The Last Country on this trip: Taiwan, May 27 to June 8, 2024

Tainan City 

The flight from Seoul to the airport in the south of Taiwan, called Kaohsiung, was easy.  Though when we checked in at the airport in Seoul, we did have to show our flight information out of Taiwan. No problem for us this time, but it always annoys me because Scott and I often debated on this trip whether we’d have to show our tickets out of the country, upon entry, and I preferred to keep our stays flexible and try to risk not having a ticket purchase. Sigh, more often than not, to board an international flight, we did have to show the airline an email with our exit flight. Boo, more points for land-border-crossings!  

After the short flight, we had to board the high speed train from Kaohsiung to Tainan City.  We took the subway from the airport to the high speed rail station; on the subway, a man struck up a conversation with Scott and the nice guy spoke Mandarin to Alex and Luke and they’d hop up from my side of the subway to Scott’s side so they could hear the guy; I observed them happily and maybe a bit to closely as they did exactly what we’d hoped in Taiwan - practice Mandarin! 

We got off at the station and found the high speed rail tix; we had a little time before the train so we grabbed a snack.  As we all got up from our table to go to the HSR platform, I suddenly realized I was carrying too few things.. Backpack, check. Violin? no, that was left in California for this leg of the trip. Oh, I was missing that little black “wrist” bag I’d been carrying (actually, a freebie from Katie’s orthodontist to carry Invisalign that I had commandeered). I kept it on my wrist so I’d have my license, credit cards, eye drops, and chapstick handy, so I wouldn’t have to dig around in my big backpack on travel days. Great plan right??  The boys had already gone up the escalator while I was frantically looking all over our food table for it. Katie was glaring at me top hurry up.  My heart was beating, I was starting to sweat as I frantically tried to figure out what to do, where to look, and a curious man a the table next to us really wanted to know if I was American and whether I was a Christian. I bounded up the stairs to tell Scott what had happened. We had 10 minutes before our train. The only place the bag could be was on that subway from the airport (I remembered being totally absorbed by Alex and Luke trying to talk to that nice stranger-man on the train.. sigh, distracted train-riding…). I ran down to the subway window, google-translating my issue; the nice station man gave me a form in Mandarin to fill out for a lost item; a nice American lady behind me tried to help me fill it out. Then, another station worker who spoke English talked to me; she quickly called around and then, unbelievably, told me that a black bag was found at the end of the line station, where the subway train I’d been on terminated. Amazing!!!! 

I ran up to the platform and the family; we quickly agreed that I would go get the bag while they kept to their train that was leaving in 90 seconds; I grabbed Scott at the last second to get his cash - luckily, he’d taken out money at the airport because of course, I would be stranded with no money or credit cards.  Phooey though, I forget to get my passport from him, as identification….30 minutes later, I was at the terminus station, standing at the station agent’s booth, showing him my picture of my passport on my phone (and of course, my matching CA ID was inside the bag) and, amazingly, I had my black bag with all my cards + $60 American dollars inside, all untouched, having ridden all alone on the train to the end of the line and somehow, making its way to this booth.  Wow… I… could… not…. believe my luck!   I was sort of in love with the nice people in Taiwan.. :) 

Little black purse - FOUND, after it road, all alone and full of money and credit cards, on the subway to the end of the line - with my savior, the station agent, behind me.

By the time I found my way to the apartment, it was quite dark out. Tainan was still busy though; I exited the train station to a steamy evening and multiple, large boulevards FILLED with scooters and small motorcycles. As I stood at each red light, waiting to cross, I started to quietly mouth “moto moto moto moto moto moto..”, counting all of the motorcycles lined up at the light. Another night sound we became accustomed to was the music - slower than an ice cream truck - over loudspeakers as the garbage trucks moved slowly down their designated streets, with people carrying garbage bags following behind them and handing them to the workers on the back of the truck (I later read that the loudspeakers used to blare an English word or phrase to help residents learn the language). I arrived triumphantly, my little black purse in hand, to our little apartment (which, oddly, did not accept credit cards for the room payment, poor Scott had had to run around and get enough money from the ATM, oh well, all worked out and we could finally sleep!). 

Tainan City is Taiwan’s oldest city and famous as the location where a Ming dynasty loyalist, called Koxinga, drove out the Dutch trading company from the island in the middle of the 1600s.  Koxinga is memorialized all around Tainan as sort of the independence hero (interestingly, the Republic of China [mainland China] also regards Koxinga as a hero, because he backed the Ming dynasty during a war for power with the Qing dynasty; he retreated to Taiwan and launched unsuccessful attacks on the Qing on behalf of Ming).   Koxinga’s adversaries on the island were the Dutch who called the island Formosa and had been given access to it by the Ming dynasty in the 1620s and later also the Qing as a base to trade with China and Japan.  They ruled the island for about 40 years before Koxinga expelled them. Here are some specific places we visited in Tainan: 

Confucius temple and school: Built in 1666, this is Taiwan’s first Confucian temple.  

At the Confucius Temple and School gate. 

Confucius Temple in Tainan. 

Chihkan Towers:  Fort first established in 1650s by the Dutch; just the foundations remain while the buildings were altered and added onto over the centuries. 

At one of the banyan trees in Tainan, inside the Tower grounds. 

Luke, pondering the view from the Towers. 

Great garden inside the Tower grounds. 

Hayashi department store:  Funny tourist attraction - This one of the first modern department stores in Taiwan, from the 1930s. We hopped on the little elevator and went to the roof (like, floor 5) where Katie found me a nice little cross-body purse to replace the black wrist one I nearly lost. As we made our way down each floor, fairly intense salespeople called us over as we browsed and Scott and I got into a long conversation about this great massage oil that, when you rub into the back of your neck not only smells great but it cools down your sweaty sweaty skin! We pondered it as a nice souvenir until we (1) remembered that we do not live in the tropics and we could not possibly use enough massage oil over a week and (2) the price was like 8 times what I understood the salesperson to say.  Ah, but I will remember the smell and cool feeling of that oil for a long time! 

We just fit into this 5-person max elevator at the Hayashi Department store. 

 Taijiang National Park: Coastal marsh, tidal flats, mangrove area. We made our way out to this park in taxis to hop on a boat ride through the mangroves. It was… nice… and hot…!   We didn’t walk too much because, you know, hot, but we did enjoy seeing all of the wild orchids growing on trees in the park! Katie and I kept pointing the m out to each other every couple of steps, like, wowowow, look at this one! 

Yes! Wearing these shade hats on the slow boat ride through mangroves. 

Hoping to save this one for their high school graduation yearbook-flashback photos page.. 

Yes, we did have to duck under some of the tree branches during the boat ride. 

Taoist temple in Taijiang. 

This orchid is amazing! 

No Mom, THIS is the best one! 

Anping Fort: Another Dutch fort, this is where Koxinga finally beat the Dutch and they surrendered.  

In front of Koxinga statue at the Anping Fort. 

I am pretty sure this is another Koxinga statue.. 

Tainan Art Museum Building 2. Very cool art building with interesting modern art pieces; this is where we saw an engaging video piece that we eventually understood to be a deconstructed Laocoon! 

At the hip and modern Tainan Art Museum Building. 

Food.. food.. food… Taiwan is famous for night markets and shaved ice (and probably many other dishes I am not privy to).  We did our best to eat our way through markets and shaved ice places.. one annoying thing we found, we sometimes popped into a shaved ice place, hot and sweaty, but while waiting for our dishes inside the A/C stores, became less excited about the giant bowl of shaved ice!  There was a place in Tainan near our apartment that had no A/C and we sat on their sidewalk tables just loving that cold flavored ice!  

Do not keep viewing the below if you are subject to getting hungry… 

Yum. 

Alex’s lip got COLD! 

I overdid it on Sweet Potato balls…Luke should have stopped me.. 

Alex and Luke always found something they liked at the night markets. 

Trying a yogurt shop! 

Alex, forging ahead to check out more stalls. 

Traveling from Tainan to Taipei.. Our last travel-betweenness-cities day… Sniff. Sniff. 

Taipei

On to our final final stop on this trip!  We ended up really enjoying Taipei!  We arrived on the train to an apartment very close to a train station and we got right out to the big neighborhood sight, the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial (a giant memorial, think, the Lincoln Memorial but bigger with more grounds around it with a museum to the namesake). We arrived after the museum closed and we were tired from the travel day, so we agreed to return when we’d have more time and instead, we rested up for our big museum day the next day - the National Palace Museum!  

This museum is excellent. Eight thousand years of Chinese history…. Chiang Kai-Shek, then rule of China, had the hundreds of thousands of artifacts were boxed up and moved from the Forbidden City (the Emperor’s home) to Shanghai to keep them from falling into the rapidly advancing Japanese invasion of China. After the war, Kai-Shek continued his control of the artifacts by bringing them to Taiwan, as the Nationalists retreated to the island.  Thus, Taiwan has a pretty great collection of one of the oldest civilization on the planet. 

Our apartment in Taipei was very close to the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial; an immense set of buildings and grounds.  Climbing the steps on a clouding day. 

From the balcony around the memorial building. 

Nice view :) 

Luke posing in front of this fantastic Taiwan-democracy scene… Taiwan achieved democracy in the 1980s and has received very high reviews for its democratic institutions since then. 

Checking out the Eisenhower and Chiang Kai-Shek photo above.

Cute smiles, boys! 

We saw amazing items in the National Palace Museum, this was likely not in the top 10.. or 20.. or 30 .. but, we loved it, can you guess what it is…???

Katie was amazed!! Clearly, a smart phone prototype… 

… 250+ years before a smart phone there was this… ink stone! 

The museum encouraged visitors to strike a Taoism pose meant as part of meditation and self-reflection. 

The Museum had a great kids room.. We realized with some horror that our kids have gotten so much older during this trip that we sort of don’t really belong in the “kids” rooms in most museums. Again, sniff.. sniff! 

Taipei 101 sort of gets its own post. We went up the big buildings in Tokyo and Seoul but we loved this one the most. It is just the best looking and best experience of the buildings, at least on the day that we went (probably matters a whole lot what the cloud cover is!).  We also got to a nice “city-hike” to a viewpoint called Elephant Mountain trailhead. 

We loved catching a glimpse of Taipei 101 on random street corners in the City - It really is one of the best looking among all of the  “tall buildings” of the world that we got to see on this trip.

Classic nights cape photo. 

We looked for the right socks to bring back for our friends’ kiddo and finally found the right one.. 

Elephant Head trail. 

More views from the trailhead. 

Happy trail walkers! 

Trailhead duo! 

Katie’s the best! 

Trail path goes right between these two rocks that fell together and will.. hopefully hold a long time! 

Amazing engineering inside Taipei 101; this 700+ ton steel ball hanging inside of Taipei 101 helps the building survive earthquakes by absorbing some of the swaying-energy from a tremor.. And a strong wind! 

Something to love inside the Taipei 101 viewing platform - fun places to take photos!  It seems sort of dumb.. Until your cool mom makes everyone pick a spot for their special photo! I picked this flower arch… 

Scott picked this 1980s neon area…

Luke pointed to the first thing we passed, this .. polar bear? .. for his photo. 

Alex wholly refused, stating that the city is the photo op. 

Katie picked these angel wings and then we had an argument because my first photo was blurry and we had to get back in the angel wing line to take it again.  I pulled rank and made her retake it and look.. it’s beautiful! And you cannot even tell she is clenching her teeth!  

AND you get to go outside on Taipei 101!  Rare for super tall buildings.. 

Rest Katie, rest.. 

One of my classic nose photos, to get the top of Taipei in the photo. 

We spent a funny amount of time at the Taipei Zoo.  My buddy recommended it as a rare, great zoo and it has pandas, so we made our way there and… we are so happy we did! The first visit, we wandered around the giant zoo without meeting very many people, enjoyed an entrance fee of like $8 for all 5 of us (compare to Oakland zoo’s +$150 entrance fee), BUT we were sorely disappointed because we were there on the one day of the whole month that the zoo gives the panda’s a break from visitors..  So… we decided to return another day.. and that day was also a great visit! We saw the rest of the zoo and we staked out a spot in the panda house.. The panda house has A/C because the pandas are not comfortable in Taipei’s warm weather.  When we entered, we found two cute, young-adult female pandas snoozing away.  We popped from one area to the next, keeping watch and taking what I recall to be very funny videos of ourselves catching on of them yawning or rolling over and madly proclaiming into the camera that the pandas were the most active we had ever seen.. We figured they would be like those lazy (read-nocturnal) lions who you see in zoos and they just sleep the whole time but then… after +45 minutes of keeping vigil, we were so happily rewarded when one panda completely woke up and starting marching all around her space! Oh, it was sooooo exciting, the whole panda house became a lot more crowded as visitors enjoyed (with no wait!) the scene we had so patiently stayed put for: a panda totally awake and playful AND getting a wonderful treat and toys placed in her house.! Oh, it was so very fun. 

  

Amazing hippo picture at the Taipei zoo - what an ugly-cute creature it is! 

The great story of Yuan Yuan and Tuan Tuan, both pandas were born in the zoo. 

Tired panda. 

Wake up, panda! 

Can’t get any cuter than panda with bamboo treat. 

More panda. 

Umm.. we absolutely loved this fan-hat but decided our CA climate does not warrant this apparatus. 

Having fun and eating food- No further explanation needed for the pics below! 

Typical scene as we road on trains during the trip, Alex and Luke finding a way to faux-wrestle and Katie trying to imagine herself somewhere else.. 

Throughout Taiwan, Alex and Luke requested as many kiwis as I could find and Katie felt like she was tasting REAL mango for the first time in her life… They all started cutting up their own delicious, tropical fruit for themselves (to my delight) because I could hardly buy the fruit as fast as they ate it! 

Searching for my first food stall… 

We are careful shoppers, checking out each place.. 

Yum savory pancakes. 

Yummy pancake-cookie-waffle thing.. 

Sharing a shaved ice because we had all already eaten sooo much. 

Last day: For our very last day, I had a list of minor sights to get to (mostly, cool streets and parks) but I realized that really I am the only one who likes strolling on ‘cool’ streets so instead, I found this little amusement park!  For a minor cost (maybe $30), all five of us got to go to the park and the kids could ride any of the (admittedly, not super exciting rides) while Scott and I hung out in the food court. It was such a nice last day!  They were happily running about, checking in at our picnic table periodically while we got some time to reflect on our trip together and discuss the myriad of house-administration topics as we prepared to re-enter society.. 

To cap off the evening, we made it to a nearby night market for dinner and got back to our apartment with plenty of time to pack up and even catch some episodes of this Netflix, ninja-family show Scott got a bit addicted to in Taipei! 

At the Taipei Children’s Amusement Park. 

Last shaved ice - Mango, of course. 

In case you were wounding where mine was,  I shared Alex and Luke’s cookie-shaved ice :) 

Final final thoughts on this trip: I hesitate to even add this section because I am sure I will change my mind about what I think about this whole year as time goes on but, I cannot end this trip-blog with “cookie shaved ice.”. :)  Hmm, what wise words..? What does it say about humanity that each time I think about summing up the trip, I start with a list of things that could have gone very wrong and did not?  I am not sure, but, here is what immediately comes to mind: No one got very sick or very hurt, we never got stranded or had any major travel mishaps, we were never victims of a crime nor did we witness any crime (other than the near daily minor car crashes into those short, fat bollards on the walking street in Bariloche, remember Scott??). We never got a flat tire or ran out of gas.  We never lost each other or lost anything of significance.  

Ok, I guess those were all of my fears and I think fears come first - they’re at the front and center of one’s brain. Now, what did I hope would happen? I hoped we would make memories, BIG memories, with just in them; I hoped the kids would know after this trip that they can pursue anything, anywhere, and that their parents pursued happiness and experiences, at least for one whole year; I hoped to figure out what I wanted to do job-wise.  I’m satisfied to testify that all of my hopes save one were fully realized (I can always think about jobs from the comfort of my home in the EC!). 

Here is what I didn’t hope or fear would happen, that happened: First and painfully, I learned that I didn’t know how to be myself within our family, without my job. I am not sure how else to put this, but I had a tough adjustment period - not working and  - being with my wonderful husband and children - all the time.  This adjustment had a lot to do with my lack of confidence and poor self-assessment of myself, as just.. a member of this family (a leading member, to be clear!).  I sort of had to learn how to like myself without all of the positive feelings I got from doing a paid-job well done. That was a surprise - that doing the food shopping, trip planning, and laundry wouldn’t give me as many happy vibes as negotiating leases and public presentations.  While this was an unwelcome revelation, I got through this process and am on the other side, liking myself again.  Bigger than this adjustment though was that I got to know - to really KNOW, like could read expressions and breathing noises and tone; my kids in a new and deeper way.  Not in “see them on the nights and weekends” sort of way, but in the much more full and messy way that comes from spending EVERY DAY together, with nearly no one else to interact with, for months and months. I sort of feel like we invented a new reality show - lock up families together for months and see what happens!… It might not be a great show because, rather than wanting to vote someone off the show, I sort of fell into such such close relationships, I have been sort of swimming in a happy halo since we got home, pleased with our relationships!  I look forward and think - they will change so much and I will not be able to keep up with this close relationship as they mature and widen their circle of intimates; but… I got to know them and have them as my only inner circle for a little while… and boy will I remember it…. ❤️ 

In El Cerrito, coming off of the Bart train after we went backwards in time - boarding a plane in Taipei at 9:45am and arriving at SFO at 6:45 am - and a bit tired and just a 1-mile walk from home… Luke’s expression says it all.. Almost. Home.