And Now We're Back Stateside!

My last few days in Taiwan were been spent in my mom's hometown, Lo-Tung. It's about 1.5 hours south of Taipei. It used to be a much smaller, provincial town, but it's been booming the past 20 years. My mom was born and raised here and my grandparents' house/clinic has been torn down since they passed away and is now a shopping arcade (somehow this seems fitting). According to my mom, the town is the #1 consumer city in Taiwan. Apparently, this shopping sickness of mine is genetic also.

There is still a lot of small-town flavor here though. There's no need for a car--everything you need is walking distance. My mom is a regular at the fruit stand next door, the little eatery across the street (it's faster and cheaper to go there to buy rice than make your own) and the beauty salon two doors down. They notice when my mom is coming and going, or if she has a suitcase with her, orout strolling with grandkids they've never seen before. It's nice, but on the other hand, if we buy fruit from a different vendor we have to hide it as we walk by, and sometimes we go the other way around so no one sees us.

It was the Tomb Sweeping holiday on April 5th, a federal holiday and long weekend for most people so the town was bustling! Tomb Sweeping is a holiday to honor and remember your ancestors, clean their tombs (obviously), make offerings, etc.

We did two touristy things: went to this National Traditional Arts Center and the beach. The arts center was huge, kind of like a folk arts village. They had really nice lawns for people to run around or picnic, a river for boat rides, a cute shopping "avenue", a bamboo arts exhibition and a bamboo maze.

We also went to the beach. This beach was nothing like the Thai beaches we visited. No clear, blue water, no fine white sand. There are extremely strong--and dangerous--undertows and a small temple was erected right on the beach by the Taiwanese government after several children had drowned and the people petitioned for the temple. There hasn't been a drowning since.

And so, after a rather uneventful flight back (15 hours total--bless that tailwind), a chat or two with U.S. Customs agents in Seattle (they love to talk to me, but luckily they never ask to inspect my luggage), the slowest plane ride EVER to Newark (those 5 hours seriously felt longer than the 10 hours from Taipei to Seattle), an hour-long wait for our luggage, and then a mishap with the car service, we made it safely home. Thankfully my apartment building was still intact when I pulled up. Whew.

I am very happy to be home.

Travel Fabrications

A dear old friend of mine once told me about how he lied when he was on airplanes and people asked him what he did. He would tell them that he was a successful lawyer or businessman. I asked him why he did that, and he said that it was better than the truth: that he was an unemployed 30-something chain-smoking alcoholic who lived at home with his parents. Nice old ladies--and attractive women--don't like to hear that. (Note: he doesn't live at home anymore.)

My mom does a similar thing. She's not a pathological liar or anything, but she doesn't like strangers knowing too much. "They'll ask questions otherwise, " she says. Um, if you fabricate too much, won't they still ask questions?

So in Thailand we were on this tour with three other people: the Lins, a middle-aged couple, and Mrs. Chen who was traveling alone. Mrs. Lin liked to talk. A LOT. She is one of those people who seems not to get out enough. She will interrupt conversations and just talk louder to get peoples' attention. This is rather annoying when you are driving around an island in a passenger van. There's nowhere to hide and I can only listen to my headphones so loud.

I should mention here that Taiwanese people are very friendly and chatty. More so than your average Midwesterner, actually. We were at a restaurant and my aunt burnt herself on the tea pot because she's having problems with a tendon in her hand and the waitress comes over and talks for about 10 minutes about how she had the same problem and she had surgery and it was much better. This is one of the less personal conversations with random people that occurred.

Anyways, mom didn't want our travel companions to "know too much" so she would fib and withhold information. Thus, the basic story was this: My sister and I are Taiwanese born and bred (not true) and she sent us to the U.S. to live with relatives and go to school at a young age(also untrue), which is why we speak English. She mentioned that I understood Taiwanese (true), in the hopes that they would just speak Taiwanese to me, but they took it to mean that it would be better if they spoke Chinese to me. So the whole time they would speak to me in Chinese. Which is fine since I understood enough, but not ideal since I understand it the LEAST of the three languages.

Oh, what a tangled web of lies we weave!

sigh.

Then last night, my sister found herself doing the same exact thing to the scallion pancake cart guy. They were talking (in Taiwanese) about her being from NY and he asked how much a house was there and how much her salary was, etc. She totally lied about it, and almost told him that all four of them worked (her, my brother-in-law AND the two children under the age of 5) but caught herself.

It must be genetic...