10 things to love about Taipei, Taiwan

Maybe I haven’t always been the most positive about Taipei. The cockroaches, the working hours, the lack of alternative night-life, the terrible dating prospects for Western women… (more on that later). Now that I’m leaving, though, all the nostalgia is kicking in. I will be genuinely sad to leave Taiwan: it grows on you.

The Mountains

The air in Taipei is not that polluted for an Asian capital, but it’s not clean, either. The city has nice parts, but it’s not an attractive city. What makes the city bearable is that almost wherever you are, you can see the mountains between the buildings or over the rooftops. Ride the MRT from the city centre for 15-30 minutes in any direction, and you’re in nature. Take a train or a bus for an hour, and you’re at the beach. Surrounded by mountains. They’re green, lush, and a beautiful way to escape from the city for a few hours.

On a Sunday morning hike in Neihu.

On a Sunday morning hike in Neihu.

The People

If you’ve heard about Taiwan at all, and aren’t one of those people who hear me say Taiwan and respond with ‘Thailand! Awesome!’ (seriously, learn the difference)  then you’ll have heard that the people are lovely. They don’t disappoint. With very few exceptions they’re friendly, helpful and welcoming. They compliment your Chinese if you can say anything at all, and they’ll go out of their way to give you information, take you places, and see that you’re alright.

The Convenience

When I lived in Germany I was always getting caught out by all the shops closing on Sundays. In Taipei, the schedule is the same all week long. 24/7 convenience stores are on every corner and sell most things you might need in a hurry: umbrellas, rain ponchos, toothbrushes, alcohol, disposable underwear. A lot of shops are open until 10pm and nightmarkets are on till midnight, so you can finish work late and still go clothes shopping with friends. Basically, when you need something, you can get it.

The Transport

Admittedly it’s not cheap, but the HSR (High Speed Rail) will take you all the way down the coast from Taipei to Kaohsiung in a little over two hours. If you want a cheaper option, there are trains and buses. Taipei has an excellent transport network: the MRT (Metro) is constantly having new lines added to it, and there are buses if that fails. The Ubike system is used by everyone, so much so that the bike stands are frequently emptied and you have to stand like vultures waiting for someone to return theirs. Most of inner Taipei is flat, and so it’s perfect for biking: as long as you’re brave enough to bike in the scooter traffic amid the buses and taxis that will try to flatten you.

The Metro: clean, convenient, just don't bring your birds.

The Metro: clean, convenient, just don’t bring your birds.

The Safety

The other night I was walking the 20 minutes back to the MRT from an art class I was portrait modelling for. It was about 10.30 at night and I was in a suburb I didn’t know, right in the South of Taipei. It suddenly occurred to me that I’d never even thought about my own safety, because it’s just not an issue in Taiwan. Even when I’m alone by the riverside cycling home in the early hours of the morning, I’ve never once felt in danger.

One warning: bike theft is quite common here. If you have a nice bike, get a decent lock and lock it to something when possible.

The Tea Shops

This is something I haven’t seen anywhere else. Tea shops are everywhere here, and I don’t mean places where you go in, sit down and get a teapot. Here, you order bubble tea, or mango green tea, or one of many other flavours, you say how much sugar and ice you want, and you have a tea to go. And they’re big. They’re perfect for cooling you down on a summer day.

The Fruit

One of my biggest disappointments here is that the fruit is so expensive! It’s almost UK prices unless you go to the big wholesale markets. But it’s so tasty, and it’s everywhere, and it’s all perfectly ripe. When you buy a pineapple they’ll chop it up with a cleaver to save you the hassle (I hate to admit how many times I’ve accidentally let a pineapple go bad because chopping it was too troublesome.) Things also come in and out of season here, so there’s always something to look forwards to. And fruit and veg stalls pop up everywhere.

An extremely well-organised fruit and veg seller.

An extremely well-organised fruit and veg seller.

It’s not the Mainland

We have regular internet service, there’s not intense monitoring systems in place, and people are much more liberal. Taiwan has progressive laws for same sex couples, relatively speaking, and although discrimination is an issue here it’s small enough that you can for the most part get by without being aware of it. Schools still need to be better about hiring teachers on skills, not looks, but other than that Taiwan is good to foreigners. You won’t get overcharged, ripped off, or given dirty looks for being Western. People are polite and well mannered: they don’t shove, they don’t smell, and they don’t use the street as a bathroom. Taiwan is just generally more in touch with the rest of the world than the mainland.

Vegan and Vegetarian Food

I can’t state enough how easy it is to be vegan here. Once you learn to recognise the characters for vegetarian restaurant, you realise that they’re everywhere. Most food is labelled, so you don’t need to check the ingredients and risk missing something you don’t know the character for, and people know what a vegetarian is (there’s still some confusion about vegan, but they’re getting there.) More on being vegan in Taiwan here.

Vegan food at Vege Creek.

Vegan food at Vege Creek.

The Coffee Shops

You can get good coffee here, but for some reason you can’t get cheap coffee (unless you want it from the 7/11). Hipster culture has permeated Taiwan so deeply that coffee shops are everywhere, filled with quirky interiors and very expensive slow drip coffee from Brazil. A good coffee in most of the places here will set you back around 160nt, which is more than Starbucks, and more than most meals unless you’re in a restaurant. They are incredibly endearing though, and I like seeing the curious cafes that pop up everywhere with their hipster charm. Finding one down a ramshackle alley is one of the things that gives Taipei its charm. Find your vegan latte here.

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Taiwan, and the demise of my self-esteem

“You have a lot of pimples, are you on your period or just tired?” was the first thing my Chinese teacher said to me when I walked into Starbucks one day. I just wasn’t wearing makeup.

Recently, I have been fighting an ongoing battle with pinkeye. It’s now 7 weeks and counting. When it first developed I immediately went to the doctor before it could get worse (clearly that worked). Having had a bad experience with a clinic previously, when a doctor insisted my dislocated rib was a pulled muscle and refused to even feel the large, hard lump sticking out of my chest, I decided to go to the hospital this time round. And to make sure there would be no understandings, I took my friend who studies Chinese philosophy, who speaks Chinese.

Google ‘pink eye’ or ‘conjunctivitis’ and you get a page of stomach turning images of green gunk filled, swollen, red eyes. That is exactly, eye for eye, what my left eye looked like. I could only just open it. It was not, emphasis on not, a hard diagnosis.

So you can imagine my confusion when I was sent to the optometrist and tested for glasses. Almost in tears, I insisted that I couldn’t see out of my eye and stop trying to make me see tiny letters on the distant wall.

“If you can’t see, then you need glasses,” the girl said.

I pointed at my red, oozing, swollen eye in disbelief. “This isn’t something I need glasses for!”

Thankfully, my friend convinced her to be less trigger happy about prescribing me a pair of lenses. After more logic-less healthcare and five hours of my life gone, I left with two bottles of eye drops and a weird longing for the NHS.

The doctor had given me the all clear to go straight back to work, but I took the next morning off anyway because conjunctivitis is extremely contagious when it’s oozing still, and giving it to all my small children would not make me teacher of the year.

“Eyes? Red eyes?” chorused my six year olds when I entered, first class back. Their English is very limited so my co-teacher explained to them that they couldn’t come too close to me. In unison, their hands went over their eyes. “No!” I shouted, “that will make it more likely to infect!”

“Why are your eyes red?” asked one of my twelve year old girls. I proceeded to explain what had happened and we talked about whether it hurt. Two minutes later the boy in the seat behind her asked, “teacher, why are your eyes red?”

“See?” I replied. “This is why you need to listen and not talk Chinese. We just talked about my eye.”

“Oh. Really?”

“Really.”

“So, why are they red?”

“TEACHER, YOUR EYES, THEY’RE SOOOOOOO RED, AND SOOOOOOO SMALL,” shouted one of my eight year old students the second I walked into the room. By far my biggest cram school class, all seventeen of them gathered round to stare, laugh and point.

I wish there was a happy ending to my battle with pinkeye, but thanks to the climate (hot and humid is a breeding ground for bacteria) and my babies (a room full of toddlers is also a germ factory) it keeps coming back, just thankfully not as bad as the first time round. Salt water is helping more than the eye drops, and I’ll keep fighting it.

The eyes are just part of the picture, though. Since I got here my hair has turned into a frizzball of a totally different texture that gets drier instead of greasy the longer I’ve gone without washing, and my skin broke out so badly it was my teenage acne years all over again. A year in my face has cleared but my chest hasn’t, and I’ve cut my hair off to a level where the frizz is more manageable, but I still wouldn’t say I feel like ‘me’.

And the thing is, this is not British or Western culture. Personal comments here are a sign of caring, and it’s relatively normal to comment on weight gain or loss however minimal, on pimples, and on hair and general physical appearance. In the UK if I was having a breakout, sometimes what would get me out of the house would be the thought ‘it’s okay, no one will notice, it’s just me that it’s obvious to.’ What you realise here is that, everywhere else, they’re just being polite.

I know I’m a soft touch, which definitely exacerbated the following events, but a few days ago my 8 year old girls decided to massage my shoulders when I was writing communication books. Before, they liked braiding my hair and saying “Mei mei!!” which means little sister. Apparently I have bad hair, because it’s curly. I interpret this as being my hair is bad, because it’s different. After a moment of pummelling my shoulders, they started flapping my arm fat. I have no more than the average woman, and less than most, but still enough to amuse 8 year olds. Then they called my eyes small, and my nose big. And have I thought of surgery? Everyone gets it here… Then they asked me “teacher, do you think you’re fat?” That’s where I drew the line and told them you don’t ask people that. They said okay and sloped off.

Did I know about plastic surgery when I was 8? Maybe, because I grew up next door to a clinic, but I wouldn’t have known the details or known enough to tell someone to get it. The comments were a strange mixture of childish rudeness and cultural gap. I like the girls who made them a lot: they’re good kids, and I can’t imagine that there was anything malicious or hurtful intended in them. They do what I ask and are usually respectful. It had me wondering, what actually counts as disrespect here?

The only comment on my aesthetics that’s ever provoked a negative reaction from a Taiwanese coworker was when I was teaching colors in kindergarten. “Brown!” I flash-carded them. One of my Korean toddlers shuffled forwards and pointed at my quite-tanned arm. “Brown!” he shouted out.

“Brown!” The face of a toddler confronted with a blonde-haired green-eyed Westerner.

My coworker looked shocked. “He doesn’t mean it!” she said, placating me as though he had just pointed to me for the flashcard ‘ugly cow’.

There are some curious culture divides.

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My packing list – how to travel light

You can always tell a first time backpacker by the size of their bag. Overpacking is a problem, and it doesn’t have to be. Here are my tips for how to travel light enough that your backpack will pass as carry on luggage with most major airlines. This list is designed for city travel with some countryside, not hardcore trekking. So no tent, hiking boots, or sleeping bag.

Clothing

You never need as much as you think. It’s better to have to pick something up than discard things along the way. One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made travelling was buying a wardrobe just for that trip, before I went there. I bought with the climate in mind (I was going to South America) rather than my own personal taste. If you wouldn’t wear it at home, you’re not going to enjoy wearing it while travelling.

Don’t bring: clothes that are only useful for clubbing. So no heels or sparkly and impractical dresses. They take up a lot of room, and you just won’t get the use from them to justify it.

Do bring: clothes that go from day to night. Shorts with a nice top, maxi dresses, and little black dresses that are casual enough for day wear too are all good choices.

Don’t bring: jeans. Jeans are heavy, impractical, often quite uncomfortable to wear for a long time, and they take forever to dry.

Do bring: leggings. Leggings are the traveller’s secret weapon. They can go under shorts to keep you warm, they’re comfortable on a hike, and they can also be worn at night in a hostel or at a couchsurfer’s for some modesty. They pack small and they dry fast. I usually travel with 2 pairs.

Don’t bring: a million accessories. I hope this one goes without saying, but you just don’t need 5 different choices of scarves and hats.

Do bring: a versatile scarf that you love. Try to find one that can double as a shawl when it gets cold. If it’s colourful it will make all your outfits instantly brighter.

Don’t bring: impractical footwear, new footwear, and shoes that don’t dry and absorb water fast. If it rains and your only walking shoes get soaked you’re going to have nothing to wear tomorrow. Or you’ll have wet feet, which will make you sick, and being sick when away from home is miserable.

Do bring: a comfortable pair of shoes that can withstand miles of city walking and light hikes, and a pair of flats or sandals that are small and light and will transition from day to night effortlessly.

Weird tip: I met a woman in Colombia who swore by traveling with thongs. I tried it and she was right. If you can stand them, they’re smaller, pack better, and dry faster than regular underwear.

Toiletries

Don’t bring: bottles, they’re heavy, space consuming, and they don’t last.

Do bring: bars. You can get solid bars of soap, shampoo and conditioner. They’re airplane friendly, they don’t take up space and they last for ages. You can also use your soap to wash your clothes with in a sink, if necessary.

Don’t bring: all your make up.

Do bring: essentials and one extra thing. I travel with basic make up: spf foundation/BB cream, mascara, eyeliner, blush. My one extra is a bold red lipstick for the evening, as it instantly detracts attention from travel-worn clothes.

Don’t bring: a hairdryer. Most places have them to rent.

Do bring: straighteners, at least if you have crazy frizzy hair like mine that triples in size when humidity is mentioned. Having nice hair makes such a difference to my mood, and my willingness to appear in travel photos.

Electronics and extras

Don’t bring: all your chargers. This is a massive space waster.

Do bring: cables that will fit multiple things. Some cameras and most electronics will charge via usb, and usbs will go into laptops, meaning you only need your laptop charger to go into the wall –  this means you only need one bulky charger.

Don’t bring: your big laptop, if you can avoid it.

Do bring: a netbook or a tablet. Much better than nothing, as it saves using slow hostel computers and it means you can blog, send couchsurf requests, and upload your photos from the road. Battery life is also much better than most large laptops.

Don’t bring: paper books.

Do bring: a kindle/ereader. I was so against them until I got one. Now I can’t imagine traveling without it. It saves space and gives you choice of what to read.

The bag

Don’t bring: a suitcase, or anything with wheels.

Do bring: something you can comfortably carry on your bag for hours, and something good quality. A good bag is worth investing in, as it will accompany you on the road for years. Find something with a waist strap that fits you well: taking the weight off your back is crucial.

My current favourite travel buys

Lush shampoo and conditioner bars

At about $12 each they’re not cheap, but 1 1/2 of these got me through 3 months of travelling in South America, and my hair smelled amazing and was soft and clean.

Buy them here. They’re also almost all vegan, and they’re all cruelty free.

Image credit: Valli Ravindran/Flickr.com

Image credit: Valli Ravindran/Flickr.com

Croc sandals

These are without a doubt the best thing I bought before I came to Taiwan. If you’re going to a hot, wet country, buy these. They’re incredibly comfortable, not un-stylish (they don’t look like crocs) and they’re durable and totally waterproof. I can wear them in a typhoon in summer, and it’s no problem.

Picture from Amazon.com, where you can also buy the shoe http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crocs-Huarache-Womens-Ballet-Flats/dp/B008KZC5KK

Picture from Amazon.com, where you can also buy the shoe http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crocs-Huarache-Womens-Ballet-Flats/dp/B008KZC5KK

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How to travel as a vegan (and a reaction to Anthony Bourdain)

I’ve hitch-hiked, couchsurfed, camped, stayed in hostels lived in more than a few countries. All as a vegan. Unsurprisingly, when I started eating a plant-based diet it was one of the things I worried about most, as I already loved travel. I wouldn’t say that I had an opinion as extreme as Anthony Bourdain (an opinionated chef) in my pre-vegan days, but the motives behind refusing hospitality weren’t exactly ones I understood. Here’s a taste of his eloquent, beautifully phrased sentiments:

“They make for bad travelers and bad guests. The notion that before you even set out to go to Thailand, you say, ‘I’m not interested,’ or you’re unwilling to try things that people take so personally and are so proud of and so generous with, I don’t understand that, and I think it’s rude. You’re at Grandma’s house, you eat what Grandma serves you.”

You think that’s bad? Here’s what he says about vegans:

“Being a vegan is a first-world phenomenon, completely self-indulgent.”

Excuse me while I go into the corner until I stop laughing. This statement is so ironic to me that I can’t even take it as an insult. For the record, though, I don’t eat what my Grandma cooks when I visit. I cook her vegan food, and even though she complains a little, she eats it and I’m pretty sure enjoys it.

I was worried about seeming like a bad guest, though. I’ve done some thinking since then. When was the last time you saw an article called ‘reasons Jews and Muslims are bad travellers because it’s not Kosher and Halal.’ (Opinions on Halal meat, again, save for another day.) The difference being, religious diets often hold a respect that vegetarian/vegan ones don’t. I’m still waiting to see an article called ‘Why the Buddha makes a bad traveler and guest, and if he visits me he’ll eat beef and thank me for being generous.’ Think that’s going to happen?

Probably not.

What Bourdain handily looks past is that respect it a two way street. When I travel I am more than open to immersing myself in their culture, their language, and their food. As long as no animals are harmed. And I hope that they can respect that, just as I in turn respect their religions and customs. So far the only people who it seems to offend… are those sitting at home.

wpid-img_20130403_133817.jpg wpid-img_20141003_203346.jpg wpid-img_20140616_143601.jpg wpid-img_20130911_221428.jpg

Top to bottom, left to right: a ‘haggis’ and cranberry panini at a cafe on an island in the North of Scotland, a ripe papaya for dinner in Taiwan, an extortionately expensive raw vegan patty burger in London, and an amazing traditional style thing in Brno, Czech Republic.

How to eat when you’re a broke vegan travelling

Emergency food I travel with in my bag:

Rye bread (if possible, easy to find in Europe, not so in Asia), peanut butter, vegetable spreads/pates, bananas, apples, trail-mix and/or nuts. Sometimes there’s also a potato and an onion in there to cook at a host’s.

A standard day’s food on the road:

Breakfast: Fruit of some sort, usually bananas. I’ll add in bread or have oatmeal if I’m feeling super hungry.

Lunch: Some restaurants will have a vegetable soup, often I can find something involving noodles. I can usually find fruit or veg, or peanut butter and crackers when all else fails.

Dinner: Happy Cow is a godsend. I can usually find somewhere in any city I’m in that does vegan food. If I’m cooking, I’ll often do a potato/onion/mushroom/tofu fry up which is quick, cheap, and I can find the ingredients almost anywhere in the world. I carry small bags of spices in my backpack to add, carefully packaged.

I’m not good at being hungry. And I like hot meals. Couchsurfing is usual for travelling as a vegan because I can often find at least a vegetarian to stay with, or the person is willing to translate when we go out for food so I know what I’m eating.

The main thing is prepare, prepare, prepare. Make sure you have a few granola/cliff bars stashed away, so that when an emergency happens you’re okay. I’m a purist within reason, too – if there’s bread on offer, I’ll check it’s not been friend in lard or something, but I’m often a little more flexible about it containing milk or egg if I can’t tell and there’s nothing else. Chances are, it’s vegan. Better that than something that definitely has animal products in it.

Bottom line is, I’ve made it this far. And it only gets easier to travel as a vegan. It shouldn’t be a reason to put you off – veganism or travelling. And vegan food tourism is a fantastic way to see a city. Hunting down that little vegan place down a back alley in a city leads you past amazing places that you might never have experienced had you settled for the omni-place on the high-street. There are ways, there are means, and there are rewards.

P.s., here’s the full Anthony Bourdain article if you feel like it.

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Happy Holidays from Taiwan

As I may have mentioned here before (with a slight tinge of bitterness) holiday time here is something non-existent. Last night I Skyped a friend who’s been living and teaching in Beijing since last May. It was our first time catching up. “How much annual leave do you get?” he asked. I held up a balled fist to the camera. It took him a moment to realise. Because I private tutor too – one session a week adds significantly to what I save every month – I work Saturday mornings. My school also has me working the occasional Saturday, and once, in December, a Sunday.

This was a strange award ceremony on the 4th floor of a cinema in a remote part of the city, where the kids doing well in English got to watch a film, and then a colleague and I were brought in to hand them awards on a tiny raised podium. Trying to manoeuvre around ten children standing on a 4ft by 7ft raised platform to put medals over their heads wasn’t easy, and I nearly fell off or knocked a child off a couple of times. Then I had to have a picture taken handing them a certificate. Tip: if you’re coming to Taiwan, learn how to have the perfect camera smile ready to pop out at any moment. I don’t have one. Mine was a pained and awkward grimace. What made this whole event particularly surreal was that the music they had chosen to play sounded like ‘riding over hills’ generic video game music from ten years ago. I was pretty sure I remembered it from Legend of Zelda.

I had to press ‘Insert link’ to get this image on the page, get the pun? (Nerd reference).

The Saturday I worked in December was a ‘make-up day’ for having two days off at New Year. This wasn’t just my school, this was every company across the island. Because New Year was a Thursday, Thursday and Friday were off school. But two days off in a row??? Who heard of such a thing? The country will collapse! So we had to work Saturday the 29th to make up for not working Friday the 2nd. Some companies ignored this of course, they gave the Saturday off but not the Friday, and some gave both, but most schools held to having the make-up day. All of this meant that in the whole of December I was not working for… 3 days. I’m burned out. Because of the make-up day and the cinema award ceremony, I was working for 13 days straight, with Christmas towards the tail end of those days. By the end of this period, I bore an uncanny resemblance to this rabbit:

Me in December

My coping strategy towards dealing with missing Christmas, and one that I’ve heard repeated by other expats, is to tell myself that I’m just saving Christmas up for next year. I was homesick at the time, but now that it’s over and it’s 2015 it doesn’t seem like such a big deal. Something that is celebrated is New Year’s Eve, though.

When I left work on Wednesday night, the city had changed. Small nightmarkets had popped up where they’d never been before. People, people were everywhere! Although, for a capital of Asia, Taiwan is pretty small and empty of people, it’s still far more densely populated than most European cities. But because everyone is working all the time, I never really realised this until so many people appeared.

The biggest event in the city is the fireworks at Taipei 101. One of the tallest buildings in the world in a relatively small city, it looks odd standing out so high about the city with very few other buildings that even reach 1/3rd of the way up it. People appeared about 4 hours early to get a good spot, and I’m pretty sure I saw a few tents set up. By about 11.30pm it was hard to move. We found a patch of ground to sit on, and waiting for the fireworks. They started at midnight, and lasted for three minutes. They were nice, but not that impressive.

The most impressive thing was the amount of people videoing it. My newsfeed now has many, many pictures that all look exactly the same. Something like this one.

Taipei 101 lit up

Taipei 101 lit up

And when I turned around to look at people’s faces, this is what I saw:

Smart-phone fever

Smart-phone fever

It doesn’t really show the amount of people on their phones, but I think it was every other person watching the fireworks though their screen. I wondered what the point of even being there was. Oh well, welcome to the future. Even though the MRT was running until midnight, there were lines around the block to even get it, so I walked home. The internet on all phones had stopped working several hours before, so meeting up with any other friends wasn’t going to happen. All in all, a mellow NYE. And then four days off. In which I’ve been sleeping, and writing, and staying up too late. It’s glorious.

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