Taiwan

While it's still fresh in my mind, some random reflections on Taiwan:

 ~ Taiwan has a reputation for nice people and good food. Hong Kong people love to go to Taipei just for a weekend and spend it eating. We've heard this again and again, even just yesterday when I told someone where I'd been over the break ("Oh Taiwan! The people are so nice and the food is so good!". That's a pretty good reputation for a country to have, I'd say! Anyway, it didn't take long for us to find out how good the food was. The picture above is a rest stop where we stopped for lunch on our first day of driving. The kids saw the Subway sign and they were sold. Actually it's pretty funny how "Western" the boys are. Especially Caleb loves to eat hotdogs and pizza and his favorite food is Subway sandwiches. They are also quick to say "I don't like this! I'm not going to eat it!". Which was actually a big relief to me, because I didn't feel as bad if my kids also had that reaction about what we were eating! 
Anyway, this little rest stop was actually THREE floors of food court restaurants! The kids had subway, while the adults sampled some Taiwan noodles, Korean Bibimbap, and from an Irish Potato place we had potato skins and a couple orders of fries with the most delicious sauces (one honey mustard and one mayo-type thing that was so addicting). That was just the beginning of how well we ate on this trip! I'm glad the pictures of me are all from a distance, because my skin did not agree with my tummy!
~ One strange observation is that there are so few garbage cans in Taiwan, yet we didn't see any litter.  In Hong Kong you don't have to walk more than five steps and you will trip over a garbage can. But you still see garbage on the ground. Weird. 

 - It was great to travel with Phoebe and Joey many reasons, but one is that they forced us to be way more adventurous in trying new food than we would have otherwise. They were always handing us things and saying "Here. Eat this." So we did. Some of it I could take or leave ("Taiwanese Hamburger"), but some was really delicious (spicy chicken stuffed with rice).  

~ One thing that made our trip AWESOME was the luxury of having a personal driver for most of the duration of our trip. We had a 9 passenger van, and I know we saw so much more of the country because we could travel this way. And the driver held true to the "Taiwan people are so nice" stereotype. He sort of reminded me of Grandpa Braun. Just quiet and unassuming. And so professional- he always had a tie on. And a ball cap. Having been a driver for more than 20 years, he knew Taiwan so well, so there were lots of little stops and things we did because of his recommendation that were great. It was so cute- he always gently lifted Leila out of the van every time we stopped. He didn't speak any English, our main communication was just a lot of "xie-xie"s to him. I snuck a picture of him on our fishing day. 

~ It was funny to reflect at our last supper together about the reservations we all had about traveling for 11 days together, because it turns out that Phoebe and Joey were just as nervous about traveling with us as we were about traveling with them! We were friends going into the trip, but I think I will now always consider them to be very dear friends. We had a great time together- in fact, Joey went as far to say that it was the best trip he'd ever been on. 

They are actually really inspiring people to spend time with. We don't think it's possible for Joey to be in a bad mood, and we miss his friendly greetings every morning at breakfast. He kind of has the same lines that he says again and again, one being "How nice, right?". Mike and I now like to add that into our conversations. Also, "I can help you!", and he would quickly grab my camera and get us to pose for a family shot. He is a lover of all things beautiful, and the night that we stayed at the Old England, there was a music concert starting after dinner. We went to check it out, but it was late and we were tired and they were still setting up, so we back to our room and put our kids to bed. It turns out he went back for the concert and was really moved to tears because the music was so touching. No one in his family was surprised to hear that, but I think that is a good example of how he is. He is a real "glass-half full" kind of person- he seems to be able to always find the positive in any situation. Including a tense moment where they thought Phoebe's wallet had been lost/stolen (it was found in their hotel room later). 

I have to give Phoebe a lot of credit of how much work she quietly put into organizing the whole trip. And she sat in the very back of the van the entire time and refused to let us trade seats with her, eve though I don't think it was a very good spot- especially on the hour and a half of switch back roads that it took to get up and back down Alishan mountain! And there is no possible way to match her generosity. 

~ I was also very inspired by the patience and calmness that they both showed in a few situations where if I was in their shoes I know my default reaction would be high-strung and stressed out. I think there are stressful moments EVERY time you're traveling in a new place, and the good thing about that in our experience is that you tend to remember the good and either forget or laugh at the bad. But still, when you're in the moment (like in Chiang Mai where it took us half an hour in the rain to find a taxi), it can be hard to stay calm.

One such situation was when they navigated all eight of us through the night market in Taipei. I know that they all love going to the night market, but it has got to be a lot more chaotic when there's two families and four kids to keep track of when it's such a crowded place. And when we went, we were needing to get supper, so I realized that this could quickly turn into a gong show. But we made our way slow and steady through the crowds and then they went into action mode/teamwork finding spots for us to sit at a stall and getting us to watch the kids while they went off and returned with good eats. Seems easy enough, but I know myself well enough to know in that situation I could quickly become frazzled and overwhelmed!

~ It's actually pretty good that given the length of our trip there was only one afternoon that looking back I thought was a bit of a gong show. But it was another example of Joey and Phoebe always staying positive. We had spent a relaxing morning fishing and enjoying some beautiful weather and scenery and then had meandered our way down the ceramics street. By the time we were done, it was well past lunch-time, but no one was too starving because we'd snacked on some street food. I thought the plan was that we were going to a pizza place for the kid's sake since we'd been eating a lot of Chinese food. Maybe there weren't pizza places in the area we were, or I'm not sure what happened, but our driver ended up driving us back to Taipei 101, which was close to where our hotel was located. And that was over an hour drive from the fishing area, so by the time we got there, it was 3:00. Maybe it's because we had considered going up Taipei 101 that day, but because January 1st was a stat. holiday, it was so crowded in the mall and we quickly decided against it. We decided to eat in the food court in the Taipei 101 mall, but it was ridiculously busy. Mike and I tried to order food from a delicious looking Indian place, and they said it would be 30 minutes before they would even take my order because they were so busy! Again, I would have gotten frazzled, because there were no places to sit and it's late and we're hungry and we all want to eat different things and seriously what happened to the pizza idea?? But, instead I could follow the lead of my calm friends who took it all in stride and eventually we were able to find a table. And even though it was 4:00 by the time we'd all eaten (which in my mind was also crazy because we were scheduled to have dinner with Phoebe's niece and her husband at 6:00), no one complained. Instead they seemed happy that we found spots and had good food to eat. Never mind that we had even more good food just two hours later. Ah well... it wasn't that bad, just the timing of that day seemed like things could have been planned a bit better. But if that's the worst, I can't complain!

(I thought it was funny that Leila planted herself between the boys for this Thai food lunch.) 

Finally, some more pictures of our amazing room in Old England hotel that didn't make to on to Facebook:

 It had a Nespresso machine and a fridge stocked with complimentary drinks.

 Also fruit, candy, chocolates and wine. 

 My only complaint with the room was that it was freezing cold. We kept the fireplace whenever we were in it, which helped. 

 Our bed. Wow! The girls thought it should be for them and were less than impressed that they had to sleep on the pull-out sofa. They got over it. 

 The bathroom alone was the size of a Hong Kong apartment! Beautiful, but unheated. 

 Sleeping beauties and our morning view.