By Lucy

By now, you may have noticed that the URL for my website changed. The renewal for my plan came up and I opted not to renew it. Firstly because I can’t afford it, and secondly because I don’t plan to keep writing this blog after I get back to Canada. This website should stay up and active after my plan expires, I just won’t be able to add to it.

I hate to say it, but I am looking forward to that day. I had another meeting with Gabe about my novel and I resent the effort required to maintain the blog. I’ve had to decline plans made by the other volunteers because I know I have to catch up on my writing. That’s a cross writers have always had to bear, but when you start to think you’d rather go than write, that’s always a sign to call it.

I’d been struggling to sleep for a few days. There was another occupant of my dorm who doesn’t sleep and has no consideration for others. I found her doing laundry at 3 in the morning! The hostel has free earplugs, but the problem is that she enters and exits the room every 20 minutes, and the beam of light from the door opening and closing wakes me up. Around 5 or so she finally went to bed, but she was usually up by 10. Just a dreadful human being.

It was beautifully sunny on the Thursday after Rotary ended. I stayed in the hostel and did nothing. Me and Vlad have been watching the odd episode of Community together, which is teaching him both English and American pop culture.

While I had some time to myself, I admit I was struggling with the idea of telling Vlad I like him as more than friends. He pointed out I talk about him coming to Canada “often” (he’s exaggerating) and I feel like he can tell, but he hasn’t mentioned it and I don’t want to. I’m being selfish, but I know a relationship with Vlad will mean thousands of dollars, hours spent filling out forms and arguing with lawyers and pulling my hair out, and it might come to nothing in the end, so I’m not going to entertain the idea.

I spent a couple of hours deliberately moving photos over to the app and deleting them off my phone. There’s a few I figure I can do without, like the hiking photos. Now that Rotary is over, I can delete that app off my phone as well. I managed to clear more than ten gigs off my phone before I lost interest and finally applied the update I had been delaying for a month. Phew!

I move to my volunteer hostel tomorrow. Let’s do laundry today, just in case.

In the late afternoon, it clouded over. I thought nothing of it until the alert flashed up on my phone as I was putting my wet laundry in the dryer.

“Watch out for extremely heavy rain. Take shelter immediately.”

Holy shit.

Wait, I need dinner!

I threw on my raincoat and dashed out into the rain, which was already so severe the street was flooding. I stopped at the alley, but everything was closed. I kept going to another bento box place. Some of the crossings, the water was so deep it was higher than my boots and my boots were soon filled with water.

It also drove all the cockroaches out of the deep, dark places they usually hide, because each street was lined with storeowners armed with brooms, sweeping legions of cockroaches into the streets.

When I got back, I hung up my stuff to dry and turned my boots over to dry out. They were still wet the next day. I changed into my pajamas, now fresh and hot out of the dryer, and sat down to write for a bit while rain lashed at the windows.

Friday; moving day.

I walked down for my usual breakfast of fried bread and eggs, but when I got there, the place was closed. What? I spun around in circles, trying to figure it out. A man walking by told me it was a holiday.

A holiday? What are we celebrating? I’d noticed the signs saying there was a dragon boat festival today, but I didn’t realize that was a state holiday. I walked back to the hostel and grabbed something from 7-Eleven for breakfast.

This place had sent me a message asking me when I was checking in, but hadn’t replied to my reply. I suspected and later confirmed that the owner has a very laissez-faire approach to her volunteers. I couldn’t remember when check-out was, but I’m pretty sure it was 11, so at 10 I went back to my dorm, packed, and headed out.

It was only a 30 minute walk across downtown, but in the blazing noon sun. I stopped a few times. It’s not like I was in a rush.

When I arrived, I waited for a few minutes before I discovered the woman at the desk is the owner, Mei. She doesn’t speak English and relies on Google translate, which makes me wonder why the ad says “beginner Chinese or fluent English” if no one there speaks English. I’m pretty sure she didn’t connect me to the person who was messaging her until I’d been there for 2 or 3 days. She gave me a key and had me sign a form saying I’d volunteer from 11-3 five days a week, don’t eat in the dorm, etc etc.

I went upstairs. I suspected and later confirmed that they sort of give us a room to ourselves, although guests can stay in our rooms. It’s a 6 bed dorm but it is by itself on the other side of the hallway. The fourth floor is the female-only floor.

There are four of us here; myself, a Spanish woman named Annalisa, an Italian man named Marco, and a German man named Martin. Annalisa has been in Taiwan about as long as I have and is very jet-lagged. Martin and Marco have been at this hostel for 3 months and are conversational in Chinese. Annalisa is older than me (I want to say around 40), Marco is my age, skinny and sort of sleepy, and poor Martin. He’s decided he’s never moving back to Germany and he hates any mention of it. He’s also jacked and super tall, maybe 6’4 or taller. I asked him once how he fits in the bed and he replied that he doesn’t, while Marco laughed in the background.

It’s my first time staying at a place with people who have been there for a long time. Usually I’m the one who’s in one place the longest. It was nice to find people who were a bit more like me.

Once I’d gotten myself organized, I hopped on the MRT and headed to the dragon boat festival, which was on the Keelung river, under the Dazhi bridge.

The walk along the bridge is nice.

They have this all figured out. There’s a bunch of food tents set up under the bridge, to shelter it from rain or sun. Seating set up all along the water for the competitors, of which many are international. This is a big draw. No seating for fans, though… lame.

I sit and watched the boats for about an hour, but the sun is too much and it’s not terribly exciting, if I’m honest. I’m surprised by how sparse the crowd is, when the city has shut down for the day; I figured everyone would be here.

Before I headed out, I stopped to grab some food. They have sausages, plus sausage casings stuffed with rice and cooked like a sausage, as a carb. A little sweet for my taste, but yummy.

As I walk back across the bridge, I notice a man in a bright blue Rotary shirt. Since he’s Asian, I say hi, figuring he’s a local. Imagine my surprise when he replies in a California accent. Oops, bad Lucy!

We stop and chat for a minute, when I just meant to be like “oh yeah, I was at the conference and now I’m sightseeing, blah blah”. This man – his name is Jinn – seems like he both wants to keep talking and would rather be anywhere else. He’s the outgoing president for his club and invites me to meet the incoming president, who’s meeting him at the dragon boat festival.

Sure, why not.

As we walk, he expresses surprise that I don’t hold a senior position in the club and I just went to the conference on my own prerogative. He also keeps complaining that he wants a beer.

We meet the incoming president, Ken, and his brother, who seems to have lost a few marbles. We chat for about half an hour and then I excuse myself, because I feel like I’m intruding and I also just want to go lay down. Jinn is still here for another week and we discuss hanging out later.

I get back to Ximen around 5:30 and notice a craft market nearby. Cool!

I wander in, expecting nothing, but I’m sidetracked in minutes. I find a booth selling stickers – so that’s my sticker acquired – and post cards, since the Rotary convention only gave me two. As I wander a bit further, I find a hair clip I am immediately taken with. It’s so me! It’s 300 NTD but I can’t resist.

Alright, back to my hostel.

Me and Jinn make plans to go to a night market at 8pm. The meeting location is a 40 minute walk, so at 7:20 I head out. At 7:30, I check my phone and notice he’s changed the location to a place I have to take the MRT to. Well, darn. Fortunately I’m right by another MRT station, so I hop on.

We meet at Songshan station, which is next to the Raohe night market. I get there a little early, and then Jinn and his friends are about ten minutes late. He brought with him another Rotary couple from California, Jeff and his wife.

The stairs are insane.

The problem with Raohe night market is that it’s one of the ones tourists get paid tours of, so it’s packed cheek to jowl. We can barely hear ourselves think, nevermind chat about what we see. Me and Jinn are having some fun, talking about things and trying things, and Jeff is sort of game, but his wife is clearly dazed and confused. She refuses to try anything and seems upset that there’s meat and sugar for sale.

At one booth, the three of us get mesmerized; a cranberry drink! We all order one. At another booth, I find one of those reusable cup caddies with Noface on it, so I buy it.

Towards the end of the my night, I finally find a booth selling fried pork blood. I’ve wanted to try this for a while, but it’s hard to find. As I accepted the congealed triangle, I was hoping for something black pudding, but it was not. It was heavily mixed with rice, and they coated it in coriander! Bleh! I ate a few bites, then stuffed it in my backpack and took it back to the hostel. I peeled the coriander leaves off the next day and reheated it and it was better.

“Wow, Lucy, going for the pig’s blood!” Jinn says, clearly impressed, which marked a turning point in our relations.

About an hour after we started, we were about halfway down one side of the market. Jinn and Jeff decided to park themselves at a bar and order beer, which is when I decided to bounce. This is too late and I’m not interested. I say goodbye to everyone and hit the road.

This bed kind of sucks. The bed is comfy and the mattress is fine, but where the railing is bolted to the bed is in the middle of the mattress, and like the princess and the pea, I can feel it.

Saturday, I didn’t do a lot. Just recovering still. I have a bit of a con cold again.

I wandered around the corner to buy breakfast. They didn’t have youtiao, but they had a rice bowl with an egg, whatever. It was a hearty breakfast, but the first bite was painful because whoever prepared it put all the spices on the rice, then put the whole egg on top which concealed the spice blob, so when I took a bite… fire! Once I’d stirred it up properly, it was much better.

This hostel posts the schedule the night before, but on Line, which means I had to download and sign up for Line… sigh.

Marco showed me how to do my first shift. They assigned me the first floor and the fourth floor, which he didn’t think was right on my first day, but that’s one of a few nitpicks about this hostel. The schedule isn’t done by Mei, the schedule is done by the paid front-of-house staff the night before, with no consistency. Some of them assign everyone one floor, some of them mix it up. They also don’t have proper cleaning equipment. No gloves or masks. For cleaning liquids, we get diluted bleach and rubbing alcohol. No glass cleaner, even though half the hallway is glass, no floor cleaner even though we are expected to mop the floor every day. Also, the floor, counters and showers are all unfinished concrete. The floor and the counters are hopelessly stained and it’s difficult to even sweep, because you can’t see the dirt. The shower floors are rotting and becoming gravel pits, which the scrubbing with bleach does not help. And without vinegar or another kind of cleaning liquid, we can’t clear the soap scum and hard water off the taps, which are coated in a thick layer of gunk. We’re expected to wipe down the toilet with toilet paper, and to dust everything.

I mean, dry dusting is useless here. If you don’t have air circulating – and we don’t – in an hour, all the dust will settle and it’ll look like you didn’t do anything. Maybe if we had pinesol, but we don’t have that either!

Again, not that I mind. With the diluted bleach, everything is functionally clean, and I’ll spill bleach on my bare hands and not care. But it doesn’t necessarily look clean, and the front-of-house staff have a nasty habit of doing evening rounds (you know, several hours after we’ve cleaned and the guests have checked in) and complaining to May that we haven’t cleaned, who then complains to us. Communication is a game of broken telephone; they basically leave it to Martin and Marco to explain the rules to me and Annalisa, and things get forgotten or confused. Me and Annalisa had been there for 2 weeks before we were told that we were only supposed to change our own sheets once every 2 weeks (so, once for our entire stay?). Not that we’d been changing our sheets every other day or something, either. Just frustrating.

Anyway, I muddled my way through my first shift. It took me 2 and a bit hours, stopping every so often to find Marco and ask him a clarifying question. In Taiwan, they fold the duvet lengthwise and lay it across the bed, interesting.

I walked back to my old stomping grounds for lunch. Too many new things, I wanted some comfort food.

In the afternoon, a guest checked in to mine and Annalisa’s room for the first and only time. She was an electric wheelchair user, presumably in our room because the beds lacks the wood paneling that narrows the opening of the other dorm. Based on her spastic motions, she probably had cerebral palsy, but it’s possible she had something else. I am not an expert.

Actually, one thing I noticed a lot in Taiwan is the number of disabled people out and about. Which I approve of. Everything here is just so thought out and accessible, it’s amazing.

For dinner, I walked down to the market me and Pat had gone to the other week. I wanted some stinky tofu!

The next day, I had breakfast from 7-Eleven. I really should go grocery shopping.

I got the first floor for chores again. Everyone said I could start the first floor at 10 since I don’t have to wait for guests to check out, but when I was most of the way done, the desk girl came over and told me volunteers are supposed to start at 11.

Communication.

There’s an old man who lives here, for some reason. He shares a dorm with the boys, has a permanent spot at one of the tables and spends most of the evenings on the massage chair. None of us are sure who he is or why he never leaves, but he’s obviously allowed to be here, so whatever. He doesn’t really speak English – when he wants to talk to one of us, he snaps at the front desk – but one day when he was in a good mood, he said “good morning” to all of us with a huge smile. He also can’t eat solid food because he’s missing teeth; Annalisa offered him some nougat and he declined. He mostly seems to eat plain rice and bananas.

After lunch, I went on a walk to the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial.

It was a brutally hot, sunny day. I regretted wearing jeans, but I was used to the slightly cool, rainy weather.

The size of the memorial is insane. Maybe it’s less impressive to Americans, but we don’t have anything like this in Canada and the shear scale of the buildings, which the photos do not capture, was breathtaking. I felt like an ant walking through an elephant’s house. Everything was massive!

The giant, unshaded courtyard was a problem too.

I found a small garden off to the side and walked through it. There’s a pond with koi, and you can buy a small bag of fish food for 10NTD from a vending machine and feed the fish. Herons stalked the ponds, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. There was also a small turtle trying to grab bites of the fish food.

Eventually I wandered on to the memorial itself.

The statue is cool, I guess. It’s a giant brass sculpture.

Under the main pagoda is a large museum. There’s two permanent exhibits, one on the life and times of Chiang Kai-Shek. The other, like Leo mentioned, is about not just the protests against him but about protests and revolutions in general, going back to the 1920’s. It was surprisingly comprehensive, including the Philippines, Chile, Czechia, and many more. As I scanned the list of first world countries, I was suddenly glad to be Canadian. We always joked in school that we don’t have sexy history – no war for independence – but the more you see the cost of war, the more you appreciate how empty our textbooks are.

The other exhibit I accessed was, I realized later, a Buddhist art exhibit, with the artist himself in attendance, Chiang Chui. I wandered in and was beset upon by staff, who wanted me to follow him on Instagram in exchange for a signed postcard. Sure, why not.

I will say, the art was pretty good. His textured, abstract paintings were much better than his attempts to do still life.

I headed across to the shop. They have “authentic” boba here, claimed to be the first store to do boba. They make the balls in front of you, so it’s super-fresh, and the cream tastes fresher as well. They also have this little “fortune game” that gave me “You don’t dream because you are a dream.”

Hmm… that’s funny. I actually don’t dream. Hmm…

Someone was doing a photoshoot in the courtyard now.

I walked back to the hostel. I noticed a bell on the street corner is an original construction, from the Japanese days.

I’ve been watching a lot of PBS Terra, specifically their “Weathered” segments about climate change. I also read an interesting climate change article about “ecosystem breakdown” that makes the salient point; what is an ecosystem “breakdown”? How do you measure the function of an ecosystem? We usually measure it in terms of what it does for us, humans, but that can be limiting. As Kinderman says, in order to have a notion of a line that’s straight, you have to have the notion of a line that’s crooked.

It’s hard not to fall into despair. Some people derided “Don’t Look Up” as cartoonishly on the nose, but we really are standing under the night sky, looking at an asteroid about to slam into Earth, and saying “someone will stop it”. No one’s coming, and the people in charge don’t care. Look at the heatwave in Europe!

Me and Annalisa stay up most nights, laying our bunks and talking across the divide. She’s a good roommate. We’re both fairly quiet, but the thick curtains and the fact that the air circulator is pointed at my bunk creating white noise probably helps too.

I’m still struggling to sleep, and I figured out the problem when I woke up with a fever. I have a con cold, again. I blame the Americans.

After I finished breakfast, I finally walked down to the store to grocery shop. I stopped at a pharmacy to grab iron and decongestants, which came to 700NTD. Jeez, that seems so expensive…

At the store, I grabbed some instant oatmeal. It’s a small store, but I’ve been to larger stores and couldn’t find a baking aisle, so I suspect they don’t exist. I found some sort of chocolate creme to add to my oatmeal. Some green tea and instant coffee.

I also splurge on this jar of lemon tea with honey. Just add a tablespoon to a mug of hot water and instant tea! It was a little expensive, but the small jar of regular honey next to it was even pricier, so I’ll take this. Vlad later pointed out the label was Korean. What a random find.

When I got back and showed the others what I bought, Martin criticized the sugar in my chocolate sauce. 3 grams, sure, says the guy who has Nutella on his shelf. Besides, if I need to cut extra sugar anywhere, it’s the honey in my tea.

The kitchen here is not great. At least Ismail had a gas cooker and shelf space. All 4 of us are stuck juggling the top shelf, and there’s only an induction hotplate and a rice cooker. Induction hotplates are fine but I find them very finnicky, especially if you don’t have the right cookware for them. There’s also limited space in the fridge and no containers for food storage, although I suppose I could wash and save some of my bento boxes.

I had the first floor again, but I just waited until 11 to start. It doesn’t really matter.

When I was tidying the fridge, I noticed an unlabeled cake inside. It was Mei’s, for us, because it’s her birthday. It’s not much, but it was a nice treat. After we all finished our chores, we sat down and had a slice together.

For dinner, I walked across Ximen square and found a chicken place. Taiwanese fried chicken is pretty legendary for being the size of a small child, for pretty cheap. I mean, I can’t remember the last time I ordered something from KFC that was cheaper than ten bucks, and this is five and honestly more than you can eat in one sitting. This place has a virtual order machine that you can put change into, so I didn’t need to try and explain my order at someone who doesn’t speak English. I got the deep fried broccoli as a side; I mean, it’s healthier than French fries!

In the evening, I was surprised when they posted the shifts for the next day and I wasn’t on it.

“Hey, Annalisa…”

“What? Oh.” She notices what I’m looking at, “Yeah, you have tomorrow and Thursday off.”

“How do you know that?”

“She posted the schedule for us, you have every Wednesday and Thursday off. Did you not read it?”

“That spreadsheet defies all common rules of spreadsheets.” I grumble. I go back and try to read it again. I’m still pretty sure it says I have Monday Tuesday off.

“Want some nougat? It’s a touristy thing here.” She says.

“Sure.”

She goes to the fridge and takes it out.

“Well… that’s gonna suck.” I observe.

“Why? I thought it goes in the fridge. It looks like cheese.”

“It’s not cheese, it’s confectionary. Have you never had nougat?”

“No.”

It’s hard as a rock. The nougat is also sandwiched between two scallion crackers. It’s not bad but it is strange. Why is nougat here?

Tomorrow is supposed to be the last sunny day for a few as well, so I text Jinn, “Want to do Juifen tomorrow?”

No reply.

I can’t sleep that night. I toss and turn for a bit before spending 3 hours sitting at the table in the hallway. I don’t even feel sleepy.

Jinn replies at 3AM, asking when and where we are meeting.

At 7:30, I rolled out of bed feeling like death.

Actually, I was in that weird place of sleep deprivation where you don’t feel tired anymore, but I know I wasn’t firing on all cylinders.

To go or not to go.

I replied to him, “We have to head out earlier.” Fully expecting to not get a reply until 10 or later.

To my surprise, he replied right away, “When is the next bus?”

Technically, there were two between now and 9, but we wouldn’t make them. “9” I reply. “At Ximen station for me. I don’t know where yours is.”

“I can meet you at 9 at Ximen.” He says.

Alright.

I walk across to the 7-Eleven and buy my favourite pretzel bun, which is on sale. I still have instant coffee, so I steal Marco’s disposable mug – he buys a fresh coffee every morning because he’s Italian and a snob – wash it, and make myself a coffee to-go. After double checking that I have everything I might need for the day, I walk down to the bus stop and wait.

The bus actually comes at 9:15, but I always tell people an earlier time in case they are chronically late, like Jinn seems to be. He shows up shortly after 9 wearing a different vibrantly blue Rotary shirt.

We have a pleasant bus ride, weaving through the mountains to Jiufen. Jiufen is a lovely place for a day trip from Taipei because it’s only about an hour away, up in the mountains. It has an iconic covered market all along “Old Street”. The rumor mill says it’s the inspiration for Spirited Away, but the rumor mill is wrong because that was inspired by Japan, not Taiwan. Nonetheless, there’s lots of Spirited Away merch in the market.

Turns out, Jinn has already been here, but he likes coming back. I was correct the other day when I thought he looked Taiwanese; his parents are from Taiwan, his father one of those who lived through the Japanese occupation and speaks Japanese. He comes back to visit every 2-3 years, but he can never convince anyone to come with him. He says he knew I was legit when I ordered the pig blood and ate it.

The first thing we get is a mango slush. He didn’t bring much and he’s hot already… it is hot, even in the covered market.

The stores here are a little more unique than the other touristy markets. Most of the stores do different things from each other, although quite a few of them offer nougat, with free samples. We tried some stores samples and then admitted to feeling guilty because we had no intention of buying any. I did buy these snacks that were dried seaweed coated in pork floss, which was sweet and salty in the best way. The vendor at this store also asks if I’m French; something about my face.

“Watch out for that.” I say, when he tries something that has sailfish in it.

“What, the shark meat?”

“Yeah. ‘Cause sharks are predators, it’s not good to eat too much…” Because mercury is bio-accumulative, its at the highest concentration in sharks, along with any other nasty chemicals the shark has ingested.

“Ah, gotcha.”

Jinn’s happy here. He usually comes with the tours, by which time the market is packed. We got here earlier than the tours, so some of the vendors are still closed, but it’s also a lot emptier and we can actually hear ourselves think.

One stall is selling cooked sea-snails, still in the shell.

“Oh, I want to try!”

This vendor doesn’t speak English, because westerners don’t usually want to try it. Jinn orders for me.

It’s not bad. It’s like calamari. It kept trying to slide back inside the shell as I took bites of it. The intestine in the middle is really chewy and I end up not throwing that bit out. The ladies wash the shell and give it back to me as a souvenir.

At one point, Jinn laughs, “They asked if you’re my girlfriend.”

“I get that a lot.” I reply. Jinn’s probably old enough to be my dad.

“Really? You do?”

“Oh, yeah. No one believes an unattached woman travels like me, so they just assume I’m someone’s girlfriend.”

The next store sells alcohol. I’m on the fence about it, but then I notice a plum wine. Oh, that has to be good.

I ask for samples, and before long Jinn is talking in Chinese to the vendor while I stand nearby awkwardly. This is the one problem with going with someone else; sometimes you’re stuck waiting for them. I just wanted to buy the one 150 ml bottle of plum wine and keep walking, but he chats for like half an hour, which I understand none of it. He decides to buy a couple himself. Each bottle is 380, but he talks her down to all three for 900. Fair enough!

A short distance away is another wine seller. Jinn stops to sample the orange wine. We’ve had enough little samples of 15% wine that he’s got the Asian flush coming on. He chats with this vendor as well and I’m losing patience. He tries to excuse himself by saying he’ll be back later to buy some, and she unleashes a torrent of angry Chinese at him.

“I don’t speak Chinese and even I know she just called you on your shit.” I laugh.

By now, the market is starting to fill up with tours and my stomach is growling.

I pick a random Japanese restaurant. We go sit on the second floor and order food; I get an “assortment soup”, Jinn gets some dumplings, some nigiri, and a giant beer.

About halfway into the beer, something unlocks in Jinn’s brain. He starts venting about how much he dislikes it in the US and other things I won’t mention out of respect for his privacy. I’ll admit, I started it by making a few snarky comments about how intolerant the US is, but it’s depressing how cartoonishly close-minded even the other Rotarians are. Almost every white guy I talked to at the conference – which, admittedly, is not a comprehensive sample – had very little experience with Asian culture and was confused and grossed out. By contrast, all the Asian people felt right at home, and I felt like I had more in common with them. But then, I’ve always despised the notion of “American exceptionalism”. They’re not exceptionally anything except ignorant.

It also marked a new appreciation for how multicultural Canada is. Even Calgary is more multicultural than most American cities, it seems.

Anyway, we finished eating lunch and finished touring Old Street. We could have done more walking around Jiufen, but we were behind where I wanted to be on the schedule (and this is why I go on trips by myself).

We walk around the edge of Jiufen to Songde Park, which I wanted to check out. The park was cool, although even Jinn didn’t know what it was about because the statuary was too worn to be legible. We climbed up and around the moss-covered steps, like wandering into the spirit world, which was a lot of fun.

After that, we got into an argument about which bus to take to Keelung. I had looked up which bus to take online, but Jinn consulted our lord and savior AI, and after several minutes of arguing I agreed to take the bus he picked, but I was very tempted to get on my bus and say “see ya later!”

Needless to say, his bus was not the correct one, although it is hard to say how much of a difference it made. We did end up having to wait several minutes in a different town for the correct bus.

Keelung is noteworthy for several reasons, but the main one is all the geological formations in the area. We debated and eventually decided on Yehliu Geopark, so once we got to the bus stop in Keelung we had to dash to the next bus stop. Considering it took an hour to get to Jiufen, more than an hour to get to Keelung, and another hour out to the geopark, we spent quite a bit of the day talking on the bus.

‘I should warn you before we get there, I like rocks.” I say.

“Oh yeah? Tell me about it.”

So I rambled off a bunch of geological trivia off the top of my head.

Yehliu geopark closes at 6, because that’s when the tide comes in. Taiwan has a normal tide like Nova Scotia. So we had about 2 hours to explore, but that’s all we needed anyway. “Zone 3” requires to rent a guide, and both of us were feeling all the walking from the day.

After we buy our tickets and walk through the turnstile, I can’t contain myself anymore. I run screaming down the steps as Jinn watches in bemusement.

This place is an exercise in what Peggy’s Cove should do. They have the line on the ground clearly demarcated, and an attendant in a high-vis vest armed with a whistle, to make sure people respect the line. It’s such a simple thing and better than a fence.

Anyway, the rocks are pretty cool! I couldn’t find an explanation for what they are, but I’m pretty sure they’re not limestone. Most of the formations appear to be iron – volcanic or meteoric? – that the stone is weathering around. The part you walk on is technically above the tide line, but not above the height of storm surges/ king tides/ tsunamis, hence the slow rate of wear.

The Queen’s head in particular is wearing fast. I’d imagine in the next 10-20 years it’ll snap, just looking at the pictures across the decades.

Jinn’s a decent photographer.

We also discovered that Yehliu isn’t a Chinese or Taiwanese name. Originally it was called “Punto Diablos” by the Spanish because the treacherous tides tended to ground ships. Overtime the name got corrupted to Ia-los, and then Yehliu.

There’s also a cave under the footpath that’s only accessible during the neap tide, and they hold ceremonies for the Goddess Matsu during that time.

The sun descended and we headed out. Across the road is an aquarium and we could hear the sea lions loudly barking for dinner.

Thanks to Jinn, we got on the wrong bus again. Eventually we ended up on the right bus and got back to Keelung.

One thing he really wanted to do before we headed back was go to a night market in Keelung, so we walked down. He’d already been once this trip, but I won’t begrudge him the opportunity to gorge on all the things he won’t be able to find in the US. Plus, if I’m being honest, walking around with Jinn was sort of like having a free guide, since he can read Chinese.

The first things we got were these buns made of laminated dough, filled with scallions and chicken. Jinn bought mine, which was nice of him.

We tried a few other things, but then he got bit by the bug for potstickers, which is when I learned potstickers are Taiwanese. I love potstickers; three years ago I got all of my friends addicted to them. Unfortunately, the only booth that was selling them had a line-up so long it took us an hour to get to the end of it. After a bit, I left Jinn on his own and went to get something else, a banana crepe. No it’s not super healthy but I wanted something sweet. I walked around on my own for a bit.

Eventually Jinn got his potstickers (I stole one. It was fine) and we kept walking. He explained to me about a few Chinese characters; this one is rice, this one is noodles, so at least I can tell what a store serves at a glance.

By the time we walked back to the bus station, it was 10 PM, although at least, with no traffic on the road the bus got from Keelung to Taipei main station in half an hour.

You’d think, after all that walking around, I would have fallen asleep immediately, but you are mistaken. I couldn’t turn my brain off and I ended up staying up until 3 AM.

Pray for sleep!