Ni Cha Bing
Sarah says:
To wake up in the morning in Amsterdam and go to bed that night in Taiwan is a crazy thing. Firstly, it takes 19 hours of travel to be able to accomplish such a feat of contrasting sleeping environments. But aside from flying time (small digression, we did so via Singapore Airlines and true to reputation, it was a very nice airline indeed and the food is really good…), it struck me as rather mind-boggling that Amsterdam and Taipei can co-exist simultaneously on the same planet. Over in Amsterdam people are living very Dutch lives and in Taipei people are living very Taiwanese lives and this is all happening at the same time, every single day and the Dutch aren’t thinking about the Taiwanese and the Taiwanese aren’t thinking about the Dutch. After all our traveling, David and I have started to view the world as being rather small but in this one moment, I felt the hugeness of the world and I truly did feel like I was on the other side of it.
Here are some things I quite liked about Taiwan:
Only one other time, out of all the times we’ve landed at an airport, have any of the people greeting friends and family been there to greet us. That first time was Beth for our trip to Amsterdam last summer and it was quite heavenly to see her smiling face. We felt the same being greeted by our friends, Ed and Sue. They whisked us way to their beach house on the northern tip of the island and we slept and slept and slept so good in the fresh ocean air, windows open, a nice fan blowing, birds to greet us in the morning. It was lovely. And then Ed generously shared his imported Vivace coffee with us and the morning could not have been more perfect.
Speaking of morning beverages, one of my favorite parts of traveling thus far has been acclimating to and embracing the local morning brew. I have so far succeeded 100% - sure enough, sooner rather than later I can no longer live without my morning cup of whatever is going. My Taiwanese beverage addiction was Ni Cha Bing, iced milk tea. yummy yummy in my tummy. Of course, the Taiwanese are not big milk drinkers so I have no idea what kind of ‘milk’ my milked tea was milked with, I’m hoping soy. And the Taiwanese also love sugar. So I had Sue teach me how to request no sugar: quasi-phonetically it is: ching booyow taang. But then of course there was that one time where it wasn’t possible to have it without so I had it with and I will never go back. I mean really, how can anyone resist the shot of sweetened condensed milk thrown on top?? Why would you even consider? Speaking of tops, the Taiwanese have invented the most ingenious to-go cup beverage top adhesive machine that glues this thin little top to your cup and you poke a straw through it and you are set to go with a spill proof bevvie. Love it.
In preparation for our upcoming 3 1/2 weeks in China, Ed and Sue taught us a bunch of hopefully useful Chinese vocabulary words. Ed’s Chinese, after 6 years of continuous lessons and marrying a native speaker, is excellent. He actually gave us most of the words. We can now order fried noodles or rice with any variety of meat product, vegetables, beer, dumplings steamed or pan-fried, milk tea, tea without milk, this, that, do you have, toilet, please, may I ask a question and can we have a discount. oh, we also hopefully know how to say any variety of transportation.
On the topic of transportation, Taipei has by far, without a doubt in my mind, the best #1, all-time greatest, cleanest, most reliable metro system and also has the best public toilets ever. I promise. It also have the strangest garbage pick-up system I’ve ever encountered. One is not allowed to leave one’s garbage on the sidewalk to be picked up. You must be home to actually throw it in the passing truck yourself. And just like the ice-cream man, the garbage truck has a catchy little tune it plays so that you know it’s approaching. It’s Fur Elise and it’s played very very loudly.
To escape the noise assault that is any Asian city, one can visit Longshan Temple. Actually, it’s a pretty noisy place as well but for some reason I think it is my favourite site. I’m choosing this even over the very famous Taroko National Park with its breathtaking gorges and stunning bright red bridges set against lush green trees. I’m choosing this temple because it’s not actually a tourist site, is a real life working temple. We sat there for about an hour and I drifted into an almost comatose state of relaxation watching everyday people of Taiwan coming to this temple after work to do their praying and offering and incense lighting. I sat watching their routine of lighting the incense, bowing over and over, mumbling things, bowing again, and placing the incense. I watched the old ladies all sitting around gossiping together as they made an endless number of flower arrangements. I was most transfixed watching a tiny old woman tend to her job of keeping the enormous candelabra clean. She removed the burned down candles, scraped off wax, replaced some candles, re-arranged and then would shine the metal free of soot and fingerprints. Over and over and over and over, around and around and around, going up and down a step stool…..I could have watched her all day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longshan_Temple
There were loads of good times shared with Ed and Sue and we thank them for being such generous hosts and showing us their lovely country. Playing pool to Hotel California and plenty of Taiwan Beer (winner of most creative beer name), seeing Ed’s band play live, congee at 1am, and of course the front-yard hole in the ground bbq, just to name a few 
Long live the death trap, I mean, Scooby Do Mystery Machine.
We are now in Korea where I am desperately missing the Ni Cha Bing, see I told you. More on that to come……