Today’s weather is like Donald Trump at a charity golf tournament in July 2006 (fuckin’ stormy) so I’ve decided to finally sort out all of my pictures and stuff. It’s also exactly one year after I landed into Taiwan, so it feels like the right time to let you in on what the bloody hell I’ve been up to.

In the short amount of time that I’ve been here I have seen quite a bit of change. When I flew out of the UK, June 2022, everything was pretty much ‘back to normal’ with regards to COVID-19 stuff. Taiwan, however, was still very much in the full swing of things. It was closed to tourists (the only people allowed into the country were residents returning home and “aliens” that were entering on a working VISA) and it still had strict rules and regulations in place. This meant that for a while, for myself and the few other touristy types that had made the decision to move here or stay here during a pandemic, the country felt like our own to explore. We got our own sneak peak behind the COVID-curtain.

This post isn’t going to be about COVID-19, but, not mentioning it would be a massive oversight, like Samuel Pepys not mentioning the Great Fire in his diaries. Or Dean Gaffney’s extended memoirs having no mention of his time as Robbie in Eastenders.

Another thing I should mention early on is the political tensions. Tensions that by even attempting to write in depth about them, I’d probably make worse. From my perspective, and for the purpose of whatever this writing will be by the time it’s finished, here’s how I’m dealing with stuff. I’m just riding it out here for as long as I can, I’m not going to bury my head in the sand, but at the same time, it makes no sense to go hunting for horrible possible outcomes in your head. You just scare yourself for no reason. Like typing “commute in ‘my city‘, terrorist attack likelihood” into a search engine. Of course it’s going to give you mad results.

I’m just following the advice and really enjoying things for the time being, but, if anything does get really bad, then, frankly, I’ll just bounce. I reckon there’d more than likely be a “things are heating up here lads, if you don’t want to get involved then now’s the time to jog on” message before anything truly abhorrent happened. Maybe I’m just naive.

For peace of mind, the political tensions here go way back, people are very accustomed to the odd flare up now and again. Last year, when Russia invaded Ukraine, certain types back home started putting together their doom and gloom narratives, “well, this is World War 3 init?! First it’s this, then that Chinese fella is gonna get handsy with Taiwan, then the septics’ll pile in…then blah, then blah, we’re all fucked”. You know what, they might be right, but, as things stand, everything is completely fine. And it’s been fine for my entire time here. Who knows what’ll happen in the future? But, if you live your life afraid of the “what if”s then you’re going to end up doing fuck all and never leaving your house. At least, that’s what I think, get out and see the world while you can.

Anyway, for the politics, I’m not your guy, or for the ins and outs of COVID-19 policy for that matter. This is just going to be me chatting some shit and catching you up on some of the stuff that I’ve seen and done since moving here last year. I’ll share some pictures as well.

For those ducking out here, here’s a summary, I’m safe, I’m happy and although giving a pretty shit first impression, Taiwan has really grown on me.

For those in for the long haul, let’s start at the beginning, the arrival airport madness and the compulsory quarantine…

Arrival: TPE Airport

It was a good but long flight (I’ll tell the story about my lost bag another time). I’d had a little stopover in the new Istanbul airport on the way which was nice, just enough time there to get a bit of food and to be bent over by the rates at the Bureau de Change. I got out about £30 worth of New Taiwan Dollars for about £50. Anyway, all pretty normal, as normal as flights during COVID times could be.

The plane landed in Taipei airport, TPE. All still normal. Getting out of the plane and into the airport though, it felt very strange, mad actually. I came up the ramp thing and out into the corridor to the terminal, the lights seamed much brighter than a usual airport. Walking straight into clinical bright lights, like being in a dentist chair. It was like walking out into a mad old sci-fi hospital, everyone there was in the full beekeeper, storm trooper, morph suit hazmats… I’ll tell you what it was like, it was like a mixture of an old asylum but filled with…the people in the Truman show when he’s trying to drive out, testing the limits of his bubble, and he goes too far and they pretend he’s gone into a radiation area. Pretty intimidating.

Then you go through what smells like a wall of sanitiser spray gas (probably because that’s what it was).

There was a multi-step compulsory entry process procedure, first, you had to buy a new SIM card, solely for tracking and messages from the government and the Taiwanese health check police patrol. You get that, get it registered, it’s all very quick and confusing and in Chinese (more about that later). The next thing was the COVID-19 station where you get the normal nose and mouth swab test thing. Then, you’re given a specimen container…”specimen, what the fucks this?”.

Then, you’re ushered around into the ‘specimen collection area’, (I’ve spoken with other people that went through the process/airport around this time and they didn’t see this but I swear one of the doors to a room was open and it had a plastic chair in there, like a school chair, a wooden desk with some of the varnish worn away on it, a gammy looking bar of soap, and a completely mirrored wall from which there were two massive gloves hanging down, gloves that looked like big unrolled five chambered condoms, like those gloves they put on before sticking their hand into a cow… did I imagine it? Probably? Was I shitting myself, definitely) into the booth and the specimen they wanted was just a saliva specimen – one of the easier specimens to collect but still pretty disgusting, who’d have thought that collecting saliva would be a ten stage process!

Anyway, things did run pretty smooth, the last thing to do was go through the document checks; passport, visa, work permits etc. I’d come prepared with all of the paperwork and stuff that they needed. It was a big relief when it was all accepted. I love the feeling when the customs official gives you the nod and they do the clunky passport stamp thing, dab-dab-DOOSH! “Yes! I’m in!”.

No freedom yet though, the cabs, after all of the checks and stuff were done, the admin’ forms and that, the spit specimen, I went outside and was hit by that unpleasant, boiling hot, tropical, 100% humidity-hot curtain of outside air. Horrible, I started sweating immediately and didn’t stop until around the end of September.

Outside, were loads of cab drivers, all pretty normal looking, but, masked up and wearing the full length thin yellow plastic suits, like you’d where at a theme park to stop getting splashed, like an improvised outfit of a minion, made with carrier bags and tape… imagine how sweaty they must be.

I chose the friendliest looking driver, got into his murder-prepped cab with plastic on everything and tried to mime where to go. After a bit of confusion, I did a flash of the paperwork and all became clear. Off we went. It was a long journey as well, but you’ve just got to trust the procedure…luckily as well I’d gotten the expensive cash in Istanbul because it turned out to be just enough to cover the journey!

Next stop, the quarantine hotel.

Quarantine

The quarantine hotel was next level (by my standards anyway). I usually stay in hostels so this was a weird but pleasant treat. Look up the Tango hotel in XinYi, Taipei, the slogan should be “you don’t need two to Tango”. My days were spent either training for work (zoom calls, making little videos and stuff), sitting in the hot tub watching wildlife programmes (the only programmes I could enjoy on the TV without knowing Chinese), sitting by the window watching the storms/ traffic/ people going about their business or eating the food (left outside of the room three times a day).

The room

Views from the window

Quarantine food

The food was actually very nice in quarantine, most of the time it was meat/fish with a side of veg’/salad/rice/noodles/a combination. Accompanied by a gruel consistency yellow/brown/grey liquid and a non-water drink. See if you can clock the garlic bread (sweet, cake-like bread, with garlic butter on it).

Bad meals

The bad meals were when they’d resemble something you’d recognise, but you’d look closer and there would be a disappointing twist. They never tasted bad, the disappointment came because you’d convinced yourself it was something else.

Fancier meals

Paranoia

So, the room, top notch, the food, nice, the hot tub, no working jets but still excellent. What were the downsides of quarantining? For me, it was all of the stuff in the room that looked like it could be surveillance equipment. I went a bit mad (between hot tub visits) looking for cameras/ doing little dances for the cameras/ singing for the people watching… Have a look at this stuff and see if you agree that there might have been cameras. Actually, go and watch Enemy of the State, then look at this stuff and see if you agree that this stuff might have had cameras inside.

Maybe the broken hot tub jets were cameras as well? Who knows. I could easily have convinced myself in the madness.

Another factor was all of the rules and stuff. One of the first things that was required on arrival in the airport was to register a Taiwanese SIM card. This card, is used to keep track of your movements during quarantine. The first part of quarantine was in the hotel room, then, for the second part, you are free but you have limited movement allowances (no pubic transport, going to restaurants/ bars etc.). On top of the tracking, it was also mandatory to keep the CECC (the Taiwanese government public health people) up to date of your condition. Every day the CECC send a text to check on your health. Fair enough, but the creepy part was the automatic reply – “Thank you for your cooperation. The CECC cares about you”. Even creepier was the one time I didn’t reply fast enough, I received a telephone call from a far away sounding nationless voice. The chat of symptoms and health condition in that accent was pretty unsettling.

The rules

A message from the CECC

The texts from the hotel itself started out very formal and intimidating. By the end though, they were sending love hearts and GIFs and stuff.

Meal drop-offs

The picture below is a snapshot of the little moment before each meal that you could possibly see another person. You opened up the room to collect your bag of food and were immediately hit with the chloriney/ bleachy/ swimming pooly smell of cleaning chemicals and also the loud sound of the big air-conditioning units (to create a through draft). Stood outside of the door you then linger for a few seconds, “will someone else pop their head out of their door?”. They never did but it was always a nice moment.

Teaching

I’m working as a “Native Speaking English Teacher”. It’s tough, and was awful at the start, but I’m getting better. I’m at the stage now where I can get away with most lessons, and some lessons are actually pretty good! I dreamt about getting to this stage in my first few months.

What’s the best part about working as a teacher? After the money, it’s the students. What’s the worst part? The students. Whether it’s a good day or a bad day is completely dependent on how the students act in the lessons. There are no ordinary lessons, you either come out of them feeling fucking incredible or you come out questioning every single little decision you’ve made in your life that’s lead up to that moment. Nothing in between. No lesson is the same as well, it can look the same on paper but with so many moving parts there are no two lessons that are the same, even with the same people and pretty much the same material. The way I get my head around the challenging lessons is by telling myself, “these are the ones I get paid for, the others I do for free”. Below are a few pictures of the training and then some on the job pictures (I’ve blurred out all the faces to avoid any issues).

Teacher training: Started on video chat then ended in person

Flashcards I made for the online teaching demo’s (whilst quarantined)

After a couple of weeks training, I started to actually teach, like I said, it was hell at the start. But, now, I think I’m pretty good! (Only a few pictures of me in the swing).

Some more teaching stuff (I’m not in these)

Weird/Cool stuff in homeworks, books and on the backs of test papers.

If students finish early in tests/ quizzes, we let them draw on the back of their papers. There’s been a lot of weird shit drawn and some really good artworks. Unfortunately I didn’t start collecting pictures of them until quite recently. The pictures from the books/ resources speak for themselves.

Taichung – The living situation

I’m renting a one person flat, pretty close to Taichung Park. It’s right in the middle of town, very close to the main train station, the bus station and all of the stuff that Central Taichung has got to say for itself. In the middle of town, but only about a half an hour bus away from the mountains (one way) and about an hour away from the coast (the other way). A nice balance and all for $10,500 NTD a month (£250-£290). The pictures below are the pictures I took at the first viewing (the fella in the pictures is my landlord) – saved in notes, alongside the pictures, was a caption that just said “no neighbours, quiet road, lift, landlord is a geezer, no need to chase the bin lorry”.

Before I give you a little tour of the town – this is what I meant when I said the “bin lorry”.

Taichung – The tour

At time of writing, Wikipedia says this about Taichung – “Taichung is called Taichung (/ˌtaɪˈtʃʊŋ/,^[6] Wade–Giles: Tʻai²-chung¹, pinyin: Táizhōng), officially Taichung City,^[I] is a special municipality located in central Taiwan. Taichung has approximately 2.8 million residents and is the second most populous city of Taiwan,^[7][8] as well as the most populous city in Central Taiwan. It serves as the core of the Taichung–Changhua metropolitan area, the second largest metropolitan area in Taiwan.” – You know what? I don’t doubt it. And, I don’t fancy knocking on doors and doing a headcount so I guess we’ll have to trust the numbers. 2.8 million, that’s about the same number of people as Birmingham (UK), Lithuania, or Puerto Rico. Or, Luxembourg and Gabon combined (if that’s easier to picture in your head). It’s a big city.

Summertime, June-ish to September-ish, it gets sweaty as fuck. Proper sweaty. We’re talking 40°C and 100% humidity sweaty, grim. It’s alright though because most places have got air-conditioning or some kind of plan in place to make the place cooler (all the classrooms at work apart from the front of 301, that place gets spicy in summer). This delicious sweatbox is created because of the mad storms, pretty much every day in that time period you’ll get a full-on thunder-storm, biblical, with film-set style thick rain, but, it’ll only last for about 30 minutes. After the rain, for the rest of the day, all of the water evaporates in the sun and creates the perfect human cooking environment, broiling from the top, steaming from the bottom. I’m not a fan of sun anyway because of the admin’ it brings with it (sun cream, glasses, hats and stuff) but adding the sweat element to it makes it particularly unpleasant.

The rest of the year, beautiful, you’ll get hot days, you’ll get overcast days, but for the most part it’s just at the sweet spot (direct opposite of the sweat spot). So yeah, in summary (summer-y?), don’t visit in the summer, unless of course you live like a tropical fish and enjoy being constantly hot and wet (feel free to replace “tropical fish” if you prefer a more bawdy read).

Let’s continue the tour, I’ll break it up into the parts that I’ve ventured out to so far. (From here on out this is just a shit load of slideshows, be sure to scroll left and right where you can).

Taichung Park

This park is right next to where I live. It’s fun to go here and look at the trees with pubes, the people feeding massive squirrels and the big lads rowing tiny little blue boats. It’s also home of the G(gs)OAT, the Greatest goat statue Of All Taichung – installed in the year of the goat and I presume it’s still there for a place for the local goths/ knights templar/ capra enthusiasts to frolic, maybe it’s just been forgotten about. If you like fish, and turtles, as I do, there’s shit loads of them in the ponds. The last pictures are of a running track that I’ve used twice (athlete) and a TV talent show event that was in the park one day.

Dakeng Hiking trails

I’m yet to make it to trails 1-4 (the proper ones) because they’re hard to get to. All the pictures below are of trails 5-9 and the surrounding area (easily reached on bus route 21 or 1). They start off as a street market area, then get nicer the further you walk.

Sun Moon Lake

A bit of a trek from Taichung but I’m still claiming it for the tour. It was a nice peaceful place and a very welcome break from the busyness of the city.

Taichung Harbour:

“The dogs can’t be that bad…” – They were actually fucking scary.

Wuqi Fish Market

Around the corner a bit from the harbour proper there is a little beaut’ of a fish market. We got here quite late in the day so the market was the busiest part. I’d like to go back early in the morning and see all the fish being sorted and taken out of the boats. Full disclosure, I got snap-happy and took about 300 pictures of the fish and the boats and stuff. Here are a choice few.

The Gaomei Wetlands

Another place not far from the harbour that deserves its own strand is the Gaomei Wetlands. A nice area for sunset hunters and wildlife photographers alike. The big wind turbines are fucking cool as well.

Basianshan Bamboo forest

Beautiful trekking area. We didn’t do the hardcore mountain trail, just the nice one’s around the bamboo forest and the river. I want to go back when it’s cooler and conquer the mountain.

Baseball

I went to the local baseball stadium to try and find out when the games are played, how much tickets cost, etc. When I got there I saw that there was a game already in progress, maybe I could catch the end? Turns out you can just walk straight in! So, I went in and watched the rest of the game (no home runs hit but still pretty cool). Then I decided to hang about and take some pictures. I got more and more brave and ended up down on the field with the players.

921 Earthquake Museum

Wikipedia:

“The 921 Earthquake Museum of Taiwan (Chinese: 國立自然科學博物館九二一地震教育園區; pinyin: Guólì Zìrán Kēxué Bówùguǎn Jiǔ’èryī Dìzhèn Jiàoyù Yuánqū) is a national museum in Wufeng District, Taichung, Taiwan. The museum is dedicated to the 7.3 earthquake that struck the center of Taiwan at 01:47:12.6 TST on Tuesday, 21 September 1999.

The museum is located on the site of the former Guangfu Junior High School [zh]; the shell of the building forms the exterior walls of the museum and the Museum’s Chelungpu Fault Gallery crosses the fault on which the earthquake occurred.”

GuangFu New Village

Close to the 921 Earthquake museum, this is a nice place to walk around.

Wanggaoliao Night View Park – Dadu Plateau

Taichung’s ‘make-out point’ – I went on my own, missed the bus and then walked all the way back listening to Bjork.

Rainbow Village

The story of this place is pretty cool… it goes something like this “It was an old military housing block, owned by the government, that was going to get knocked down, but an artist (now called “Rainbow Grandpa”) started painting all the walls and stuff. Now, it is one of Taichung’s most popular places.” My reality however was a little bit different. I trekked all the way out to it, but, it was closed and surrounded by construction hoardings. I decided to play the dozy tourist card and just walked in anyway. Of course, I was quickly shouted at in Chinese to fuck off but I still managed to take a few pictures (the last of which has the hands of the guy ushering me out). I’m going to give it another visit when it’s properly opened again, at time of writing “Rainbow Grandpa” is 100years old, it’d be nice to meet him.

The Taichung Sign

On the walk out to the Rainbow Village I spent quite a bit of time making stop motion videos of me pricking about in front of this sign. The videos won’t upload so here’s some pictures of the walk down the river, and a few stills from the videos.

Temples and Parades

Temples: Peace in a noisy area. Parades: Noise in a peaceful area.

Luce Memorial Chapel

National Taichung Theater

Beautiful and weird, inside and out.

Markets and shops

Sometimes it’s hard to tell what is a shop, what is a food stall/ restaurant or what is someone’s private residence. All over town businesses spill out onto the pavement forcing you to walk on the road or through what feels like peoples front rooms/ kitchens.

Museum of Illusions

The museum of illusions! Good fun, but expensive. Fair play to the chancer who stuck a load of optical illusions on the walls and is charging premium coin for the entry (NT $380 ≈ £10 pp), absolutely raking it in. I bought a little wooden puzzle in their gift shop as well (another tenner), putting the guy’s kids through college!

The Wufeng Family Home and Gardens

The actual home wasn’t very impressive until we got to the theatre in the back, that was cool. Don’t forget to go to the gardens (about 10 mins walk away) they’re nice. Also, don’t forget your bug spray! I got bitten to shit.

Rivers and canals

Every river and canal in town is relatively small compared to the massive walls built up around them. Maybe every once in a while it used to flood here. In my time though, I’m yet to see a canal or river that’s come close to filling even half the space that’s been allotted to it.

Scooters, buildings and hidden gems

A few more pictures from around town.

Satellite townships

Yuanlin

Beautiful scenery and a load of treetop swings to mess around on.

Houli and Tai’an

The original plan fell through because of the public holiday opening times. But, we managed to salvage the day by walking through little villages and pricking about on an abandoned train.

Taiping

Typing Taiping… I was on the bus and saw a sign pointing to an intriguing path. I got off, followed the trail and it led to this owl sanctuary/ military history place. Pretty tasty place for a sunset. I’ve got a recording of the sounds around this place as well that I listen to to get to sleep.

And now, some further afield places…

Taipei

I’ve only been up to Taipei a few times but it’s a treat every time. Some of these pictures repeat because my friend came over and I took him to some of the places I like.

Hualien

Out on the east side of the country. This was a slog to get to but certainly worth the journey. Taroko Gorge is fuckin nice.

Tainan

We went down to visit friends. Stayed in a hostel with capsule hotel style pod-beds built into bookshelves and had an all-round wholesome time. Even with a disruption of the plan by a road incident (I’m not going to go into that). The highlight of the trip was the night where the bar we were in got taken over by the local rap troupe. When they were finished, one of the lads came over, introduced himself and bought us drinks, absolute gentleman.

Chimei Museum

Still in Tainan but deserves its own section. Incredible place.

Yilan

We went to Yilan on a really wet weekend. It was great though. We stayed in a hotel that was pretty much a museum, full of old artefacts and swords and stuff. Went waterfall hunting during landslide warnings, and then all got drunk on gin and cried.

Jiufen

An old mining town, North East of Taipei, this area is sold as “the place where they got the idea for Spirited Away”. Although that’s not true, it’s still a beautiful little village to explore. And there are mountains to climb for nice views as well.

Yuanminshan National Park

Another one north of Taipei. Volcanic hot springs, woodland, bamboo and mountains. By the time we had reached the top of the second peak it was fuckin freezing and a total whiteout, but, still a nice walk nonetheless. Worth a mention as well, the power of the wind was insane, the kind of wind you can lean on.

And now, an assortment of funny shit I’ve seen whilst out and about…

Bad translations

Businesses with names that sound like genitals (Or genital adjacent stuff).

Crap stuff on clothes

I wish it was socially acceptable to take pictures of T-shirts whilst people are wearing them. “Excuse me, your shirt’s shit, can I take a picture?!”. The best one I’ve seen so far was on a grumpy old bastard, probably about 90 years old. He had a T-shirt that read “Part-time Mermaid”, I hope it was a gift from a knowing grandchild.

Pets and Scooters

Local Icons, Celebrities and Politicians that don’t know what to do with their hands.

Stuff in shops

“Convenience stores” have absolutely everything. Where else could you sit in a shop with a hot dog in one hand and be having your blood pressure measured in the other?

The tax lottery

On every receipt in Taiwan there is a code. Each code is an entry for the “tax lottery”. You get an entry on all receipts, regardless of how much you’ve spent (I haven’t done it but I assume you could separate out your shopping into loads of different single transactions so you’d get more tickets). The latest top prize was one million NT (£26,000 ish) and then there were loads of smaller prizes. Unlike the National Lottery in the UK (a tax on hope), the tickets do not cost extra money and also, you actually have a good chance of winning! So far, since I have been here, I have won a total of NT$1200 (£30 ish). Hopefully one day I’ll get the jackpot. Sorting and scanning the receipts is a ballache but worth it when you win.

Arty stuff

I’ve called this section “Arty Stuff”. Just because I can’t find a place for a lot of these pictures and the majority seam to be…arty stuff.

The End

That’s about it for now. I hope this has given a little flavour of the year I’ve had. I’ve just signed the contract to stay for another year because I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface. There’s still plenty more to explore. Also, now that the quarantine on arrival procedures have been pretty much lifted, I’m going to try and fly out to some interesting places nearby.

Now, it’s starting to brighten up a bit outside. So, more than 1,000 pictures later, I’m going to fuck off to the foodcourt at the bottom of the Taroko Mall for some tomatoey beef noodles. This has actually been really nice to do (picture me, sat with my computer, doors open, listening to the sounds of the storm and the city outside). I hope you’ve had a nice time looking through.

Below is a picture of my view while writing this, why not send me a picture of your view while reading it? Details of how to contact me (and some other bits) are in the link below:

https://linktr.ee/Tidbitspod

Safe travels,

Jack Tidball