Taiwan, the entry point for the Asian half of our trip, was on our itinerary primarily because Tom’s nephew, John, lives there with his wife Hui Ching and son Max and it seemed crazy to go halfway around the world and not go there to see them.
We had not seen them since 2016, when they came to the UK for a visit. At the time, Max was a shy sixteen year old who was not confident about speaking English, so we were unprepared for the mature, outgoing and fluent English speaking 23 year old Max who surprised us at the airport with his girlfriend Pei.
John and Hui Ching had sent Max, Pei and a car to pick us up and drive us into Taipei, and this was only the beginning of the incredible hospitality and care they took of us for the week we were in Taiwan.
We arrived in the evening, so settled into our downtown hotel room—which was small but quite nicely appointed in a minimalist, oriental way.(Note the desk already full of all the cords we brought to recharge mutiple devices, watches, toothbrushes, etc..the price of travel in a digital age!)
The next morning, we sampled our first Asian breakfast served at the hotel. There was a huge range of choices of unidentifiable rice, meat, fish and vegetable dishes that I was unable to try because of gluten issues. There was some fruit and rice congee (a kind of unsweetened rice porridge) that I could eat, and Tom opted for toast and fruit, unable to face the kinds of things we’d normally eat for dinner at 8 in the morning.
With the lack of English among the hotel staff and the complete lack of accommodation for Western diets at breakfast, it began to dawn on us then that Taiwan gets very few Western tourists (it is popular with Japanese and South Korean tourists, apparently) and this impression was magnified throughout our visit.
The scarcity of tourists from Europe and America meant that we were very visible to the Taiwanese and they could not have been friendlier or more helpful to us. Any time we were out in public and stopped to look at our phones or a map, people would immediately come up to us and ask us if we needed help.
Even with limited English, they were unfailingly kind and friendly. Once, in a temple, when we stopped to read a sign in English, a woman came up with a tissue in her hand and motioned to Tom. We had no idea what this was all about, but she shyly came closer and then gently wiped a miniscule speck of bird poop that had landed on the back of Tom’s shirt with the tissue—she must have seen it happen and felt compelled to clean it up!
Little acts of kindness from strangers were repeated throughout our visit, but nothing could match the kindness and attentiveness that John and Hui Ching lavished on us that week.
After breakfast, they met us at our hotel and we walked a bit around the neighbourhood to a nice restaurant Hui Ching had picked out. This was my first taste of the culinary challenge ahead of me in Asia—trying to make Asian people with little or no English understand I can’t eat wheat, barley or anything with gluten—including soy sauce. And practically everything in Taiwan is made with soy sauce.
Hui Ching was fantastic, checking with waiters everywhere we went and picking restaurants that would have things I could eat, which helped enormously. She even found a gluten free restaurant card online in Chinese (with versions in other languages) that I could show waiters in every country I visited, which has been a huge help when eating out.
After a delicious (and gluten-safe) lunch, Hui Ching hired a car and whisked us into the hills surrounding the city, where we saw the first blossoming trees of spring—a startling reminder that we had moved back into the northern hemisphere.
The other reminder was the weather- while we had gotten used to the Australian heat, Taipei was quite cool- only in the low 20s centigrade. Taiwanese people were all dressed in heavy sweaters and puffer jackets, while Tom and I had only our summery clothes (though Tom had one pair of long trousers I had only summer dresses, skirts and shorts).
We felt a bit out of place and even a bit chilly as the afternoon rolled on, as the only warm thing either of us had was a hoodie. Nevertheless, the mountains were scenic and even tropical looking, though the distant views of Taipei were obscured by smog—something that would plague us throughout Asia, sadly.
We next visited the summer home of Chiang Kai Shek, now a restaurant, which was interesting and really lovely—we enjoyed it very much.
From there, we went to visit an area of flower farming where you can stroll among the growing beds. When we were there, the featured flower was calla lilies, growing in ponds by the thousands.
At one particularly beautiful spot, you could pay a small amount and have your photo taken with a bouquet against the backdrop of the flowers (and some rabbit statues?!) so Hui Ching arranged for me and then Tom and me to be photographed by the proprietress, who fancied herself quite the Annie Liebowitz—she must have taken 30 photos, posing us, saying ‘beautiful, beautiful’ over and over, changing our positions, the backdrop, shooting landscape, portrait, at an angle—it was absolutely hilarious!
After we left the flower farm, we drove to a thermally active area of the park we were in, which was quite impressive. The hillside was belching steam, pools of mud were bubbling, and the whole area smelled and sounded like the end of the world, as these kinds of places often do.
We really got a sense of the variety of landscapes around Taipei and spent a really nice day with John and Hui Ching, whom I was getting a chance to know a bit better.
We went back to their apartment for a bit to see how a family of three lives in crowded, bustling Taipei (with lots of built-in cupboards, and custom made storage pieces, it turns out) and where Hui Ching introduced us to some new fruits—something that looks a bit like a green apple but is very crisp, juicy, not too sweet and tastes nothing like an apple (with the English name of ‘jujube’), green guava (very popular in Asia) and a red bell-shaped fruit called a wax apple or bell apple, that again, tastes nothing like an apple but is crisp and sweet.
Then, we were in for a typically Taiwanese meal of Hot Pot, which was something completely new for us. Our group, which included Max and Pei, sat at a large table that had a sunken metal pot at each place into which was poured hot broth (or water if you preferred). At each seat there was a dial to control the heat of the broth, which was brought to boiling and kept at a simmer.
Then, plate after plate of paper thinly sliced raw lamb and pork were brought, along with heaping bowls of greens and vegetables, plates of succulent scallops, chunks of raw salmon and other fish, mushrooms, disks of fresh corn—so many, many delicious things! Everyone helps themselves to the various ingredients, placing them in their own individual hot pots, then retrieving the cooked meats, fish and vegetables and eating them with rice and various spicy sauces. It was hectic and busy and a lot of fun, not to mention delicious!!
The following day, Hui Ching had to work so John took us to the National Museum, where we spent the entire afternoon looking at the collection—most of which was brought from China in the 1940s—including bronzes, ceramics, paintings, jades, calligraphies—a real treasure trove of Chinese art from across the centuries.
There were some really cool digital displays as well- a kind of VR screen where you could ‘enter’ a Chinese painting and ‘fly’ through it by leaning right and left (Tom only partially got the concept).
There was also a digitally animated scroll painting that I found delightfully entertaing and thoroughly charming. (best viewed with sound off unless you like the sound of crying babies..)
We had a snack at the musuem cafe–where we were served the prettiest capuccino ever, and also got a chance to stroll around in a beautiful garden next to the musuem.
That evening at a beautiful restaurant we were treated to a really spectacular meal of Cantonese duck—succulent pieces of duck meat and crispy skin which are enclosed in thin pancakes spread with hoisin sauce topped with green onion and rolled up.
Sadly, I could only eat the duck, but Tom thoroughly enjoyed his first experience of the iconic dish.
Walking around Taipei was an experience. Like most (or all?) Asian cities, it is a feast for the senses. Lots of traffic (especially motorscooters) shops and restaurants spilling out onto the sidewalks, market stalls covering the streets–lots of color and sound and new smells and sights.
At the end of the evening, I was feeling quite tired and had a sore throat, which I didn’t think anything of….until I awoke the next morning feeling as if I had been hit by a truck. Dreading the worst, I took a covid test, and sure enough, after four years of avoiding it, covid finally caught up with me.
We had planned to go to a small village on the coast that day, but when we called John and Hui Ching with the news, plans changed. They went into full remedy mode with Chinese medicine, sore throat drops, hot pads, facial masks, fruit, and masks. I basically just slept the entire day, while Tom went out with John and Hui Ching for dumplings and also found a laundromat and did our laundry.
I felt terrible upsetting their carefully made plans for our visit, but they were typically generous and kind and just tried to make me feel better. Thankfully, my case of covid was pretty mild and the next day we checked out of our hotel as planned and masked and armed with an array of medicines, embarked on a two day trip to the ancient capital of Tainan on the southwest coast of Taiwan.
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