Hello internet.

I’m still wandering about, squandering my savings.

After my 3 months in Japan I moved on to do 3 months in Taiwan, which is a country that is neither Thailand or China.

One of my first days in Taiwan I was at a night market, standing in line to buy some quail-eggs-on-a-stick before I got bored of the tiresome chore of waiting and began to wander away.

Soon after, someone tapped me on the shoulder and I turned to see two dudes holding a bag full of quail-eggs-on-a-stick. They pushed the bag into my hands and ran off screaming, “NO ENGLISH-YYYY!!” before I had a chance to terrify them with a “thank you”.

Thus set the theme for Taiwan: awkwardly/wonderfully/overwhelmingly generous people on a weird, beautiful island.

I realized pretty early on that it’d be difficult to write anything about traveling Taiwan.

You see, Taiwan is the best one.

And by ‘one’ I mean country and while I understand that I haven’t been to the vast majority of countries, – it does not matter.

Taiwan is still the best one.

The people, the food, the scenery, the bountiful convenience stores, etc.

But. I know. –

There are few things more useless than positivity on the internet and I really have no interest in having you read anything about the #blessed #wanderlust of Bethany fucking Ellington.

Ferreal tho~

One time I went in for an interview at a modeling agency in Taipei and they asked me if I’d ever worked in Milan and immediately offered to sponsor my work permit and I blushed and giggled and said, “oooh, staaaaaaahp”.

#grateful #inspired #eatpraylove

You see that? You hated that.

You just finished another mindless 8-hour day at work and you’d much rather revel in the endless disappointment of some vague acquaintances’ facebook nonsense than read about me having a nice time in the pits of Asia.

It just doesn’t seem fair to leave out Taiwan, tho.

So let try to focus on the negative.

To be fair, I only ended up at a modeling agency because my strict travel budget has turned me into a slimy, opportunistic street gremlin.

Other clawing, mercenary schemes include begging:



Here I am “selling photos” (re: begging).

People offer monetary donations and in exchange I give them a picture and regale them with an inspiring story, – assuring them that the abandoned dreams of their youth still flourish and soar within me as the free little butterflies they were born to be.

Afterwards, I lick my thumb and count my money like a world-weary baroness.

Also, I briefly returned to the job to which I’d promised myself never to return.

The one I hate the most.

Elementary English teaching:



Butt.

At one point I told one of these bastards that “thirteen” didn’t count as “thirty” and he started screaming at the top of his lungs and raised a chair above his head to hurl at me.

WHAT ARE CHILDREN?!?!WHAT IS WRONG WITH THEM?!?WHY DO THEY EXIST!?!

Taiwan is a popular cyclist destination as there is (kinda) (supposedly) a bike path around the whole island. There is NOT a bike path around the whole island but it is still pleasant. Or rather the east coast is extremely pleasant and the west coast is mainly a congested mess that people bike through just so they can tell people that they biked around Taiwan. Which is precisely what I did.

I started on the west coast and it looked like this:







But did come with some nice coastal side routes:







At one point, for a break from the highways, I decided to take a detour to the coast to watch the sunset.

What I found was a wind-turbine dotted swamp.

On the way back to the road, I passed a massive, rank garbage incinerator and two bats hovered terrifyingly close to my face for the duration.

Here, the internet has preemptively reenacted said scene for you.

My first volunteer gig was a hundred kilometers or so into the west coast route. It’s a restaurant/resort on a beautiful mountaintop run by three generations of a rull wonderful Taiwanese family.



The Wu family being great.



The water below these lounge chairs is a densely populated frog pond.

I once caught one of the sons putting his cigarette out in it. When I asked him why this was his ashtray of choice, he told me the tadpoles have it too easy and he is helping to build their character.

He also strongly encouraged me to read The Power of Now.



My favorite among them was A’gong, the dementia-addled grandfather. The family is relaxed and kind enough to not put him in a home and instead has him live in their care at the resort. A’gong spends his time walking from one restaurant table to the next, helping himself to the customers’ teas and reminding everyone to eat well and stay warm. Sometimes he forgets where the bathroom is and pees in the middle of the restaurant. The family, being chill as hell, just laughs it off.

They have very bad reviews on TripAdvisor.

My job there consisted mainly of sign-making and enjoying really nice coffee, tea, chocolate, wine, food, views, and resort rooms, etc.













If by some chance you ever want to volunteer in Taiwan, I’d highly recommend Roll In Farm. It’s lovely, easy, and the over-worked manager, Jedy Su, is a saint as well as a badass.

On my way to Roll In, I’d spent a night at a cheap roadside love motel. Whilst wandering the halls in search of potable water, something big and black flashed across my peripherals. It stopped for a split second and I recognized it as the largest, fastest spider I had ever seen in my life. I ran back to my room and prayed to any available higher powers that I never run into that thing again.

A few nights into my stay at Roll In I was sitting on my bed, probz watching Adele’s new video for the 5th time in a row, when suddenly that giant black flash was ON MY BED RIGHT THE FUCK IN FRONT OF ME.



There it is.



I jumped around screaming and then got the daughter to come chase it out of my room with a pink pool queue.

This string of near-spider-experiences lead me to my second volunteer gig – a yoga studio in the woods that was actually just a giant spider zoo with beds.

I first saw one was on the wall outside my bedroom. By this time I was a hardened enough to pretend not to be terrified.



That was until I got up out of bed in the dark to turn the fan down and my flashlight settled on the green glowing eyes of the spider that had followed me into my room to watch me sleep.

I was in a sort of yoga-warehouse with 9 different empty bedrooms so I decided to find a new room for the rest of the night. What followed was a fucked-up nightmare in which each room was inhabited by progressively larger, scarier spiders.

I did not sleep for my first few nights there.

Here’s another one that was tryna get at me through my bedroom window. I tried to close the window, hoping to push it outside. This only served to crush some of its legs and violently anger it. – – It flew out and chased me.



Some other night I was brushing my teeth when I saw, on the wall next to me, yet another giant spider. This one had a huge, still-alive cockroach rammed into its maw.

The cockroach looked into my eyes and whispered, “help” before the spider ran off into the shadows.

I made a drawing of this in my journal that I’ll include here so you can better understand my trials:



Anyway, the yoga studio was run by a dude named NoNo who is fascinating man and a master of everything (esp Asian stuff); kung-fu, tae kwon do, boxing, yoga, meditation, chiropractorin’, accupunture, sports massage, permaculture, etc, etc.

One time I saw him pop a cork on a needle, gouge it into his hand, and set it on fire. For his “chi”.



Anyway, Nono was super great and fascinating and my work at the studio was just to tame the street puppies born on his property.





There they are.

But.

Back in Japan, during some cycling days, I’d learned that I could go about one week without much social interaction before it started to get to me. One and half weeks and the conversations and narrations in your own head stop — you no longer have anything to say to yourself — and you’re left with nothing but the symptoms of a budding situational depression.

By the time I’d arrived at the yoga studio I had not talked with another native/capable-of-subtleties English speaker for seven long, long weeks.

I was going right out of my fucking mind.

Regular-ass people, I do not recommend extended stays in the Taiwanese countryside.

Worm-y mole people, I know some places you might like.

So, to remedy the situation, I cut my yoga studio time short and I pedaled off to Kaohsiung where I met 700+ foreigners and talked at them for a record 168 hours straight, -only stopping occasionally to gasp for air.

Thanks, guys.

Then I started the east coast.

The east coast of Taiwan is a mixture of Ireland and the Caribbean.

As in – super green and super blue.

Plus lotsa monkeys.







Rull stunning.

You should do it.

I found that while biking and biking and biking, your body goes into flow and your mind wanders off with no real direction or distraction, – revealing your baseline psyche to be as unstable and inane as you always feared it was.

Brain while riding:

-Remember that time so-and-so said that funny thing? (*insert LOL*)

– Remember that time whathisface said that shitty thing? (*insert grumbling*)

– OMG, What if so-and-so DIED?!? (*insert actual fucking crying*)

– Am I hungry? (*insert quizzical expression*)

– Long, drawn-out, entirely improbable, hypothetical situation in which I can play every instrument in the band and sing at the same time. (*insert confusing series of expressions*)

[Repeat – only pausing to refuel with 7-11 tea eggs]

So, anyway.

Taiwan was lovely and it taught me a lot of important lessons:

1.) The hardest part of being vegetarian is not being able to share your food with cute, ungrateful street dogs.

2.) After the novelty of cultural experiences wears off, stinky tofu just tastes like someone farting directly into your mouth.

TL;DR

-Taiwan is the best

– Yun Huang is even more the best (also Ikuyo Kito is the best, too)

– Taiwan really likes to set things on fire* and is covered in tiny lizards and giant spiders

*here’s Taiwan setting an entire boat on fire – complete with 8 million fireworks to really rub in the fire theme.





Thanks, Taiwan!

PS: here’s a Taiwanese parrot eating a str8 up chili pepper like it has never given a shit about anything in its life.

