while we were there. Just explored and enjoyed the view and the sea breeze.

We noticed what looked to be a road, but it was inaccessible to us when we were there. It turns out it is a road used by the oyster farmers. When the tide is low, they can drive out to their farms and collect their oysters. We also saw lots of small crabs in the sand, which is what you see in the last picture; all the unevenness in the sand are small rocks, sea shells, and small crabs.

Damn I Miss Bread

So, it has been awhile. And in that time I have learned to make bread. It may be hard to believe but there is no such thing as real bread here. All the bread I could find, whether I bought it from a grocery store or went to an actual bakery, all tasted like they have been steamed; with a sort of cake-like texture. Everything is sweet here as well.

It's hard to believe how crazy some cravings are when you just miss some tastes of home. But this is bread we're talking about. I was getting sick and tired of eating already sweetened bread with some jam on it that sometimes just tasted like it was rotten. Sometimes you just want to eat some delicious, straight up plain white bread, but that doesn't exist here. They always put stuff in things. A few times Matthew and I bought a loaf of bread which we thought was plain, because the exterior had no indication of anything in it. But once we cut into it we discovered the hidden items. Once we bought a loaf that ended up having red beans inside. Another time there was some kind of cream filling but it wasn't good. And even another time it ended up being raisin bread which was probably one of the better tasting loafs.

We discovered that there is a Costco in Taichung, which is about 1.5 hours away, and my Canadian membership works there. However, they as well don't have any good bread, unless we wanted to buy Wonder Bread, but that wasn't exactly what our cravings were for. Although I did manage to get some delicious peanut butter while I was there, yay!

Anyway, after scavanging around to find the ingredients, Matthew and I baked our first loaf of bread earlier this month. Now it is an occurrence that happens a few times a week.

After having done this numerous times, Matthew and I taught my co-workers how to make bread. There were some who were successful and some whose bread turned out to be rock hard, and others who never managed to even get the texture of the dough right. Either way, it was pretty fun.

Biker Gang Tour

A few weekends ago Matthew and I joined a small group of bikers and went cruising down south. We were the most pathetic bikers of the group. It's mostly because we have the most gutless bike. We own a 2010 150cc Hartford (a Taiwanese bike, built in Taichung). It can barely do 105km/hour, and the fastest speed we seem to get out of it with me as a passenger is about 90-95km/hour (and that's not going uphill).

There were two other foreigners in the group, one who lives in town, Lehi, (a fellow Canadian who used to have my job, but now owns a school) and who owns a massive motorcyle that can go a couple hundred kilometers per hour. There were some Taiwanese guys, about three others with their girlfriends, and they all have the same bike as Lehi. During our little tour, that group of bikers took the highways, but Matthew and I, and the other foreigner, named Mark (from England), took the small back roads. The highways in Taiwan are restricted to cars and motorcycles above 550cc. Mark own a scooter, but even so, he had suped his scooter out, so it can easily do 120km/h and it kicks our motorcycle's ass every time. (Yes, it seems a bit silly but people do that here. There are more scooters than anything, and mostly when you see a suped up scooter, it belong to some teenagers; they can get their license at 18 years of age).

It's always a bit weird when going anywhere with a group of people; it's hard to all agree on things. During the entire ride down and back, we were with Mark and took the smaller back roads. Even though he has a suped up scooter, it still isn't allowed on the highways. They have a system that makes it easy to identify the motorcycles that are allowed on highways from the ones that aren't. All cars are allowed on the highways, and they will all have a white license plate. The scooters and motorcycles, however, are not. Most scooters and our motorcycle has a white license plate, but we are excluded from using the highways. If the motorcycle/scooter has a red license plate, it means that it is above the 550cc mark, and therefore, is allowed to drive on the highways. This year they have introduced something new. There is a yellow license plate for two wheeled vehicles (scooters & motorcycles). They are given to anything above 250cc but below 550cc. This is where is gets a bit tricky. These yellow plate vehicles are allowed on only some of the highways as not all the Taiwanese cities have recognized them in their laws yet. This new plate was only introduce earlier this year, so I am sure it will take some time for the adjustment. You may also see green license plates, but those are old and have been phased out, but not everyone has gotten rid or changed them on their scooters, so you still see them from time to time. I am unsure what the green ones represents. Like I said, tricky.

 Lehi and the group of three Taiwanese guys all have the exact same motorcycle, just with different paint jobs.

 

You can see the red license plate.

 

The scooter on the left belongs to Mark, and you can see the back end of our motorcycle. We're pretty puny compared to those giants over there on the right.
 
Taking the highways saves an enormous amount of time, and I can't say that I actually prefer taking the regular roads; it's not like you get a better view than the highways. The highways here are pretty state of the art. They are all way above ground, so it's like you're driving in air. However, they do have a ton of tolls, which gets to be pretty annoying so I guess that is one complaint, but as a motorcyclist I don't have to deal with them.

We drove all the way down to Chiayi County, along the coast. It was beautiful. Sometimes you forget how fantastic looking at the blue sky and lush green trees can be. There isn't anything better than seeing those scenes while on a motorcycle; the wind in your face, the smell of nature. It's not the same with the windows rolled down in a car; you can't get the feeling of being part of it all while sitting in a car; you have barriers around you. I have seen a lot of windmills in Taiwan; Matthew and I have spotted them on our drive to Taichung, north from where we live, and on this particular drive. Driving past them I realized how small I am and wondered what kind of a feat it would be the install one.

We saw strange wooden posts in the sea down in Chiayi, and it turns out they were oyster farms. Apparently, the farmers walk along the scaffolds and just pick up the nets and check whether they caught any oysters or not; or wehter they are ready for harvesting. No one seemed to know exactly how it all works, so I will be forced to do some research. I'm not sure how effective the whole process is, but there were lots of them there, and oysters are super popular all over Taiwan. You can buy them everywhere!

After this we all headed to a restaurant nearby and had some lunch. We were a pretty big group and got our own private room in the restaurant. We let the others order and just tried everything. They brought the food to the table and placed it on a huge lazy susan (it was about as big as the table itself) and everything is communal. As you can imagine, there were plenty of oyster dishes that day. After lunch we split up from the group of Taiwanese bikers, and us foreigners all headed to some other town where they have huge celebrations every Sunday. I thought is was a little bit ridiculous. The Taiwanese absolutely love their firecrackers and fireworks. I think it's stupid actually. They love them so much they will lightup fireworks in broad daylight, even though you can barely see them. I am not one for traditions as I mostly think they are ridiculous, especially when we have learned that they don't serve a real purpose and happen to be bad for the environment (maybe I like science too much). The Taiwanese aren't actually different from the Chinese, their religion and traditional practices are the same, and I just think it makes no sense. I do realized that I am biased, having no religion and not believing in any kind of afterlife, I do not feel the need to pray or to participate in any actions related to these practices. If a relative dies, you are supposed to leave food at their graves (or in the case of praying to a god at a temple), and you are also supposed to burn this fake paper money, so that the specific god or your relative will have money to spend in heaven. The temples smell horrible most of the time as so much paper is being burned daily. These Sunday celebrations are no different. They lay our firecrackers on the ground and just light them. There aren't any barricades or anything like that; it's just, light them wherever you want, aiming them whichever direction you want. We didn't spend much time there. It's just a place crowded with people and it's loud and more abnoxious than interesting.We all escaped the noise and heat to visit a nearby Temple in a garden.

Even though the temple was not very far from all the chaos, it was very peaceful and serene. It wasn't busy at all, but that might have been because you needed to make a donation in order to enter, but I can certainly say it was worth it.

The smoke you see is from all the firecrackers that were being lit. This is the view from the temple built on top of a man-made cliff.

 I like architecture and have this weird obsession with staircases, vaulted ceilings, and hallways.

The temple is now used more or less as a museum; the Cultural and Historical Museum of Nankunshen Daitein Temple. It had quite a collection of seashells, and objects made from seashells.

It was a hot sunny day; Lehi is a pretty big guy and Mark had gotten some pretty serious sunburns. So we decided to relax in some shade and recouperate for a bit. Matthew himself burns quite easily, and even though he re-applied sunscreen multiple times that day, you couldn't tell. He was pretty red; it peeled, but it was nothing compared to Mark. Perhaps I can be thankful for my mixed heritage as I don't burn easily; or maybe it's because of my grotesque fear of skin cancer and looking like leather face by the time I'm 35 that I have a habitual nature to lather on sunscreen like it's the essence that gives me life. Either way I don't think it matters, as long as I don't have to go through that kind of agony.

We spent about an hour or so there, just chatting and learning lots about Taiwan from two foreigners' perspectives; they have both been here fore quite some time (married wit children). It was now pretty much mid-afternoon, so we decided we should start heading back. We walked down the paved path flanked by fresh blooming flowers on either side of the white painted wooden fence, until we came to a water wheel; we stopped there for a brief time as Lehi's youngest, Jacob, was getting tired. Here I felt a bit out of place while the three men discussed their highschool sweethearts. One mentioned how he had recently seen her, and how fat she has gotten, and how many kids she had, each with a different father. All the men are about the same age, and since there is a rather big gap between myself and them; I didn't have any stories like that to share. I did hope however, that I would not become like one of their stories because it just sounds depressing; and yes, I am so vain and shallow that I do not want to get fat either.

When we got back down to our bikes, most people were leaving the celebrations. It had been a long day in the sun, and driving all over the place on a motorcycle is exhausting. We were taking our time getting back home, but Lehi had to break away from the group as his son was falling asleep. Obviously that is a bit problematic on a motorcycle, so they took the highway and sped home. By the time we got home, darkness was just beginning to befall us. Matthew and I went out for a simple but yummy meal and headed home for a great night's sleep.

Motorcycle Touring Here We Come

After all the paperwork hell and everyone medling in our affairs, we finally have a motorcycle. We picked it up last week and took it for a quick drive; it was a very nice night. It is a 2010 Hartford 150cc. It was previously owned by a girl who barely rode it, only 2,200km on it, and it has never been in an accident.

On the following Sunday we drove it to Taichung city, about two hours away (but it took us a bit more than that because we didn't quite know the roads), to meet some potential tutoring jobs for Matthew. My butt was pretty sore by the time we got there. I got to stretch my legs and visit the 24 hour pet shop. There was a little piggy I liked, but she's not there anymore (or at least not that day).

The ride back was better, we tried to avoid the downtown areas through all the cities. They have weird rules here, and unless you have a motorcycle that is over 500cc, you cannot drive on any highways or something. They have a difference between highways, expressways, freeways, and on some of them two wheeled vehicles are allowed and all the rest they are not; it's confusing. So we pretty much avoid all "fast" roads that are 100km or more. So, obviously it takes us more time than a car to get somewhere, but motorcycles are just more fun.

We got home, and my legs were temporarily shaped like the motorcycle or like having sat on a horse for too long. It will take some getting used to. We parked the motorcycle near the seafood restaurant, we had been parking it there since getting it. There is no parking at our place, people park their vehicles against the wall, but it is a small alley and nothing to protect the bike from the rain. We had seen other people park their bikes and scooters around the corner by the restaurant. But on Tuesday after leaving for work, it was gone. We talked to our housemates and my employer, they said people don't tow your vehicle in this town, so it must have been stolen. I thought to myself, "Oh damn. People know we are foreigners, and they know we just bought a motorcycle and as they are more expensive, someone just took it. We've only owned it for four days. You have got to be kidding me!" Turns out, someone at the restaurant moved all of the bikes and scooters that were parked there, but they deliberately put ours in the park across the street. It took Matthew a while to find it as none of us thought to look for it in a park. I was just about to go to the police station to file a report. How stupid would I have looked.

Now we park the bike a lot farther than where we live so it can stay out of the rain. We'll just have to get some exercise before hopping on it for a ride anytime. But at least this way we know it won't be in someone's way.