On a short walk today I found myself at good ole exit 5 of the Taipower Building subway station. This is the first place in Taiwan I went, as it is the exit closest to the hostel I stayed at for the first two months I was here.
While I'm at this subway station often, I haven't been to this specific exit in years, and seeing it today brought a lot of memories flooding back. Specifically those from my first few moments after arriving in Taiwan. My first five memories are...
1. "Thank goodness my friend's friend came to pick me up at the airport. there is no way i would have been able to figure out how to get the bus from the airport to the city. All the signs and times are in Chinese!"
Yes at that time all the bus information was in Chinese, and the clerk only spoke Chinese. Now a days i feel so blessed that almost everything is also in English. Or should I blame this for the reason that I spent so many years here not learning Chinese at all. Hmmm, I like that better, because it couldn't be my fault right?
2. "Wow, from the highway Taiwan looks exactly like America. More specifically the drive from Landmark Mall in Alexandria to home."
Countries may be very different, but one thing i've learned in my travels is that all freeways in all countries look the same. And yeah the drive from the airport to Taipei, looks eerily like that small stretch of freeway from back home.
3. "Man there sure are A LOT of scooters on the road."
Everybody says Taiwan has a lot of scooters. And you think you are ready for it, but you're not. Seeing over eighty scooters pull out from a red light is an almost terrorizing experience. The mob of scooters looks as if it's a living thing.
4. "Wow the subway is packed, and all the girls are so thin, are they adults?"
Yes Taiwanese women are very tiny and the more skeletal they look, the more beautiful they are considered to be. You know that you've become Taiwanese when you see a boney woman and say "that lady is hot!"
5. "Where the hell am I!?"
The hostel's owner came to this exit to pick us up and walk us to the hostel. Taipei has a lot of alleys, but we went through a network of them and even the alleys had their own alleys. To this day I will have nightmares about getting lost in that maze. One of the most amazing things I've ever seen is some traveler who found that hostel all by herself just by using the address. Even now having forgotten exactly how to get there, if you gave me the address, there is no way I could find it.
