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Learning Mandarin…And A Slip of the Tongue

May 29, 2012 by Kristin Winet 4 Comments

tongue

I have just discovered, after a full day of being so proud of myself for jumping in and attempting to speak Chinese from the very first moment I arrived in Taiwan, that I have actually been telling everyone I meet, everywhere, that I have to urinate.

You can imagine my mortification, especially since I didn’t realize this until I’d already spread the word to, oh, probably about half of Taipei. I would have preferred to remain blissfully ignorant, but my traveling partner thought it’d be best to inform me of my linguistic error today after the nice little old Chinese juice lady nearly fainted onto her blender after she handed me my freshly-squeezed beverage. Her friend, another nice little old Chinese juice lady, had immediately covered her mouth in surprise and started giggling in the very sweet and unobtrusive way that Asian ladies seem to do here–polite, soft, and subdued.

tongue2

At the time, I hadn’t any idea what I’d done: after all, I’d just braved entirely new territory by ordering a fresh fruit juice of, well, everything on the menu (since I couldn’t read the menu, not because I was feeling particularly bold and exciting or anything). Tomatoes, bananas, and strawberries–all horrifically chopped and dumped into a bowl, whirred up in a blender, and handed to me in a paper cup. I’d thought I’ve paved new ground in other ways, boldly sticking the plastic straw into a lumpy concoction of fruits that make the at-home Kristin shudder in disgust (adult selective eater, anyone?). And yet, I turned those tables almost immediately when instead of saying a little thank you, I instead shocked two little old ladies in an off-the-beaten path juice shop by telling them how much I really had to pee.

The secret, I’d later learn, was this: xie-xie is not, as you might think, pronounced she-she. It in, in fact, a bit more like shia-shia (and even that’s not right….). The differences, you see, are somewhat substantial.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: culture, encounters, food, Mandarin, Taiwan, Taiwan Tourism Board

28 Hours Later….and Dumplings!

May 28, 2012 by Kristin Winet 4 Comments

taipei

My watch is telling me it’s 8:15 a.m. My cell phone, however, which just performed its automatic update, is telling me it’s 11:14 p.m. This means, if I’m calculating correctly, that except for an accidental twenty minute nap while watching a hopefully pointless romantic comedy on the airplane, I have now been awake for 28 hours. I can’t remember the last time I did this (wait, have I ever done that?).

I’ve been awake longer than I can ever remember and yet: I’m sitting in my surprise upgraded room in the superbly spiffy Dandy Hotel in downtown Taipei eating the Hershey’s kisses that were sitting pleasantly on my pillow. (From what I gathered at the reception from the hopelessly sweet but nonetheless impossible to understand concierge, the hotel upgraded my room to a suite because they didn’t have time to prepare the room I was supposed to have. How my room wasn’t ready at 10:30 p.m. is baffling to me, since checkout is 12 noon…?) Anyway, I’m not sure how to use any of the four digital remote controls sitting next to the bed, and I’m not exactly sure how to flush the toilet or how to turn on the light in the bathroom (still working on that), but I’m smiling, I’m awake, and I’m exhausted. My knees are sore for sitting still for 15 hours, and despite drinking about 6 bottles of water on the plane, there’s a dull pain between my eyes. I went next door to the infamous 7/11 mart, the mart company that has literally taken over Taiwan with its lure of all-in-one shopping, and attempted to buy an ibuprofen, but after combing through the aisles and having literally no idea what any of the pill bottles were actually advertising, I settled for a warm pork dumpling (from a microwave, no less!) and another bottle of water. What a relief to discover that bottled water looks the same everywhere.

taipei2

Our drive through Taipei was, surprisingly, a lot like I imagined: flashing billboards, huge Chinese characters advertising all sorts of products, ideas, and slogans I can’t read, sleek skyscrapers and ultra-fast highways, mini-marts and grocery stores with animal parts hanging from the windows, women holding umbrellas and hustling down the streets in the drizzly rain, men on motorcycles, a near-death experience when my taxi had a stand-off with another taxi on the windy, one-lane cobblestone road leading to our hotel….you know, the traveling usual 🙂

So now, having been awake for 28 (is it 29 now?) hours and having had my fill of pork dumplings, I am going to try and lie in bed, close my eyes, and dream of tomorrow. The mountain biking tour was cancelled because of the impending rain, so I’m going to sleep in, have a wonderful buffet breakfast, and take a bus to the fantastic National Palace Museum. For lunch, I’m going to order something off a menu I can’t read, and after lunch, I think I’ll be going with Matt, the fellow writer I’m traveling with, to a graffiti/street art festival (celebration? honoring?). I hope to top off my day in Taipei with a visit to one of the renowned night markets, which, I’m told, take a brave stomach and an open mind. Bring on the squid parts and stinky tofu!

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: food, jetlag, Taiwan, Taiwan Tourism Board

Planning a Trip to Taiwan: Tips From the Girl Who Hasn’t Been There Yet

May 27, 2012 by Kristin Winet 2 Comments

Downtown Taipei
Downtown Taipei

Starting tomorrow, I will be in Taiwan for one week on a special FAM trip. I am being sponsored by the Taiwan Tourism Bureau and will be traveling, blogging, and writing about my experiences in an effort to promote Taiwan to twenty-and-thirty-something travelers who are less familiar with Taiwan and its culture, cuisine, landscape, and outdoor activities. What I hope to do–in addition to learning a little bit of Mandarin, trying not to get lost, eating something I’ve never eaten before and resisting the temptation to ask what it is, buying something in a street market, taking a picture of something unusual, and writing my brains out–is to discover a place I know very little about. And what I will do, what I will do with all of my heart, is write about this place to the point my pens run dry and the three mini-journals I bought fill up. And I will post, post, post, and submit, submit, submit, and I will make the Bureau proud to have sponsored me on this hopefully-not-once-in-a-lifetime experience but rather, I hope, this first-in-a-lifetime of experiences.

So far, even the experience of planning this trip has been a much-needed lesson in cultural sensitivity. Navigating a website, communicating over email, making reservations, and planning side trips–everything has forced me to reconsider these tasks as culturally-situated, literate acts that are not, as we sometimes forget, intuitive. Instead, they are always, always learned. Take a look at the TTB’s website and the way they are crafting their image, for instance: http://eng.taiwan.net.tw/ Look at the adorable animated figures giggling amicably while they slurp boba on the left-hand column. Look at EVA airlines site, which is currently promoting its Hello Kitty-themed aircraft: http://evakitty.evaair.com/en/ Try booking a hotel room for a night on a website that doesn’t have an English translation: http://www.ueu.com.tw/ (The trick I’ve learned is to tab over a collection of characters and wait for the website link to pop up at the bottom of the screen–they’re written in English!) What do I, as a Westerner who only traveled the States, Europe, a teeny part of the Caribbean, and the northern part of South America, make of these differences? What can I make of them, other than to smile and remember that I am now the foreigner? What can I make of this weird obsession to be the foreigner, to slip into the role of the social “other,” to play as a child just learning to spell all over again?

More Taipei
More Taipei

Honestly, I won’t say I’m not a little bit scared. A little bit worried I’ve become a rusty traveler. After all, this is about as out-of-my-comfort-zone as it gets. And yet, a part of me is thrilled, is jumping up and down while she packs, is jamming to music on her computer while she packs, unpacks, and packs again items of clothing she’ll probably never wear in the week she’s there. (Can I get away with shorts and a t-shirt? Is that too sloppy? Should I wear heels? A dress at night? Ack.)

Even more honestly? I love this. I love not knowing what to wear, how to speak, where to find the bathroom. It’s a thrill unparalleled to anything else I’ve found in this world.

Thank you, TTB and Intertrend Communications, for making this dream a reality for me. To travel and write, to discover the world, to remember my muse….I’ll be back with hundreds of new words for you!

一帆風順 (That’s Mandarin for Bon Voyage….I think :)),
Kristin

Filed Under: Asia, Travel Writing Tagged With: culture, Taiwan, Taiwan Tourism Board

Top 10 Most Memorable Travel Moments

May 24, 2012 by Kristin Winet Leave a Comment

After mining through and paring down a book’s worth of travels to ten moments, here, thanks to the challenge posted by Lara Dunston and Terrence Carter, are my boiled-down top 10 list of memorable travel moments (complete with hair-raising happenings, drool-worthy cuisines, and a couple of those sentimental moments that linger for a very, very long time):

You’ve just turned 20 when you meet a very old man in Spain who gives you his sacred ruddhasa wishing bead. Six years later, you’re sitting at a café in Malta eating shark and reminiscing with three of your dearest friends about the places life has taken you. You’re talking about that crazy summer in Malta and the time you washed your clothes—for three months—with liquid fabric softener because you’d thought your Italian was better than it was when you purchased it (it clearly was not). You talk about eating sushi in Ciudad Juárez and all its lime juice, beef, and cheese. You think about sleeping on the beach in Colombia, watching the hairless white cows bumble back to their corrals at sunset, and you remember taking kayaks out at midnight in Puerto Rico where you swam with plankton. You remember the gaggle of Colombian grandmas in the Totumo magic mud volcano, and how you were bombarded by the wildly popular Los Reyes telenovela crew to audition for the part of a gringa and then didn’t get it (that is the extent of your acting career, except for that time in Mexico, where, behind the wheel of an ATV, you’ll be asked to be in a promo video, to which, of course, you’ll say yes). You think of how many times you’ve been robbed on your travels (which is an embarrassingly large percentage of the 20 countries you’ve been to since Spain), and you’ll admit it’s made for some pretty good stories, here, in Malta, and all those unexpected places in-between.

This post has been entered into the Grantourismo HomeAway Holiday-Rentals travel blogging competition!

Filed Under: Travel Writing

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