For some reason people in Taiwan thought it was acceptable to dig their noses in public. I don't say "pick" their noses because that's not what it was. They were really digging, with their finger way up in there and their hand swiveling around. And this wasn't the sort of sly, maybe-no-one-notices kind of nose-digging. I saw this in crowded markets with tons of people walking by, in the bus, on the street, in stores. Pretty much anywhere. What was really gross was that sometimes you see the moment when the finger comes out of their nose with a booger on it. They simply scrape it off their nail and let it fall wherever. Like totally make me barf.
The lady sitting next to me on the train was one of these nose-diggers. I tried to lean my body as far away from her as possible. I tried to distract myself and ignore what I could see from the corner of my eye. I tried not to think about where the resulting booger had landed. The train tickets had assigned seating and all the seats were full. There was no escaping from her.
I spent half the day on the train heading back north to Taipei. The nose-digger got off an hour before my Taipei stop.
Transsexual
The person who replaced her was a transsexual that wasn't fooling anyone. She looked like a man who'd thrown on a dress and was wearing high heels. I think she thought I was Japanese (actually for some reason I'm quite proud of myself for looking Japanese enough to fool people, quite a dumb reason to be proud). Instead of just starting a conversation with me in Japanese, she got on her cell phone and called someone who could speak Japanese and they had a short conversation. In all truth, I felt a bit uncomfortable which is why I didn't just go ahead and start talking to her.
The hostel
When I finally arrived in Taipei, I went back to the same cheap hostel that I stayed in before, and this time they had room in the main hostel. It was so much cleaner than the one in the other building, probably because the Taiwanese wife was in charge of this part. Her husband was in charge of the hostel I stayed last time, and I'm guessing he's not so into cleaning which is why it was so dirty and gross.
The toilet and shower were so clean, and indoors (not outside on the balcony). The rooms were small and cramped, but at least I know the sheets were clean because she gave me new ones when I arrived.
The atmosphere was much nicer, too. Adventurous young travellers roaming the globe who love meeting people and telling funny stories - that fit the image I have of hostels much better than last time.
Taipei's Longshan Temple
No one was allowed into the front gate and I had to walk through the side entrance. I wonder if this is because of the same belief as the temples in Japan, that the central walkway is where the god walks, and so we have to stay out of their way.
Interestingly, this temple was multidenominational. The main god was in the central shrine, and there were 165 other gods in alcoves and smaller shrines all around the outer edge.
Probably because of all the gods residing there, this temple had lots of places to place offerings.
Really, I just couldn't stop being amazed by the carved pillars in temples.
While I was wandering, women in robes lined up and entered the main shrine. The evening chanting was about to start!
Hundreds of worshippers knelt or stood, and chanted for over an hour. It wasn't like the monotonous chanting that I'm used to hearing, it was melodic and more like a song. I stood in the crowd and absorbed the atmosphere. An old lady offered me her extra prayer book so I could do the chants as well, but I said that I couldn't understand Chinese. She gave me a look like, "Then what are you doing here?"
I loved this temple. It was so noisy. There was the chanting, as well as people saying prayers and throwing fortune-telling blocks onto the stone floor (like the ladies in the photo). On the right in the foreground you can see wooden fortune sticks. People mixed them around and jumbled them up before pulling one out, adding to the noise and boisterous atmosphere. The temple wasn't somber and serene like Japanese temples, but a lively experience full of energy.
Shilin Night Market
The guidebook says if you only have one night to spend in Taipei, spend it here. I wholeheartedly agree. I was there until midnight and it was still jam-packed; you'd never know it was a Monday night. And it was full of locals there to have a good time, not tourists.
It was totally fun being caught up in the flow of the crowd. I didn't expect to see so many carnival game booths mixed in with the food vendors and shops. I bought so many clothes and a few accessories (they were one-third the price of what I can find in Japan!).
The food section had a lot of stinky stuff that I tried to avoid walking past. I did ended up getting this nice crunchy fried stuff wrapped in a sweet tortilla. It required some heavy pounding with a hammer!
One section I really didn't like were the glass cages with puppies and kittens. They looked much too small to be away from their mothers, and some of them walked on still shaky legs. Is a spontaneous purchase at a night market really the best place to buy a pet?
Police Patrol
The alleys were lined on both sides with shops. In the center of the alleys, people had set up rolling carts or suitcases on stands or blankets piled with goods. This was illegal, which I found out when policemen occasionally rode their motorbikes through the alleys.
It was a domino effect. When someone down the road quickly grabbed their blanket up, or rolled their cart into the nearest shop, or snapped their suitcase shut and fled into a store... everyone up the road immediately did the same. They were anxiously keeping watch while bargaining with customers. You should have seen the speed with which they disappeared. They ran and shoved to get out of the way and hide. In less than ten seconds, the entire alley was vacant and everybody (including shoppers) waited for the policemen to pass. This happened roughly every thirty minutes.
Head Wound and the Amazingly Kind Girl
The most awful thing I saw happened on my last night near the Shilin Night Market. I saw a man (late 40s?) lying on the side of the road with blood oozing from his head. His face was badly scratched and there was blood sprayed across his shirt and stomach and the road around him. I think he'd been hit by a car and rolled a bit before landing face-up, spread-eagle and unconscious.
It had just happened when I turned the corner. I saw a fashionable young woman (early-20s?) with long, brown wavy hair in a white blouse and tall heels carrying an expensive looking leather bag run to where he lay and heard her shouting something, probably yelling for someone to call the police. Her boyfriend stood next to her not knowing what to do.
It was the first time I'd seen blood coming from a head wound. It wasn't like blood, but like bright-red gel.
A woman from a shop ran to the man with a box of tissues. Together they held tissues to his head wound and everyone in the area got on their phones. Taxis stopped to see if they could rush him to the hospital, but the man was totally unconscious. When people saw that everything possible was being done at the moment, they moved far away without gawking. It was unexpected and strange for me to see this. I think it was out of respect for the man, and so that the ambulance could go straight to him when they arrived without having to dodge onlookers.
The man started wiggling his head and attempted to get up. The girl tried to calm him while holding tissues to his head and her boyfriend tried to keep him from moving, but the man sat up. He staggered towards a taxi and she ran in front of it, blocking the door with her body and arms. She wanted him to wait for the ambulance. He was woozy and almost fell, so she held him close and leaned his head on her shoulder, covering her white shirt in blood.
She cared so much for this stranger. She stood there with him in her arms until the ambulance arrived and made sure he got on. I was worried for him, too, but wouldn't have gone through all the trouble that she went through up until the moment he left. It gave me another opportunity to see Taiwanese kindness in action. It made me want to imitate what I saw, and make kindness an instinct rather than an decision, like how I saw so many times in Taiwan.
Other small examples of kindness during my trip
In Changhua a university student saw me looking at train schedules and came over to see if he could help me. He didn't know I was a foreigner until I spoke English. When he realized I wasn't Taiwanese, instead of worrying about the communication barrier he continued to do what he could to figure out the schedules with me.
I saw a young woman in the train station find a wad of bills that someone had dropped. She looked around frantically, ran to a few people to see if it was theirs (surprisingly they all said no after checking their pockets) and then she turned it in to the man at the information counter. I believe in any other country, she or someone else would have claimed it as their own.
I'd dropped my wallet while getting a bus ticket, and no one stole it in all the time it took for me to notice it was on the ground.
On trains people always offered their seats to the elderly or people with young children. In comparison, on Japanese trains I often see people close their eyes and pretend to be sleeping, so they don't have to notice elderly people boarding the train. Sometimes women even put their bags on the seat so no one can sit next to them (of course they move it when someone asks, but that they do this in the first place bugs me to no end), and once I saw a woman hold her umbrella sideways in her lap so no one could sit on either side of her, then closed her eyes and tilted her head down when people got on the train. I never saw anything like this in Taiwan. People seemed to be looking around all the time, as if they were eager to give up their seats.
At the night market, people bought things from the man in the wheelchair even if they didn't need them. You could get tissues for free, but people were buying them from him.
In general, people tried to talk with me until they realized I wasn't Taiwanese and couldn't understand. It made me feel like everyone was so friendly there.
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