So here I am back in SE Asia...I arrived in Taiwan on late sunday nite. I was greeted by the 5 million motor scooters, poor roads and dangerous driving. Along with the thousands of protestors against the current president because he is corrupt...dont' wear red or green.
When I arrived at my hotel, I was glad to see that it was modern and clean. However, I arrived at the office on monday to find out that the bathrooms have squatting toilets! Great!
I had to squat and go to the bathroom in my professional work entire. This meant that I had to really concentrate on not pissing all over myself when I went to the bathroom...needless to say, the third time is a charm!
At nite we went to the lovely nite market. It was just like Vietnam. We walked down the aisle and every animal in the world was killed and put out for sale. The smells that came out of that place was horrendous! I never smelled anything like it. There were big vats of soups with all kinds of meats and juices, it was awful.....smell was worse than the fish market in cambodia. Before going to the nite market, a co-worker told me that I should not buy anything at the market,but the food is delicious:)
On our way home from the market, we saw whole families on their scooters...one of them had 4, with the one kid standing up...without a helmet.
The food here is disgusting, I am so glad that I never visited this place on my trip last year. The smell, the taste and sight of the food is sssooooo bad... I thought that I was going to starve.
Even their deserts are really bad, I can't even finish them. We went to dinner with some of the people here at work. The placed this soup-like dish in front of me, there were all kinds of tenatcles, livers, kidneys...and a purple ball. I set it aside because I thought that it was an olive. The taiwanese dude told me it was a grape....my co-worker ate and then spit it out..it was an olive. I don't trust anything that they say.
anyway, i did try and find an american restaurant...no deal, even the so called pizza hut only had pizza with corn, peas and crab...I couldn't even finish it. I have officially named it "the taiwan diet".
I do have to say, the people are very friendly!
For those of you who remember my travelling compadre, Alissa, she has had made many changes in her life since we returned about a year ago. She met a dude named Peter and within weeks they shacked up together. There will be a wedding next summer in PA. She took Ruben's advice and is now living the dream....
