African Tour:Dar es Salaam

Julius Nyerere International Airport
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Before we got to know Mombasa, it was time to leave the country. We were scheduled to perform in Dar es Salaam, which is only 500km down the coast. For whatever reason, there are no flights from Mombasa to Dar es Salaam. We had to fly an hour northwest back to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi and catch a 90 minute flight southeast to Julius Nyerere International Airport in Dar es Salaam. It was a lot of effort for very little reward.

We all stayed at the Johari Rotana Hotel in the Kivukoni district near the city center. Normally, I would have been disappointed in a generic business hotel, but this was the end of the tour and we had experienced plenty of local flavor. I kind of liked the predictability. The hotel had a small outdoor swimming pool that I never used. One of the room's better features was the floor to ceiling window with sea views. If only my room was facing the Indian Ocean instead of the industrial harbor. It was still a better view than looking at the building next door. Just like today's Chinese hotels, my room had large bathroom windows so people in the bedroom could watch their roommates in the bathroom. I have no idea why anyone wants this. Maybe the designers think it romantic to watch someone take a shower, but people do a lot more in bathrooms than lather up. Luckily, we all had ample experience with Chinese hotels, so we knew how to work around it. Easily the best feature of the room was the jazuzzi bathtub. It was not especially large, but it had eight jets coming out from all directions. If I did not have a roommate, I would have spent far more time in that tub.

Makumbusho Village
The Makumbusho Village Museum in Kinondoni is a recreation of traditional villages from several different indigenous tribes. Though it looked nothing like any specific village, the houses were supposed to be authentic representations of each tribe. It all seemed a little too fake to me. There are probably genuine villages people can visit away from the city. The Ngoma dancers were pretty good, though. I did not mind how much that was staged for the tourists since rehearsed dance performances were our reason to be on the continent in the first place.

Kariakoo Market
The Kariakoo Market in Ilala is the outdoor market in Dar es Salaam. Like Mahane Yehuda in Jerusalem or Albert Cuypmarkt in Amsterdam, everyone seems to go there. While I can say nothing for the food, the textile shops on the south end of Jamhuri Street were useful. I know of no better place to buy kangas. The crowds made some of my colleagues a little nervous, which I found interesting, considering where they were from. The most uncomfortably crowded outdoor market I have ever been to anywhere in the world was the Fengshan night market in Kaohsiung on Christmas Day, which is not even a holiday in Taiwan. Kariakoo felt as empty as the Carrboro Farmer's Market in North Carolina by comparison.

Mlimani City in Ubongo is the largest shopping mall in Tanzania. Unfortunately, it looks like any urban shopping mall. I cannot even be bothered to find a picture of it. Some of my colleagues wanted to shop at the Game Supermarket because it was owned by Walmart. We have no Walmarts in Taiwan, so they were curious. I pointed out that the absence of Walmart is one of the best things about Taiwan. Not that it really mattered. While Walmart is a majority stakeholder in the company, Game is run by a South African grocery store chain. It was like any large South African grocery store and had no hillbillies shopping in questionable attire.

The most interesting part about our Mlimani City outing was that the South African company closed down its only Game outlet in Dar es Salaam right after we went and completely pulled out of Tanzania just after that. Had we gone any later, my colleagues would have never experienced a Walmart that was nothing like Walmart.

Zuane, near the US embassy in Kinondoni, is arguably the most authentic looking Italian restaurant in Dar es Salaam. At least that was what a lot of people said. I only went to one Italian restaurant in Dar es Salaam, so what do I know. Their pizzas looked pretty good and the mozzarella was obviously fresh. The person I went with said the ravioli was excellent. Taiwanese people are not the most discriminating connoisseurs when it comes to pasta, but ravioli is essentially dumplings. She knows Chinese dumplings, so who's to say she is not a good judge of Italian ravioli from Tanzania.

Hong Kong Tai Yong Sun Restaurant in Ilala is either the most authentic Cantonese cuisine in all of Dar es Salaam or all of Tanzania, depending who you ask. Oddly, no one said it was the most authentic in all of Africa. My colleagues, some of whom are originally from Guangdong, all of whom are intimately familiar with Cantonese food, were unimpressed.

Azania Front Lutheran Church
A few blocks from our hotel was the Azania Front Lutheran Church. There was nothing particularly special about the building or its history, but I often find myself near Lutheran churches in the least Christian places.

Our time in Nairobi and Mombasa felt entirely too short to me. As soon as we got used to waking up in strange beds, we were off to the next city. In Dar es Salaam, we did not even get a chance to get used to anything. We flew in Wednesday morning, checked in, went to work, spent two whole nights, and left Friday morning. And one of our days in Dar es Salaam was mostly spent in Zanzibar.

On our last full day, we all caught the morning ferry to Zanzibar, did a show in Stone Town, and caught an evening ferry back to Dar es Salaam. The ferry ride was uneventful, except that everyone needed passports and went through immigration and customs. Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam are both in Tanzania, but Zanzibar has its own separate border control. It was almost like crossing the border from Shenzhen into Hong Kong, only with a lot of people speaking in unfamiliar languages. Going through immigration made the trip take a little longer since everyone was a foreigner, no matter which direction they were going.

Zanzibar is a pretty small island. Maybe half the size of Bali. It would have been nice to see more of it. After less than a full day on the island, and most of that time spent at work, I am not exactly the world's foremost authority on Zanzibar. I would not mind staying at one of the beach resorts one day. There are far fewer locals at the resorts, so it cannot possibly be as interesting, but some of the hotels look pretty nice.

Though Mombasa and Zanzibar are both mostly Afro-Arab and/or Muslim with large populations living below the poverty line on the shores of the Indian Ocean, they could not have felt more different. There was a good deal of tension in Mombasa's air. The locals tolerated the mzungu, though my impression was that they merely tolerated our money. It was similar to the Muslim Quarter in Jerusalem's Old City. Anyone who calls you “my friend” is trying to sell you something. Zanzibar was more relaxed. People seemed more genuinely friendly, regardless of how much money we might spend. It probably helps that Zanzibar is made up of several tropical islands with some beautiful beaches. I doubt I will ever go back to Mombasa, though I'm glad I went once. I will be disappointed if I never make it back to Zanzibar some day.

Since the preceding paragraph might come off as negative toward Muslims, I will point out that Zanzibar, the place I liked and want to go back to, has a much larger Muslim population than Mombasa.

African Tour:Durban

Lanseria International Airport
Johannesburg, South Africa

King Shaka International Airport
Durban, South Africa
Our flight to Durban was short and easy. We spent more time in the terminal than on the plane, though there were no delays this time. Rather than fly out of OR Tambo International Airport, we left Johannesburg from Lanseria International Airport, a much smaller airport. It has international in its name, but I only saw signs for flights to other cities in South Africa.

The drive to the hotel was also faster. At least for four of us. Instead of piling everyone into a business hotel, we all stayed at apartments and B&Bs around town. I have no idea if that was a better arrangement, and I doubt it was more efficient, but I liked it a lot more. There was nothing wrong with the hotel in Johannesburg. It was a clean place to sleep and close to major thoroughfares. In Durban, I stayed with three other dancers in a nice little apartment in the Morningside neighborhood. We were an easy walk to Mitchell Park, a Spar grocery store, Florida Road, and Battery Beach.

The grocery store was convenient since we were in an apartment instead of a hotel. The apartment's kitchen was more than adequate and was even stocked with a few staples right before we arrived. The husband and wife owners lived close by and were happy to help out with pretty much anything we needed. Caroline brought us homemade rusks every morning, which we all appreciated even if we never ate them until later in the day. She even drove us to the grocery store when we made our biggest run. There was a washer and dryer directly below the apartment, but we found the washer difficult to use. Betty, the housekeeper, did all of our laundry for most of our stay. I felt a little bad about having an older black woman wash my clothes, especially in a South African apartment owned by a white couple, but she did an incredible job. Whenever we put anything in the laundry bags, it came back cleaned, ironed, and neatly folded. No one ever charged us anything for the laundry, so we left Betty a decent tip before we checked out. My Taiwanese roommates thought that everyone should do the best job they could regardless of their pay, but I convinced them that in tipping cultures, it is always a good idea to tip well for exceptional service. I had the same conversation every time any of us went to a restaurant.

Betty was the highlight of Durban. She probably had a fascinating life story, but was reluctant to talk about herself, so I never pushed her. Something she loved to talk about were her grandchildren, which made my roommates feel bad that she was cleaning up after us. The cultural differences were interesting. Where I had white guilt and never really thought about her age, they had generation guilt and never thought about her race. For her part, Betty seemed to have the meaning of life sorted out. I would not mind spending a day as content as she always was.

Florida Road is this week's trendy restaurant street. We saw plenty of tip jars. It had Spiga, a vaguely Italian café with a lot of penne dishes; Glamwich, a haven for avocado toast and bunny chow; Times Square, which always seemed more popular at drinking time than at eating time; Bird & Co, a chicken and pizza place that looked like fast food at restaurant prices; Paul's Homemade Ice Cream, which had confusing flavors, like the vegan “No Cow and Chicken”. I understand the no cow part, but never knew ice cream had chicken in it; House of Curries, with the largest bunny chow menu; the Firehouse, a pizza place with trendy toppings like avocado, toasted coconut, cashews, and teriyaki sauce; Sofra Istanbul, a Turkish restaurant with frozen french fries; Sabroso, with its generic Mexican menu; Fired Up Pizzeria, with pizzas so ugly, I did not even want to step inside; Flamin' Wok, a vaguely Thai restaurant with fortune cookies; and Tommy's Sushi, with “Chinese takeaway”. It was not Chinese. There were even more restaurants on the next block. The entire street was wall to wall restaurants. We could have eaten at a different place every day, even without going to other parts of the city.

The Thai place was noteworthy, even though no one thought it tasted like Thai food. They had fortune cookies, which I had to explain to my Taiwanese colleagues, who had never heard of such a thing. There is something surreal about sitting in a Thai restaurant in South Africa and describing American Chinese food to Chinese people. My colleagues were flabbergasted when I told them that everyone in the United States thinks Chinese people eat fortune cookies.

Bunny chow had to be explained to all of us. It is a loaf of white bread stuffed with curry. A quarter bunny is more than large enough for one person. Rabbits are not involved in any way. It was invented by Indian immigrants as an explicitly vegetarian dish. There are disputed theories about why they are called bunnies and which restaurant in Durban, if any, has the original. Fortunately, we asked what bunny chow was early in the trip. We would see it on more than a few menus throughout Durban.

Transportation in Durban was a little more complicated than Johannesburg. Rather than pick everyone up from one hotel in a charter bus, our drivers went to all of our different apartments and drove us around in cars. That meant we never all arrived at rehearsals at the same time, which meant more time in transit despite driving shorter distances. Guided tours were also more complicated. Everyone was driven by car to a meeting point and then driven as a group by bus to whatever tourist trap was on the agenda that day. I mostly avoided all of that, with a few exceptions.

Gateway Theatre of Shopping
Umhlanga, South Africa
When everyone else went to the Gateway Theatre Of Shopping in Umhlanga, a few of us took the bus and went to Umhlanga Beach. The Gateway Theatre Of Shopping claims to be the “largest shopping mall in the Southern Hemisphere”. Umhlanga Beach is famous for its lighthouse and rocky coast just beyond the soft sandy beach. With a long promenade right next to the beach, it is a great place to walk on sand or pavement, though a lousy spot for surfing or swimming. There was no way any of my colleagues would want to swim in an ocean anyway.

Umhlanga Beach
Photograph by LC Swart
When everyone took a bus to the Pavilion Shopping Centre in Westville, I walked down the Golden Mile. From the pictures I saw, the Pavilion looked a little like the Taipei 101 mall. One of the stores at the mall is a Christian bookstore called CUM Books. Being immature, this caught my attention. I was disappointed to learn that CUM stands for Christelike Uitgewers Maatskappy, which means Christian Publishing Company in Afrikaans. The Golden Mile is both a beach and several beaches along a seven kilometer stretch from Blue Lagoon Beach to the North Pier. It has none of the famous rocks of Umhlanga Beach up the coast, which makes it a much better place for surfing and swimming. It has the “longest beachfront promenade in sub-Saharan Africa”, which only made me curious where the longest promenade in North Africa was. The promenade and beaches were an easy walk from our apartment, so I went there more than a few times. The first time I went into the water, I thought it was my first time in the Indian Ocean. Then I remembered that I did some beach swimming in Bali almost ten years ago.

Not that I avoided all the guided tours. I went with the group to the Durban Botanic Gardens, which was far more botanic than the Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens in Johannesburg. It had more flowers, which is probably a good thing. There was even a separate orchid house, the “largest orchid collection in South Africa”, naturally. It was closed that day. The butterfly habitat was open, and a great place to look at butterflies, if you are into that sort of thing. The garden was especially proud of its tree collection. They bragged about their palm trees, which are not so impressive for those of us who live on a tropical island. They also had a lot of jacaranda trees, which are common in South Africa and not something we ever see at home. Even though we were there while the flowers were in bloom, the locals did not seem to care. What we found different, they found ordinary, and vice versa. The best part of the gardens was probably the small lake, where we saw more than a few birds I could never identify.

The Durban Natural Science Museum is inside city hall rather than its own dedicated building. It might be the smallest natural science museum I have ever been to, but all the children we saw loved it. That is really all that matters. If you can get them interested when they are still young and care about things, maybe they will care when they get older.

The Umgeni River Bird Park near the mouth of the Umgeni River had even more birds I could never hope to name. I recognized the flamingos, pelicans, swans, owls, toucans, peacocks, macaws, vultures, and those little Australian birds that got Men At Work sued. If they have over 300 species, that means I barely knew any of them. The bird park is essentially a zoo, which is never my favorite place to go. I was in a part of Africa where you can see animals in their natural habitat. Gawking at them in cages is the last thing I want to do, but the Umgeni River Bird Park breeds 17 different endangered species. That has to count for something. It was also free.

The worst guided tour was to the Japanese Gardens, which is a waste of time for anyone who has been to Japan or a garden. It is a park with a few generic Japanese decorations here and there. The only interesting aspect to the Japanese Gardens are the monkeys that wander around. Something we were warned about before we left Taiwan, besides crime, were the baboons in South Africa. Apparently, they are even bigger troublemakers than macaques. The monkeys we saw in the park were smaller and much calmer. Though not at all afraid of us, they never tried to steal anything from anyone.

Next to the Japanese Gardens was Sun Sun Supermarket. Billed as an Asian grocery store “With Everything Asian Under the Sun”, some of my colleagues were excited to check it out. I was more than a little skeptical. Outside of Asia, “Asian” usually means dry noodles and soy sauce. Surprisingly, it looked a lot like a Chinese grocery store, only with far more signs in English. They even had Super Supau, which I have never seen outside of Taiwan. Everyone in the building except me could have been from East Asia, which is what most people outside of Asia mean when they talk about Asia. Nothing west of India ever counts. Though their inventory was much smaller than everything under the sun, my colleagues walked out with full bags.

Watching Taiwanese people shop is an odd experience. We were in a part of the world none of us had ever been to before. Yet instead of buying ceramic giraffes and zebra keychains, they mostly bought clothes made in China and Vietnam from stores similar or exactly the same as what we have at home. When it came to food, the less exotic the better. Even though I could never taste anything, I wanted to try the local dishes. I have no idea what bunny chow tastes like, but I have eaten it in a few different places. They could taste everything, and wanted the most familiar food they could find. Taiwanese would have been preferable, but Chinese would have to do. There was nothing in all those Sun Sun bags they could not buy at home.

The Playhouse Company Theatre
We also did some work with the Siwela Sonke Dance Theatre, who were all fantastic.
September to November is spring in South Africa, so I came prepared. Most of my Taiwanese colleagues did not bring bathing suits because we started in October. Several people pointed out the difference between the Southern and Northern Hemisphere, but to the Taiwanese, October is not bathing suit season. I am often baffled by their insistence on dressing for the season rather than the weather. If it is 30 degrees and humid in July, they wear t-shirts and sandals. If it is 30 degrees and humid in December, they wear coats and boots. I thought that being in a different country at a much lower latitude would change that. I was wrong. Almost everyone dressed for Taiwan October, not South Africa October.

We arrived in Durban at the tail end of a storm. You could tell it had been raining for a while, though it took a break before our plane landed. The next few days had scattered thunderstorms and the threat of rain around the corner. Then we woke up to sunny and warm almost every other day. There was one full rainy day in Durban and one day where it rained off and on. Otherwise, it was spring sun and clouds. Every night was colder than a Taiwan winter, but none of the days were nearly as hot. Even on the hottest days, which were always below 30 degrees, there was usually a nice breeze coming from the ocean.

Our apartment did not have a swimming pool, but the house next door did. I mentioned something about how much I like to swim to Caroline during a random conversation and the next day she told me we could use the swimming pool next door. I have to assume they had some kind of previous arrangement with their neighbors to let tenants use it. It seems almost impossible that we were let into a stranger's pool just because I happened to mention it in passing. Regardless of whatever went on behind the scenes, none of my roommates brought bathing suits. That meant I got the swimming pool to myself. The owners of the house with the pool were much older. I got the impression they had not used it in years. Eventually, my roommates wised up and bought bathing suits, even though it was almost November. One afternoon, some of Betty's grandchildren joined us. It did not seem like their first time in that pool. Though Betty never donned a bathing suit, she kept an eye on those children like a meerkat. I wondered what it must have been like for her to watch a white woman, a few Chinese women, and her black grandchildren all swimming in the same water together, and then to know that it would never be an issue for the children.

Johannesburg is much bigger than Durban and probably has more to see and do. I preferred Durban for a few reasons. Our apartment was in a quiet residential neighborhood instead of in the middle of a shopping mall. The people we worked with in both cities were friendly, but the people of Durban were less big city uptight and more small town relaxed. Durban is on the Indian Ocean and has several beautiful beaches. Johannesburg is nowhere near a large body of water. We spent twice as much time in Durban, so I had more opportunity to wander around and explore on my own without any tour guides. I usually wake up before sunrise at home. After adjusting to the time difference in Johannesburg, I did the same most days in Durban. Since Durban is on the east coast, the beaches are an excellent place to watch the sun rise over the Indian Ocean. Simply walking down the Durban promenade was a better day than any of the scheduled tourist stops in Johannesburg.

Photograph by Liesel Muhl

African Tour:Johannesburg

Taoyuan International Airport
Taipei, Taiwan

Suvarnabhumi Airport
Bangkok, Thailand

Hamad International Airport
Doha, Qatar

OR Tambo International Airport
Johannesburg, South Africa

Flying from Taiwan to South Africa is pretty simple. We took Thai Airways from Taipei to Bangkok, then Qatar Airways from Bangkok to Doha and a separate flight from Doha to Johannesburg. It was supposed to take 24 hours.

Our first delay was in Bangkok. We spent nine hours at Suvarnabhumi Airport. They never told us why. As other passengers were put onto other flights, we waited. We were a larger group, so it was probably more difficult to find something for us. I am not normally a fan of waiting in airports for nine hours, but something interesting came out of it. Our original Bangkok to Doha flight was supposed to be on a Boeing 777, which I have flown on plenty of times. Our new flight was on an Airbus A380, which I had never flown before. The A380 is that double decker plane that was supposed to revolutionize air travel and replace the 747. Except it never did. Airbus built fewer than 300 planes in 18 years, compared to more than 1,500 planes in 50 years for the 747. Airbus lost money on the A380. Boeing made a fortune on the 747.

We finally left Bangkok at three in the morning. Because of time zones and that whole spinning of the Earth thing, our seven hour flight landed just before six in the morning. Hamad International Airport in Doha seems to be pretty popular. It wins awards from organizations that hand out awards to airports. The first time I went to Hamad International Airport was on my way to Barcelona. That flight was also delayed, so I spent ten hours in the award-winning airport in the middle of the night when all of the things that won the awards were closed.

This time, we spent almost 15 hours at the airport, starting at six in the morning when everything was closed. The advantage to being in a larger group was that the airline put us up in one of the airport hotels. The last thing they wanted was for any of us to leave the airport, not that we had any visas for Qatar. I was the only one in our group with a passport that could get me out of the airport without any extra paperwork. Since I only had 15 hours, and I am not wild about spending money in a country where being gay is a capital offense, I thought it best to stay with my group and take a break in that free hotel.

After dinner, we took an eight and a half hour flight to Johannesburg on a Boeing 777. Our 24 hour trip from Taipei took 44 hours.

Melrose Arch
We arrived in Johannesburg at four in the morning and were at our hotel before six. Another good thing about being in a larger group was that we could check into the hotel as soon as we got there. Solo travelers usually have to wait until the normal check in time, which is nowhere close to six in the morning. The Johannesburg Marriott Hotel Melrose Arch was a standard business hotel just like every Marriott I have ever seen anywhere in the world. For some reason, I assumed all of our hotels on this trip would be similar. They were not.

Melrose is a more upscale neighborhood of Johannesburg. The Melrose Arch is a new office/retail development that looks absolutely nothing like most of the city. It is how business leaders want Johannesburg to look and how community leaders know Johannesburg will never look. I do not and should not have a dog in this race, but if I had a vote, I would say the city should try to keep its traditional feel and not look like a pedestrian shopping mall. The entire Melrose Arch area reminded me of the outdoor pedestrian part of the Southpoint Mall in Durham, though only in appearance. Johannesburg feels nothing like North Carolina.

One of the first things I noticed about the Melrose Arch was the overt security presence. One thing we had been warned about before leaving Taiwan was the high crime rates in South Africa, especially Johannesburg. From what I could tell, it was all private security. That did nothing to make me feel safe. I know nothing about South African police training, but anywhere else I have ever been, private security companies do not generally hire the best of the best. In Jerusalem's Old City, you sometimes see armed soldiers. If you want safety, they are the way to go. Their training is some of the best in the world. Any job that pays the bills is something to be proud of, but mall cops are not going to take a bullet for you.

Not that we ever needed anything that extreme. Johannesburg was like New York or Los Angeles. There are some neighborhoods you might want to avoid at night and some you should probably stay out of altogether. Most of the city is perfectly safe for anyone not walking down the street waving large wads of cash. To the Taiwanese, none of that made any sense. You can walk any street in Taiwan at any time with the Hope Diamond in your gold crown and no one will look at you twice. Unless you are a foreigner. Then they will stare at you all day, without any violent intent. I never noticed anyone staring at us in South Africa. Then again, Johannesburg has the largest Chinese population in all of Africa, and people who look like me are nothing special.

We were two to a room in the hotel, which was not a problem at all since we spent most of our time either at work or visiting some tourist trap. I can barely remember what the room looked like. There was a lot of gray and beige. I suppose those are the fashionable colors right now. By South Africans standards, it was exceptionally dull and lacked the vibrant colors we saw all over the country.

The biggest disadvantage to traveling with a large group of Taiwanese is that they love guided tours. The larger the group, the better. When I go somewhere new, I want to wander around and get a little lost. The things I have accidentally stumbled across are far more interesting than anything some stranger booked in advance. When Taiwanese go somewhere, they want to shop, see the most popular sights in the travel guides, and eat at mostly Chinese restaurants that have been approved by previous Taiwanese tourists.

Since Johannesburg was our first stop on this African Tour, and I am a supervisor of sorts, I chose to stay with the group more than I wanted. In between rehearsals, shows, and all the driving back and forth, we piled into a charter bus when we had some time off and saw tiny slivers of Johannesburg that taught us almost nothing about the culture or its people.

Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens
We went to the Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens, which looked more like a park than a botanical garden. Apparently, they used to have a nursery, but it closed a few years ago. Its biggest selling point is a small waterfall that flows from a hill where some eagles live. I never saw any eagles, but we were in South Africa. Plenty of animals were right around the corner.

We went to the Old Kromdraai Gold Mine, one of the mines during South Africa's gold rush that put Johannesburg on the map. They still call Johannesburg the City of Gold, but only on brochures. No one actually called it that in person. While the history is important to South Africans, no one in our group was especially impressed by rusty old mine carts and the dirt entrance of a tunnel.

We took a walking tour of Sophiatown, a cultural and artistic haven at the beginning of the 20th century, much like Montmartre in Paris or Dashijie in Shanghai. At the time, artists of all races and backgrounds could mingle, drink too much, and discuss all the vast intricacies of life. Unfortunately, most of the original buildings were bulldozed when it became a white neighborhood and the black population was violently relocated to the Soweto township.

One of the better guided tours was the Alexandra bicycle tour. We rode bicycles around the Alexandra township, which is one of the poorest neighborhoods in Johannesburg and borders Sandton, one of the richest. There was a bit of a history lesson, but our guide mostly ignored the poverty around us and the fact that what we paid to ride bicycles could have bought books for a few families.

Soweto
The best and worst guided tour we took in Johannesburg was in Soweto. With a population of over one million people in two hundred square kilometers, it is by far the largest township in South Africa. The tour covered a small area while the tour guide tried to cram a lot of history into a short presentation. Most of my Taiwanese colleagues were completely unaware of South Africa's history. Apartheid was never something they studied in school, but it was a word they heard a lot in South Africa.

Our tour guide told us that Soweto was essentially a ghetto for black people, many of whom were evicted from their homes and forced to live in the township. They could only legally leave when going to work in the mines or other parts of Johannesburg. Someone in our group asked how the white people could control the black population that outnumbered them six to one. The convoluted answer was a long history of colonization and oppression by my ancestors. By the time Apartheid was the law of the land, the black majority was used to being treated like criminals. As the only white person on the bus, I did what my people have always done. I oversimplified a complicated situation for my Taiwanese colleagues and told them the whites had all the money.

As the only person on our tour group who knew anything about the history of South Africa, albeit not nearly enough, I was not at all surprised by anything our tour guide told us in Soweto. What surprised me were the living conditions. I expected a Hooverville of tin shacks with dirt floors, which do indeed exist. I thought Soweto would look more like Alexandra. But there were also plenty of paved roads, wood framed houses with tile roofs, lots of garages for all the cars, and ample electricity and indoor plumbing. At least in the daytime. Nelson Mandela's house is a small but sturdy brick and mortar building.

When I saw a tour group of white people strolling through the township, I wondered if their tour guide was showing them the real Soweto or the tourist version we were seeing. I never felt guilty while I was with Taiwanese people who had nothing to do with Apartheid. Had they lived in South Africa at the time, they would have been classified as Coloured, which sounds terrible where I come from and was even worse in 20th century South Africa. I could not help but look disapprovingly at the white tourists who were treating this home to a million people as some kind of tourist attraction, even though I was doing the same thing. My internal defense was that I never wanted to go there. I wanted to explore Johannesburg's vibrant present, not learn even more about its appalling past. When I go to Hiroshima, I visit the Peace Park, but I spend most of my time in the mix of near future and distant past.

In Johannesburg's present, we ate a great deal of food. That is unavoidable if you travel with a large group of Taiwanese. If they love anything more than shopping during their travels, it is easting. The food in South Africa was something I was not looking forward to at all. Most of the time, in my daily life, I can ignore the fact that I have no sense of smell and cannot taste flavors. When I go somewhere I have never been, especially somewhere as famous for its cuisine as South Africa, that reality hits me in the face at every meal. Had I been able to taste anything, I probably would have eaten like a Taiwanese.

Most of my colleagues wanted to try the local Chinese food. There was a basic, all over the place “Chinese” restaurant near the hotel. None of their dishes were familiar and no one was impressed. It never stood a chance anyway because it was not in the travel guides. Not the most adventurous people in the world, my traveling companions were really only interested in eating pre-approved food.

Oriental Plaza
Luckily for them, not so much for me, Johannesburg has more than a few shopping malls. They reminded me of every shopping mall everywhere in the world, except for the metal detectors at the door and private security guards checking bags before anyone could get in. The one mall I might remember in years to come was the Oriental Plaza, just down the M1 from our hotel. I thought the name was interesting because where I come from, it would be seen as insulting to the Chinese. The Chinese shoppers I was with could not have cared less. They were there for deals. Unlike most malls, shoppers could haggle on prices at the Oriental Plaza. Taiwanese love to haggle, even though prices are set at all malls in Taiwan. As for a taste of the Orient, nothing in the mall reminded anyone of home. They were mostly disappointed that it was run down and looked like it had seen better days.

Further east is China Town, several blocks of restaurants and shops that did not look the least bit Chinese. But there were Chinese signs all over the place, which I found strangely comforting, and most of the shops were owned and operated by Chinese immigrants. My colleagues loved it because they could speak to people in their language and eat food that was far more authentic than any of the upscale “Chinese” restaurants in town.

There were plenty of extremes in Johannesburg. We went to the poorest neighborhoods and some of the richest. We drove past car dealerships selling Maseratis and young men standing on the side of the road selling cell phone cases and plastic toys. There are roadside stalls selling fruit in Taiwan, but usually in rural areas. The most you will see in the city is someone selling flowers. In Johannesburg, larger than any city in Taiwan, you can buy anything at a stop light. Which are called robots, for some reason.

We also did some work here and there, but Johannesburg was more about adjusting and adapting. The work was nothing new. The audiences were, and they seemed to enjoy a look into a culture very different from theirs. Johannesburg will always be my gateway into Africa, which is probably not the best position to be in. I vividly remember my first visit to Tokyo, but the Ginza was sensory overload. There was too much to take in all at once. I get the feeling Johannesburg will feel the same way a few years down the road.

Johannesburg

---

I took thousands of photographs in South Africa. It is going to take a while to sort through them all. But since I will be describing some photogenic places, it feels wrong to not show any pictures. I will use placeholder photographs until I can replace them with my own, and give credit to the photographers when I know who they are.

My Birthday Present part 2

Hisoka and I had both just arrived in Hong Kong from short flights and long airport delays, so neither of us objected to a soak in a hot tub. I brought a bathing suit to Hong Kong because our new apartment has two swimming pools I wanted to try out. I also brought it to Hisoka's apartment because he said there was a pool downstairs. He never mentioned the hot tub because he wanted to surprise me. And it worked. He surprised the pants off me. Hisoka brought his own tiny trunks, which I never saw on this trip. As private as that hot tub was, he agreed with me that bathing suits would have been gratuitous.

It is worth noting that I see nothing inherently sexual about swimming, or soaking, naked. I have been in thousands of swimming pools, hot tubs, hot springs, lakes, rivers, and general bodies of water without doing anything even adjacent to the neighborhood of sex. Hisoka and I got naked in a Miyajima hot spring on our first real date, and hanky panky was categorically tabu. Not only were we surrounded by older people, but that sort of thing would have gotten us kicked out and banned for life.

It is also worth noting that neither Hisoka nor I had our spices ground for a considerable period of time. The fact of which was vividly illustrated when I got into the water. What is a discreet way to put this? Hisoka shot his load all over the deck faster than a teenager in the back seat on prom night. He was fully erect before he even took off his clothes. Watching me get naked and penetrate the jet bubbles was too much for him. I like to put a positive spin on things, so the good news was that none of his seed spilled into the hot tub. I had no idea how often that thing was cleaned. I only knew that hosing off the wooden deck had to be an easier job.

With sex in the water out of the question, we both sat back and enjoyed a nice soak. Yes, the polite thing for him to do would have been to service me. That would have required me keeping most of myself out of the hot tub, and I wanted to be in it. Besides, we had all day.

We talked about going out to hit the town, but we both had a busy week ahead of us. Sunday was our day of rest. It made more sense to make use of the apartment. Since it was an apartment and not a hotel, we had to go out when we wanted to eat. I like staying in apartments better than hotels, but hotels have room service.

For lunch, we went to Feast, an upscale buffet restaurant on King's Road near Quarry Bay Park. They had a wide variety of local food on tiny plates and local food pretending to be international food, with more soups, salads, and sides than anyone really needs. They even had coleslaw, which is not something you see every day in Hong Kong. I mostly just got desserts, because that is how I roll. Hisoka got several tiny plates of stamina, because he would need it. We both knew that after lunch, I was going to ride him like the Matterhorn. Hong Kong Disneyland has no Matterhorn, but saying I would ride him like the Toy Soldiers Parachute Drop sounds almost insulting.

Hisoka and I are both old fashioned in matters of the heart. I like to wait a painfully long time before I jump in the sack and he tries to get laid as soon as possible. We are more new fashioned in our willingness to find less traditional locations. Hot tubs, for example. Balconies are another. I have always been fond of kitchen coupling. The typical kitchen counter tends to be a nice height. Whoever invented islands was a genius, though quartz countertops can get cold.

Despite being open to several rooms, a few secluded outdoor spots, and pieces of furniture that are not beds, we found ourselves on the bed. Next to the bed was a large, almost floor to ceiling window with unobstructed views of Devil's Peak. I never really noticed the view with Hisoka on top of, under, and behind me. I can say that it was a nice bed, with a bit of give and not too much bounce.. Traditionally, Chinese beds are hard. Pillow tops have only recently made their way to China. You never want anything in your bed to be too soft, while a nice cushion under your butt or knees is good for longevity. What we call queen size on this side of the world is smaller than what I consider queen size. That queen size was wide enough for two, if a little on the short side. I am probably much shorter than anyone in the NBA, yet I have spent countless nights with my feet hanging over the bed.

I may have misspoken about the view. I seem to recall looking at the hills while we were pressed together on the tiny bedroom balcony. Though I suppose, technically, that was not in the bedroom.

Hisoka brought a box of condoms to Hong Kong. That might sound presumptuous, but it is far better to have something you might never use than to not have something you desperately need. He brought them from Japan instead of buying them in Hong Kong because he says Chinese condoms are too small. This is where things get interesting, and probably more than a little offensive to a couple billion people.

According to Hisoka, condoms in China are smaller than condoms in Japan. I cannot verify such a thing, but my first boyfriend in Hong Kong, who was not even a little Chinese, also claimed they were too small. In his case, he was making a mountain out of a molehill. Despite not wielding a katana himself, he assumed Chinese men were all holding a tanto. Hisoka, both on the other hand and using the other hand, has a more realistic self-image. He has seen enough porn to remain humble, and spent enough time in hot springs and locker rooms to boast. When he says Chinese condoms are too small, I have to consider it theoretically possible. Yet I cannot ignore that Durex and Trojan are in more than a few stores, and I know they come in more than one size. Several Japanese brands are widely available. It seems unlikely that those Japanese companies are making extra small sizes for the Chinese market. Unless it was for purely mocking purposes.

On what has to be the most important hand, a typical condom can stretch more than enough for almost every man. Unless you are exceptionally tiny or exceptionally huge. I would imagine more men have difficulties with condoms that are too loose. The funny thing is, I have never heard of a single man in the history of the universe say that condoms are too big.

Which brings us to a question that every man I have ever known has asked me. Does size matter? To men, yes. It absolutely does. To women? I don't know. I speak for only one woman. But I know that even if Hisoka were hung like an elephant, spraying the pool deck would have still been useless to me. It is not simply the motion of the ocean that counts, but how long it takes that boat to dock. A cabin cruiser that makes it to shore is a million times better than a giant oil tanker that spills crude 3,000 kilometers from its destination. The good news is that after Hisoka's blue balls turned beige, he had far more control. The other good news is that he had a box of condoms. Just one would not have been enough for the day. Though I still say what he could get in Hong Kong was sufficient.

Before dinner, we spent more time in and around the rooftop hot tub. November is not the best time to lie out and get a tan, and Hong Kong is not the best tanning city. Not that it matters. My skin goes straight from alabaster to lobster. But that particular deck had ample sitting and/or lying room, and the sun, such as it was, still felt good on my skin. Especially on a rooftop with a soft breeze and no one staring at me. Or at least only one person staring at me.

For dinner, we went to Frites, a Belgian restaurant just off King's Road near Quarry Bay Park. Or at least a Chinese version of a Belgian restaurant. Hisoka picked it because I used to work in Belgium. Except, I have never worked in Belgium. I was a little disappointed that he thought my time in Amsterdam was actually Belgium. Then I realized that we rarely talk about our jobs. I told him I was going to Amsterdam when I did, but that was three years ago, and I might not have mentioned it since. I would be surprised if I have never mentioned Amsterdam. It is a wondrous city. I would be equally surprised if we had any meaningful conversation about my work in Amsterdam. He tells me about places he goes for work, while I only have a general idea of what he does for a living.

Having never worked in Belgium, I cannot say anything about how authentic the Frites menu is, but they had falafel quesadillas, which I support wholeheartedly. You can put falafel in anything, and you can put anything in a quesadilla, so why not falafel quesadilla. Being a Belgian restaurant, maybe, they also had a large beer menu. So we got a bottle of wine. We also got some frites with mayonnaise because when you go to a place called Frites, you have to try the frites. If I went to Mejores Tacos del Mundo, there is a pretty good chance I might get a taco.

Hisoka has always known that I can taste absolutely nothing. He still likes to show me restaurants that he thinks I would have liked back when I could sense flavor. I am more than used to going wherever whoever I'm going out to eat with wants to go, so I let Hisoka find all of our meals. Revealingly, he never suggested anything American, Chinese or Japanese. During business meals, he mostly eats Japanese. On his free time, he likes to try new things. His assumption that I would like to avoid American food is both sound and unnecessary since I rarely come in contact with American food.

Back when I had a boyfriend and an active sex life, I often looked at past travels in terms of food. One of my favorite things about going somewhere new was eating something new. I never reminisce about the places we knocked boots. Now that food is only something I eat to survive, I might start looking back at travel in terms of whether or not I got some action. In a few months, I will forget all about the restaurants on this trip. Without the coleslaw, our lunch would already be forgotten. What I will remember most are the naked bodies twisting around each other. And that rooftop hot tub. If you can put a hot tub on your roof, I highly recommend it. Unless you live in a gabled house.

The whole point of keeping the Ma On Shan apartment rather than renting it out was to have a place to stay whenever we are in town. I spent the first night somewhere else anyway. Lily spent the night in the new apartment, along with our tenant/Kevin's friend. I can pretty much guarantee that they had a patently different night than Hisoka and I. But there is no need to feel bad for Lily. She lives with her boyfriend. They can do all the deviant things Hisoka and I did any time. But we have no hot tub at home.

Bereavement Tour part 2

One of the easiest places in Taiwan to get around in the rain is Taipei. Much of it is indoors and the MRT goes everywhere, underground. Taipei is also far more foreigner-friendly than the south. There are “English” signs all over the place and more people speak at least some version of English than anywhere else in the country. Didier wisely chose to go on a day that both Lily and I were available.

Rather than drive, we took the gaotie. The drive from Kaohsiung to Taipei takes at least four hours, under the best conditions. Once there, driving is pointless and parking is expensive. The fastest train takes 90 minutes. Didier's previous train experience was on the xiaotie from Chiayi to Tainan. Otherwise, he got free rides everywhere. For him, the difference between xiaotie and gaotie was like transporting from 1980 to the early 21st century.

One of the Taipei stops is Taipei Main Station, the only gaotie station in a city center. The station directly connects to the two largest MRT lines, the main bus station, and the xiaotie station. It is also an easy walk to several museums, 228 Peace Park, and the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial. Chiang Kai Shek was a murderous dictator, but his memorial hall is one of the more impressive architectural landmarks in the country. Had it not already been on Yi Jun's list, I would have recommended it.

Lily recommended busy and bustling sights like Bopiliao and Ximending, both of which are good examples of Taiwan's culture, though from different centuries. Bopiliao (Longshan Temple station exit #3) is an old Qing Dynasty street that has been restored to its natural state, with seismic reinforcement and ample fire exits. Ximending (Ximen station exit #6) is a purely modern pedestrian street. People often claim it looks like Tokyo, but that is only because there are millions of neon lights and youngsters shopping all night. That is where the similarities end. Both streets are close to Longshan Temple (Longshan Temple station exit #1). At 300 years, it is not the oldest temple in Taiwan, but it is probably the most famous.

That would have been an easy afternoon of walking, but Didier wanted to avoid the crowds, and he had already spent a day at Fo Guang Shan. Longshan Temple and Fo Guang Shan are completely different religions, but from his European point of view, they were the same.

I suggested a few museums. They are indoors and never nearly as crowded as the shopping streets. From Taipei Main Station, the Museum of Contemporary Art is one block north, the National Taiwan Museum (NTU Hospital exit #4) is three blocks south, and the National Museum of History (Xiaonanmen exit #3) is a few blocks further south. The National Taiwan Museum is in 228 Peace Park (NTU Hospital exit #1 & #4), which is a nice little park a block away from the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall (Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall exit #5). The National Museum of History is in the Taipei Botanical Garden (Xiaonanmen exit #3), which is a nice little garden just west of Chiang Kai Shek. Walking to any or all of the museums would be easy. Instead, we went to the National Palace Museum in Shilin, which is nowhere near Taipei Main Station. It is, however, the single best place in the world to see Imperial Chinese art. Didier liked the sound of that.

Taipei is known for its nightlife, with the most popular shopping, the most expensive dance clubs, and the most famous night markets in the country. Didier wanted to avoid everything. I find a night of dancing quite relaxing, but he was still afraid of being around too many people while his side of the world was deep into a plague. Even stranger, he was not a fan of dancing. Something he was willing to do was take the turbolift up to the top of Taipei 101 (Taipei 101 exit #4). I think the views are much better in the daytime, if it is not too cloudy, but the lights at night show how large Taipei is, by Taiwan standards, and how tiny it is compared to Tokyo.

We spent the night at the Home Hotel (Taipei 101 exit #4), a small boutique hotel about three blocks from Taipei 101. It was also the hotel I stayed in the first time I went to Taipei. I like it because it is smaller than the typical business hotel and the service is better than anywhere else in the city.

We started the next day with a morning bicycle ride through the riverside parks along the Keelung River. Morning is easily the best time to ride a bicycle in Taipei. Not so much for the weather. It is always going to be hot and humid, no matter what time of day. But afternoons and evenings along the river get far too crowded. Mornings are comparatively empty. There are almost no lights along the winding river, and the packs of stray dogs can get a bit territorial, so the middle of night might not be the best time. There are a variety of hiking options in eastern Taipei, but we did some hiking in Kenting, so Didier was looking for something a little less strenuous.

Had it just been Lily and me, we would have ridden the bicycles from the hotel to the river. It is only a ten minute ride, at most, but it requires navigating busy streets and dodging traffic in a country where right of way is an alien concept. Anyone without a firm understanding of the culture should stick with the clearly marked bicycle paths in areas where cars and trucks are physically blocked from entering. With Didier, we took the MRT to Jiannan (exit #3) and rode through the more scenic parks just north of the airport. Starting from Nangang and riding west until the river ends makes more sense, but Didier is more of a leisurely stroll bicyclist.

The Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall (Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall exit #4) was on Didier's list, so we went there. When there are no performances or events, the hall is little more than a large public space. There are better parks in Taipei, but it is an easy walk from Taipei 101. Before we went to Taipei, I thought Taipei Main Station would be our hub from which to branch out around the city. But since we stayed at a hotel next to Taipei 101, that became our reference point.

Just outside the Sun Yat Sen MRT station (exit #2) is a “German” bakery that I thought Didier might enjoy. Like pretty much everything else in Taiwan, it is far more Taiwanese than whatever other region it claims, but they have large German style pretzels. Lily thinks they are terrible, but she is not German. Neither is Didier, but France is a lot closer than Canada. He had been in Taiwan for a while at this point, and I know of no authentic French restaurants anywhere in the country, so a fake German bakery would have to do. Unfortunately, Didier agreed with Lily about the pretzels. But he liked the brioche.

About a ten minute walk north of the bakery is Little New York Pizza. Lily says it is the best pizza in Taiwan. It certainly looks like New York pizza, and the slices are large enough, but I doubt it tastes anything like New York. It was also not at all French, but our goal was to find food unlike the Taiwanese and Chinese Didier had been eating every day. Pizza, at least real pizza with tomato sauce and cheese, is not at all Chinese.

There are thousands of pizza places in Taipei, if not hundreds. Most of them claim to have the best pizza in the city, county or country. It is as absurd as all the “original” pizza places in New York. Unfortunately, I can say nothing about the taste, but few look like they could ever be the best. Far too many serve “pizza” without cheese or sauce, and for some reason, proofing the dough is considered unlucky. Almost all of them serve something other than pizza as a main course. Most have more traditional Chinese dishes. More than a few have various noodle and/or pasta dishes. Little New York is the only one I know about that only has pizza, aside from fries and maybe garlic bread, but those are acceptable side dishes. In my experience, the best pizza places concentrate on pizza. Anything else on the menu is an afterthought. Big Boyz Pizza in Songshan (Nanjing Fuxing exit #5) has Chicago style, which is unheard of in Taiwan, but their New York pizza looks nothing like New York, and Lily said it was criminally undercooked. If they can't take the time to cook a New York pizza, I can only imagine how the Chicago turns out.

I should probably point out that there is more than one Little New York Pizza in Taipei. The one on Yanji Street, just north of Civic Blvd, is the only one that is all pizza. The others have larger restaurant menus.

From Taipei, we went to Hsinchu. The gaotie only takes 30 minutes, but the Hsinchu station is not actually in the city of Hsinchu. Ordinarily, a trip around Taiwan could easily skip Hsinchu, but Didier heard that Hsinchu is the technological capital of Taiwan. While true, that does little for visitors, unless you want to tour a semiconductor factory. Since Lily knows someone who knows someone whose house we could stay in, we went to Zhubei, which is just across the river from Hinschu. Conveniently and coincidentally, the house was only a ten minute Uber ride from the Hsinchu gaotie station, which is in Zhubei.

I downloaded Uber onto my phone for this trip. I had thought about using it once before, but I have a car in Kaohsiung and use the MRT in Taipei. I almost never have any need for Uber, unless I am going to or coming from the airport. Then I get a ride from someone or take a taxi. While Hsinchu has plenty of taxis, I thought we would spend more time going back and forth between Zhubei and Hsinchu. Having Uber on my phone made sense.

Downloading the app was a bit of a chore. My 4-year-old phone has its original battery. I can remember a time when I would charge it two or three times a week. Now, I keep it plugged in when not in use. Downloading the Uber app sucked up the battery. I had to plug mobile devices into other mobile devices, making everything far less mobile. It was a whole production. The app works exactly as it should, and the technology is pretty impressive. I push a button on my phone and in five minutes or less, someone picks me up and takes me where I want to go. And no cash changes hands. But I have to make sure my battery is above 80% when I use it. I was at 70% when I opened the app one time, and 1% when I gave the driver a 5 star review. I might need to get a new battery.

I hate the entire “citizen critic” system that has infected every aspect of modern life. Everyone wants to give everything a review. Almost no one is qualified to be a professional critic in any given field, and most people are not nearly as nice online as they are in person. I say, unless your driver was smoking or drunk, give him 5 stars. Was the ride perfect in every possible way? Probably not. But there is no need to be a dick about it.

We did pretty much nothing in Hsinchu and spent most of our time in Zhubei. The house where we stayed was in the middle of the restaurant district. There were no French restaurants, of course, but they had a branch of a Taiwanese-Italian restaurant we have in Kaohsiung and a popular pizza place that is generally decent, but not New York.

Hsinchu was nothing like Didier expected, but he took the technological label a little too literally. He thought it was going to be some advanced city with evidence of the future in every direction. Instead, he got a typical Taiwan city that looks pretty much like every other Taiwan city. Taiwan has a lot of positive aspects, but it is definitely not known for its architecture. Go to pretty much any city in western Europe and you will see people taking pictures of random buildings. No one does that in Taiwan. I expected nothing out of Hsinchu, but found a nice little neighborhood across the river.

When Didier finally went home, he had only crossed a fraction of the places he wanted to see off his list. It was an unrealistic list. Taiwan is a small country, but you can never see it all in one visit. He is always free to come back, but I get the impression that this place is simply too depressing for him. Not because he and Yi Jun spent too much time here, but because they did not spend nearly enough.

Year Of the Ox

My first New Year in Taiwan was not all that different from New Year in China. Technically, they both last 15 days, from New Year's Day to the Lantern Festival. In China, banks and schools close for the first three days, and people count the weekend before or after as part of their holiday vacation, even if they always get weekends off. In Taiwan, banks and schools close on New Year's Eve, the first three days, and a few extra days to make it a true vacation. Since the main days were on the weekend this year, the days off were the Wednesday before New Year's Eve to the following Tuesday. For some people, that gives them a full day to prepare and a day or two to wind down after all the hoopla has passed.

On Thursday, New Year's Eve, I went to dinner at a friend's house. It was a big family dinner, but guests are always welcome at Chinese dinners. Despite being New Year's Eve, it was nothing like a party atmosphere. We ate an entirely too large meal and played some card games. This particular family is fond of gambling, so more than a few bills changed hands. I won more than I lost, but I did not win too much to ever get invited back.

As often happens, this family was surprised that I can speak their language. Inevitably, I was asked how long I have lived in Taiwan. Everyone is amazed when I tell them I have only been here for nine months. Then they are less amazed when I point out that I moved here from China. At that point, most people just want me to tell them that I like Taiwan better than China. That is a big issue around here.

Another difference between what I think of as a New Year's Eve party was that it ended long before midnight. I was home before 22:00. Rather than a rowdy New Year, I knew it was midnight when I was reading on the sofa and heard an invasion's worth of fireworks outside. The year of the rat was now the year of the ox.

Friday, New Year's Day, was temple day. You are supposed to go to your local temple and honor your dead ancestors. I have none in Taiwan, and my grandparents would have considered burning incense and leaving food on a table as strange. My grandmother would say, “Dead people don't need to eat. That's a waste of perfectly good food.” But anything left at temples is donated either to the monks or to whichever organizations they sponsor. Nothing is wasted. Burning fake money for the dead, on the other hand, is just silly.

Dinner was with another friend's family. No gambling this time, but more than enough food for several families. The first day of the new year is when older family members give red envelopes to younger family. Generally, adults give to children, but older adults can also give to younger adults if they are not married. I was surprised when a few people gave me red envelopes. I am definitely not married, but older than most people of red envelope age. It was more of a welcome to our home on this special day kind of thing.

One of the biggest differences between China and Taiwan was made the most obvious on this day. In most of China, it is pretty illegal to light your own fireworks. Big cities like Hong Kong have enormous, organized public shows. In Taiwan, anyone can blow things up in the street. And they do. There were explosions all week, but nothing as loud or constant as on New Year's Day. Taiwan also has a large stray dog population. I don't know how they react to a week of fireworks.

Saturday, the second day, is when adult daughters go back to visit their parents. Traditionally, when a girl got married, she went from being her parents' property to her husband's property, so she spent holidays with her husband's family. The second day of the New Year was set aside so she could see her parents. China is a bit of a large country, so before planes and bullet trains, some daughters would only see their parents one day a year.

Taiwan is much smaller than China. You can fit over 250 Taiwans inside China. The fastest high speed train can get from one end of the country to the other in about 90 minutes. You can fly from Kaohsiung to Taipei in under an hour, but with all the time spent at the airport, the train is faster. Taiwanese women also put up with a lot less bullshit than Chinese women, so they don't need a special day to visit their parents.

I had another dinner with a friend's parents. She sees them all the time, but this was still a special day for them. The food was different on each day, but they were also with different families. One thing they all had in common was that they made entirely too much. I can appreciate being an invited guest into someone's home, but I can only eat so much. Chinese culture, much like so many other cultures, insists that you eat until you vomit. At least during special meals. A normal dinner on a normal day is typically pretty small. No matter the occasion, I simply do not eat all that much. I realize that I offend most hosts by not gorging myself, and they all assume I am eating less because I do not like what they have made, no matter what I say to the contrary, but I am selfish enough to think that I should have the right to determine how much I can tolerate.

By Sunday, the third day, no one really cared about the holiday anymore. There were plenty of fireworks in the street, but no more big family dinners. Probably because they all started celebrating on Wednesday. By Monday, it was business as usual, though banks and schools were still closed. Everything else was open and ready to make that sweet ox money.

The New Year ends at the Lantern Festival on February 26. I have no idea how or if anyone is going to celebrate that. It was always a big deal in Hong Kong. We will see what happens in Taiwan.

A Few Differences Between Hong Kong and Kaohsiung

I lived in Hong Kong for almost ten years. To some expats, that makes me an expert. I disagree. I think it takes a lifetime to fully understand a place like Hong Kong. Maybe after 30 or 40 years, I could claim to know something about the city.

I have lived in Kaohsiung for four months. That means I know almost nothing about the place. I know how to find my apartment and how to get to the places I need to go. I know where to get food and how to pay bills. I know where the best parking lots are and on which streets it is impossible to park. I can look like I live here, mostly because I do, but I cannot tell you about the heart and soul of Kaohsiung.

But I can recognize some of the differences between Hong Kong and Kaohsiung. I realize that this kind of thing would be better after I have been here for a few years and know more about Kaohsiung, but I also realize that after a few years in Kaohsiung, I will find it less exotic and I will probably talk more about other places. When I first moved to Hong Kong, every blog post was about Hong Kong. Everything was new and different. In the end, I rarely mentioned Hong Kong. When you live anywhere long enough, it is simply where you live.

The weather in Hong Kong and Kaohsiung is pretty much the same. They are practically at the same latitude and both in humid tropical zones. It rains more in Hong Kong and is hotter in Kaohsiung. The biggest difference is that Kaohsiung is more prone to typhoons. Both cities face the South China Sea, which receives every Pacific typhoon that does not swing north and crash into Japan. But Hong Kong is largely protected by the Philippines and Taiwan. A typhoon has to fit through a narrow corridor to hit Hong Kong directly. Most storms hit the Philippines, Taiwan and/or Fujian, bringing only rain and wind to Hong Kong. Taiwan is only protected to the south by the Philippines, and is wide open to the east. Kaohsiung is on the southwest coast, which is directly in the path of every storm that hits Fujian or turns north from the Philippines, but the overwhelming majority of typhoons hit Taiwan's central east coast, which is one of the reasons that area is sparsely populated. Since I moved during typhoon season, I have seen more rain in Kaohsiung than sun, but I am told that most of the year, Kaohsiung is far sunnier than Hong Kong.

The language is the same, more or less. Legally, the official languages of Hong Kong are Chinese and English. Realistically, most of the people who claim to speak English do not know it as well as they think. And Chinese is a jumble of a hundred different dialects, most of which are well represented in Hong Kong. When Hong Kong was occupied by the British, most of the Chinese population was from Guangdong. Since then, people have flooded in from all parts of China, bringing their dialects with them. You can easily find university classes taught in Cantonese, Wu, Min, Hakka, and more often than not, Putonghua. Cantonese might be the most popular dialect on the street, but Putonghua is the language of academia.

The official language of Taiwan is Chinese. Most people do not even pretend to understand English, though it is one of the most popular foreign languages taught in schools. As an island that was never really important to China, Taiwan developed its own aboriginal languages. Japan had a major impact during their occupation, but only the oldest generation remembers being forced to learn Japanese. According to the government, everyone speaks Chinese and/or Taiwanese. In Taiwan, Chinese is Putonghua, which is terribly convenient for me. But Taiwanese includes several different languages and/or dialects. Pretty much like Chinese. On paper, the overwhelming majority of people in Taiwan speak one or two languages, but you could easily fill a room with people all speaking different dialects.

In my limited experience in this country, Chinese works pretty well. I have yet to run into anyone who could not understand me, though I speak in a heavy accent to them and they speak in an unfamiliar accent to me. Several people have told me that I have a Shanghai accent, which I find odd since I have spent almost no time in Shanghai. If someone speaks Hokkien, Hakka or any other Taiwanese to me, I have no idea what they are saying. Fortunately, they are all the same in writing. There are some differences in grammar and syntax, but if you can read one dialect of Chinese, or Taiwanese, you can read them all. It is pretty much the same with English. Two people from Alabama and Australia might not understand each other in conversation, but they can read the same printed words.

China and Taiwan use a different system of measurements, other than volume, which is something to get used to since the words are the same. One 尺 is one foot in both China and Taiwan, but 1 Taiwan 尺 is 30.3cm, while 1 China 尺 is 33.3cm. One US foot is 30.48cm. Taiwan's 斤 is 600 grams, while China's 斤 is 500 grams, and 605 grams in Hong Kong. Moving from China to Taiwan means adjusting to different lengths and weights, but if you move from Japan to Taiwan, everything is the same since the Japanese converted Taiwan to their measurements during the occupation. You simply have to say the words in Chinese rather than Japanese.

The cultures of Hong Kong and Kaohsiung are the same if you go back far enough. Everyone came from China originally. But as an island that was never really important to China, Taiwan has a long history of foreign invasion and occupation, with each occupier trying to force the population to do everything their way. There is also a lot of island culture that you do not find in most of China. Hong Kong was always Chinese, until the British wanted to turn the Chinese into opium addicts. Today, any major city in Taiwan looks almost the same as any major city in China, except that China has more money and Taiwan is more relaxed.

The food in Hong Kong and Kaohsiung are night and day. Guangdong is one of the four compass points of traditional Chinese cuisine. As a British territory for almost the entire 20th century, and a more open city than most of China, Hong Kong became the modern center of Guangdong, or Yue, cuisine. When people in North America and Europe think of Chinese food, they are mostly thinking of Yue style Chinese, which is usually called Cantonese in English since Canton is the English name for Guangdong. Most American Chinese food is nothing like Chinese food in China, but the cooking style, spices and sauces that Americans know about are all Guangdong.

Taiwanese cuisine comes from Hokkien, Hakka, Japanese and a mix of southern Chinese. The ingredients are more or less the same as Hong Kong, but come from different places. Hong Kong imports a great deal of whatever it does not pull out of the ocean, while Taiwan grows almost all of its own food. The basic staples of rice and noodles are the same, but I see a wider variety of fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices in Taiwan.

Since Hong Kong is a single city, you can get the same food anywhere you go within its borders. Taiwan has different specialties in different counties. Street food is similar in that they are both cheap and fast. Hong Kong is the better place to get dim sum. Taiwan is better for dumplings. Hong Kong desserts often have a western influence, especially from France, for some reason. Taiwan desserts are far less sweet.

Hong Kong's MTR goes almost everywhere, from Aberdeen to Shenzhen, the airport to Starfish Bay. If the MTR does not reach some place, a bus or boat probably does. My transportation was 90% MTR, 8% bus, 1% boat and the rare taxi. A car in Hong Kong is both unnecessary and difficult to park.

Kaohsiung's MRT red line covers 25km north to south in a city that is 120km long. The orange line covers a 12km stretch from east to west downtown. Both lines make sense in where they go. The problem is in all the places they do not go. Hong Kong has 23 lines and over 160 stations. Kaohsiung has 2 lines and 38 stations. They are planning additional lines, but no one knows if or when they will exist.

Hong Kong has 7.5 million people crammed into 2755 square kilometers. Kaohsiung has less than 3 million in almost 3000 km2. You could say that Kong Kong is more crowded.

In Hong Kong, I mostly shopped at CitySuper and ParknShop. Wellcome is kind of a dump. Kaohsiung has Carrefour and Jasons. I never liked Jasons as much as CitySuper, but Kaohsiung Jasons is different from Hong Kong Jasons. That makes sense since Taipei CitySuper is almost nothing like Hong Kong CitySuper. My main store now is Carrefour, which does not exist in Hong Kong. I went into a Kaohsiung Wellcome to compare. It was kind of a dump.

Fat Camp part 4The part about a typical day

My typical day at fat camp starts around 5 in the morning. Not because of our rigorous schedule, but because I'm naturally a morning person. I like getting an early start on the day, and more importantly, I like the way the world feels before everyone else is awake and making all their noise.

I try to get a two hour run in every morning, weather permitting. Anything less that two hours is a waste, but it rained every day the first week I was here. Fortunately, it mostly rained in the afternoon/early evening. Mornings and late nights were mostly cloudy but calm. By the second week, there were all but no clouds and the weather has been quite nice.

Breakfast is a group event with everyone at the fat camp. The nutritionists put a great deal of thought into each of our dietary needs and they want to make sure we eat whatever we are supposed to eat. They could trust us to eat what they want us to eat, especially since we are all here voluntarily, but having us eat breakfast in a group also fosters a sense of community. We come from all over the country. Some of us came from other countries. None of us knew each other before arriving. Having breakfast together replaces the traditional family breakfast that no one can have away from their families.

Even outside of a medical facility, breakfast is generally a light meal. People in China, Taiwan, Japan and probably most of East Asia eat nothing like a full English breakfast. In Asia, breakfast is designed to get you going, not give you a heart attack. For me, breakfast is always some kind of soup or porridge made from rice and roots. It looks unappetizing, like watered down oatmeal. The good news is that I never have an appetite to ruin. Even better news is that I can't taste any of it, so eating up every drop is pretty easy.

An hour after breakfast, we do our morning basic training. This is the only part of the day that looks anything like boot camp. We run around an obstacle course that is less about military tactics and more about working different muscle groups at each section. Whoever designed the course really knows their kinesiology. I like it because it's as much mental as physical. We are not timed on the course, but I time myself. Going faster than last time works out the brain as much as the body.

After the obstacle course, we have a self-defense class. This is really more for the military types, but I find it fascinating. Martial arts have been part of military training for thousands of years, but are largely obsolete on a modern battlefield. True wushu is as much about philosophy as fighting. We don't have that kind of time. Our classes are a combination of jujutsu, aikido and krav maga. One of the instructors is an Israeli who specializes in krav maga. I'm no expert on any of these styles, but I think krav maga might be the most useful. It emphasizes being physically aggressive while defending yourself, which is probably more useful. With something like aikido, you are supposed to defend yourself without hurting your attacker. That must take a high level of self-control. With krav maga, you can beat the shit out of them and suffer no moral or philosophical remorse. Essentially, aikido and jujutsu are what you use to score points in a competition. Krav maga is what you use in a street fight. As a bonus, our krav maga instructor's brother has an Israeli restaurant in Kaohsiung. So the next time I go there, I know where to eat. Hummus is hard to find around here, but now I know of a place in Kaohsiung.

Rather than philosophy or competition, we mostly focus on defense against an armed attacker. Hopefully, I will never have to put this training into practice, but it is still nice to know.

Lunch is also nutritionally regulated, but not at all communal. Everyone wanders off to wherever they go to eat. While everyone at the fat camp seems friendly, I have learned that lunch is the time when everyone wants to be alone. I'm not really sure why. Lunch is not necessarily a private affair in China, and Taiwanese and Chinese culture have a million things in common. At the same time, lunch is the most socially acceptable time to eat alone in China. You can always find someone sitting alone with their 便當 at noon, but almost everyone eats dinner in groups.

Compared to some parts of Europe, where lunch can be the largest meal of the day, Chinese lunch is a tiny snack. My lunch is always some variation on a rice dish. It is always different from the day before, with different ingredients, but rice is always the main course.

After lunch, it's meditation time. The Chinese/Taiwanese believe that good health is as much about what you put in your head as your body, so we all get together and sit quietly. I found it all odd at first. I'm no stranger to meditation, but I have always done it alone. It seems like the kind of thing you are supposed to do in solitude. But we meditate as a class, which took some adjusting.

I think their way is better than mine if for no other reason than the setting. When I meditate at home, I'm alone in a quiet room. To me, the quiet and isolation are essential. Here, we all sit in a garden. Everyone is quiet, but we can hear birds, the stream, trees in the wind and whatever sounds of nature happen around us. They are not at all distracting. In fact, nature can be remarkably helpful while meditating. You simply need to find a beautiful garden free from the sounds of traffic and commerce.

After we clear our minds of distractions, we have free time to do whatever we want. Some people go for walks, some take naps. I'm sure most of us use the time to fill our heads with distractions. I got a foot massage at an airport a few years ago. Right after getting my feet nice and relaxed, I had to walk and stand around the airport for a few hours. This is the same thing.

Dinner is the most important meal of the day. Where I grew up, it was breakfast, but that is obviously not the case around here. Dinner is when everyone eats together, including the staff, doctors, nurses, instructors and any visitors anyone had that day. It is like a banquet with everyone eating from an individually tailored menu.

My dinner always includes soup, eggs, potatoes and, of course, rice. They mix it up all the time. I think one of the big challenges for the nutritionists is to design meals that not only give us what we need, but provide enough variety to keep people interested. I don't particularly care. I can eat the same thing every day. But everyone else would get bored.

I don't often feel lucky to have no sense of taste, but at times like this, it comes in handy. For reasons I don't yet understand, Taiwan hates salt. There is absolutely no salt in any of the food I eat. Even at restaurants, you have to specifically ask for salt, and whether they have any is hit and miss. If I could taste all the saltless meals I'm eating, I think I might regret coming here. As it is now, I'm in it for the boot camp. Meals are an afterthought.

After dinner is free time. The camp provides a variety of activities into the evening, but nothing later at night. This is not a place to party. This is also not a prison or the army. We are all free to come and go at will. Every day is structured, seven days a week, but we each choose when we want to join in. No one needs a weekend pass to get away. Simply walk out the door and come back any time.

My first weekend here, I went to Costco and one of the newer restaurants at the Mitsukoshi mall in Xinyi. On Monday, I went to 國立傳統藝術中心, a large traditional village/park dedicated to the preservation of a culture that is all but extinct. It's almost the Chinese version of a New Mexico pueblo that is open to the public. Of course, there is plenty of shopping and food. I'm thinking about renting a car and driving around this weekend. I might do it during the week since the roads will be less crowded.