Prelude | Malaysian prints in Taiwan

Click on people's faces in the photo to tag them.

Click on people's faces in the photo to tag them.

I think the whole of last month, December is a holiday month. Within the department, one enjoyed Korea, another had her burfday in Down Under.

Probably it is at the end of the month that everyone is finishing their leave, or rather Christmas and New Year day really make holiday a much sought after celebration.

No doubt. The havoc and pathetic violence that happened in Penang’s street as reported in TheStar is like a total insult to Christmas.

Well, this year, I celebrated my wedding anniversary in Taiwan.

It was my second time there, but it was totally different, this time round.

Yes, I am much fatter this time. Wallet also gained a bit weight.

Last time, I was there with my coursemates for elective posting for 1 full month, with prior 1 week of round island trip.

As a poor student last time, I was rather skewed towards being stingy, which was a positive thing at that time. And I really was thankful to Tzu Chi Foundation in Hualien County for being the host to all of us, and I really enjoyed the vegetarian food that happily pulled my weight up few kgs.

The vegetarian food in Taiwan is really different from Malaysia’s. They are good dishes really made up real fibre-loaded vegetables or fruits, cooked in the healthiest way and tasted like heaven, unlike most of our Malaysian’s oily and soya-based not-that-palatable meat-look-alike vegetarian food. I think you can figure out what I getting at.

The whole trip was very eventful, except for a few regrets. No really regrets, just some visits that could be left for my returns to Taiwan.

Those few misses were

1 Missed the feel of moderate earthquake by few hours.

2 Not able to see the marvelous view of Taroko Gorge, although managed to visit the Taroko site. It was closed due to the earthquake.

3 Alishan visit was cancelled for safety reason. Yes, earthquake, as well.

Hey, once I listed them down, it seems that my misses were simply pale against all the excitement I had in Taiwan, thanks to my jam-packed tour package with my “wah!”-excellent tour guide, plus the awesome foursome free and easy jalan-jalan 2 days after with lots and lots of bonus program ie. got into Yahoo!It’s You!

and also met with Jacky Wu and in the major Carnival.

The technical word shouldn't be 'met'. I paparazzied him, actually.

Anyway, being in the tour itself can be a rather strenuous exercise, mainly because with such discipline, we are able to get ourselves to cover so many great places in Taiwan. In addition, it reminded me about being someone with urge incontinence, where at every interval with toilet available, we’re encouraged by the tour guide to squeeze every last bit of urine out of our bladder with absolute abdominal almost-Valsalvic pressure, before we embarked on the journey by tour bus. The graphic of milking our external urethral dry came to my mind at some point of the time when I don’t think I have much of fluid to spare in my bladder.

Toilets in Taiwan have many names, commonly known as toilet, washroom, restroom and W.C. But surprisingly, some were called as make-up room in Chinese. I was taken aback by this. Totally.

I guessed my tour guide herself can be something to be marveled about. She is a pretty woman. Not the hot babe pretty, but if you compare all the tour guides in Taiwan, she’s probably the top 10 prettiest. Plus, standing at a height 5cm taller than me, she did mention she modeled before. Nonetheless, her plus point is not her beauty nor her height nor her fashionable outfits, but rather her superb effort in tour-guiding. It is obvious that she loves her job and the job just loved her so much. She is humorous, and she would explain as much about Taiwan during our traveling hours on board of the tour bus. She would go on lecture and lecture and lecture about Taiwan hours after hours, with really good stuffs ranging from politics, social, fengshui, description of the places of interest, latest news and about her own life, work and family, which was interesting with a personal touch. But the best was how much guide she had given in making sure that we had a range of good well-known food in everywhere we gone to, especially those night markets. I think my compilation of those great foods can easily overrun my collection of places of interest. I think I will have another blog entry, listing them down.

I was thinking of writing every long tedious vivid detail of my adventures with Qi, but I think some things are best left unwritten, unknown, unheard of, but always be reminded and remembered in my heart.

Thus, I will just write about some of the places of interest which we left our footprints.

to be continued...

up next... Footprints... Foodprints... Fourprints...