,
Below are some pictures to give you an idea.
No wonder Doggie parlours is a big business here. If I lived here I probably would have a dog too but a baby before that for sure.
1 comments
Below are some pictures to give you an idea.
,
From the time I have stepped into Taiwan, whatever Bubble Milk Tea (pronounced Chunchu Naitha) I have consumed has been free. Yes, not a single penny spent. I know Vicky is probably burning if he happens to read this. And its the most expensive tea in the tea shops. They have tea shops all over Taiwan by the way. Its not the you can sit and kill hours kind of place, more like takeaway counters. So I have consumed liters of this tea.
Like I said in my earlier post, the Taiwanese love their bubble milk tea. But you offer it to any girl and you get "No! No! Too fatty". The tea has pieces of a black chewy substance , refer to image below. Vikas and me contemplated on what these yummy things were.
Maybe sabudana,or maybe some exotic sea-thing, for all you know it could have been fish eggs. We asked people, we chewed and thought and chewed some more. Finally ladies and gentlemen I present to you the secret ingredient the "bubble/pearls" are made of and its potato starch! Yes, you read right. They love their potato starch and use it for a lot of meat dishes, wherein the meat is enveloped in a ball of potato starch and then fried and dumped in some exotic sauce. Supposed to be pretty delicious and that is the kind of stuff I will be missing out on. My school director has a theory about my queer eating habit, according to him I don't eat anything with legs! Interesting but partly true, because I tasted shrimp. And I am on a eat anything that you find in the sea spree right now.
,
9.30p.m. and Taichung station is deserted
While I am used to getting to the other end of the city in less than 20 Indian rupees, I find Taiwan expensive in that respect. Actually Taiwan is just super expensive for everything. The trains and bussed are air-conditioned, they have automated doors and swipe cards. The frequency of the buses is horrible in the towns, possibly one bus in an hour sometimes longer and the last bus from Taichung station is at 10.30 p.m. Hence most people travel by either cars, scooters and bicycles in Taiwan.
(image courtesy: http://www.ideachampions.com/heart/taiwan_map.jpg)
,
My first international flight alone. My last one was twenty-two years ago and not alone. So, lets just say this was my first International flight as the last one has been wiped off the memory slate. "My bags are packed and I am ready to go", said my goodbyes and the VISA has luckily just come through.
6th morning, my phone refuses to stop ringing, midst the confusion and the getting ready and last minute packing and running around and last minute shopping I missed most of my calls. I hug Mum and Dad and I am off. Inside I am welcomed with a beautiful long queue. I was wondering if it was just holiday season but it was just Airasia and on the flight I got to know that I was on board of an inaugural airasia Mum-KL flight. Although the queue was never ending, there were numerous counters for airasia and it was very well organised.
Mumbai Airport
Ooo lala! I walked into a high-end mall, oh wait its an airport, or is it? Every unaffordable brand was present, so you move ahead to the eateries, options range from US Pizza to a fancy looking Iifa lounge. I was tempted to look around but every queue was long enough to take that plan off the table.
Moral of the story: if you are flying airasia, reach the airport four hours early.
Airasia
I am finally on board, the attendants, all look stunning and I spot a fantabulously hot flight attendant, eye candy...check. Interestingly they all had different hairstyles and very chic ones at that. They all are trying hard to hide their annoyance on their fellow customers, who are all behaving like they were at the market to buy fish. But if they had to be curt to get the job done, they were. People were off to KL in herds so I had a bunch of them hovering above my head. Yes, we all are going to KL by bus, now lets play antakshari. I chucked my book back in my bag and plug my earphones to block out the noise.
A lot of people had carried their own food, and by food I don't just mean lunch and dinner. A lady unpacked her bag on the two empty seats besides me and her bag only contained sna(ke)cks- chakli, farsaan, theplas, biscuits, chocolates, and some more.
Their seating was comfortable with adequate leg space, the air-conditioning worked fine. Once the bees had cleared the air above my head I tried giving sleep a shot but the enthusiasm of 'flying abroad' made it too difficult. I decided to look around and amuse myself instead.
The sky was a sea of clouds, as beautiful as it could get from a flight window perhaps. A kid points at the clouds and shouts, "Green sky! Green sky!" I hope his mothers brushed up his colours with him. A young couple were all bundled up in scarves and thick jackets like one would for snow, they looked so adorably comfortable. A child that was running around decides to come sit leaving a seat between us. He weasels a pen out of his mother's purse and takes out the magazine to doodle on. I snatch it from him. He takes out a flyer and is about to tear it to pieces, I save it's fate. He takes out another flyer. He doesn't understand English or Hindi so in my broken Gujarati I say "Nooooo! WAIT!". From my purse I quickly give him a scrap of paper.
Reach KL airport
I wait for my friend who is to arrive from Kolkatta. I ask people who look like Indians whether I could deposit my luggage somewhere while I walk around the airport, they don't know English or Hindi, I resign to a corner and sink into my book again.
Post her arrival we walk around the airport all night. People are sprawled all over on the floors, on chairs, sleeping on or around their luggage. There is an instant flashback of numerous scenes of the V.T. Station (Bombay) at night. Sleep escapes us so we decide to make use of the free Wi-Fi and sit on the airport floor after spreading out some newspapers. Eventually sleep wins and we move to chairs which were super uncomfortable.
Next morning we treated our tired and pained bodies to Dunkin Donuts. Bliss!
Smiley Donuts
Stuffed with chocolate! :)
Donut with a blueberry sauce filling.
Next morning we treated our tired and pained bodies to Dunkin Donuts. Bliss!
Smiley Donuts
Stuffed with chocolate! :)
Donut with a blueberry sauce filling.Moral of the story: Travel light, do not deposit luggage at airport and carry a sleeping bag or a sheet to spread out and just sleep on the damn floor.
,
9th May was celebrated with great vigor in Taiwan. You would think it was an auspicious religious occasion. Turns out Mothers Day for the Taiwanese is almost as good as one. People go back home to spend their day to meet their mother dear with bouquets and personalized gifts. I am not sure how long this tradition runs and I am very keen to find out if fathers day is celebrated with as much pomp.
Besides mothers day yesterday was also God Buddha’s birthday. A Taiwan based organization Jing Si organized a Buddha bathing ceremony to celebrate the deity’s birthday. I got the opportunity to attend it and it was marvelous.
It was held in an open green space, in Taichung. It was a very well organized event, with volunteers keeping people in rows and columns strictly and attending to the ones passing out due to the enormous crowd. Rows of people wearing the nurses uniform, or a traditional Chinese dress- signifying they were part of the “commissionary”, University students in light blue collared t-shirts with white pants, others in either grey or dark blue collared t-shirts with white pants were all assembled in a pattern with the like colours together. The ones with regular clothes were assembled behind. I wonder how awesome the scene would have been from a terrace. In the middle stood the master singing songs and prayers that were interpreted to me by a kind volunteer. She was intrigued that a foreignor was attending the ceremony and that too from Buddha’s birth land! According to her and the literature I read later Jing Si ‘s philosophy stresses on compassion, being humble, living for “the now” and cleansing your heart first in order to purify the world.
(Courtesy: tw.tzuchi.org)What fascinated me was that the ceremony was organised in different locations at the same time taking the different time zones into consideration. It was taking place in three places in Taiwan, Malaysia and Indonesia among other countries. Through me the organisation is now hoping to make some inroads into India. The volunteer insisted on a TV cum print interview with some pictures. For all you know I could be on some Tai channel or magazine right now.
,
Taipei Airport
Very fancy, modeled like a 5-star hotel. Pre-paid mobile phone cards available and so are foreign exchange transactions performed. Maps, museum brochures, tourist information and important numbers also available. Pay-phones all over are money-sucking machines. Express bus, U-bus, High Speed Railway bus all available at the air-port. Also a special counter for tourists.
My reaction: I am so going to love Taiwan!
Enter Taichung
Mango and me finally meet the AIESEC-ers! We get a warm welcome from them and part ways.
Food
Their eating habits are way different from mine. They start with dessert, then eat their main course and then soup! So, its just the opposite fashion of what I am used too. I was only too happy to eat dessert first! Also they eat their meals much earlier then us, I am guessing that is because the sun rises at almost 5a.m. here.
So they eat their lunch at 12.30p.m. and dinner around 6.30 p.m. The food on the whole is extremely healthy and very tasty. They hardly use any "masalas" but everything has a distinctive flavour and aroma. I have been eating whatever vegetable and sea food put on my plate. Bamboo, tofu, rice, soup, fish/sea-food, meat is the staple meal for the well to do. And almost every second person seems to be well-to-do. That explains their high crime rate.
They love their tea. Herb tea or bubble tea they are sipping on it all the time. Thats also a post dinner ritual for them, considering they eat so early! I finally tasted hēi zhēnzhū nǎichá thanks to Vicky- translated as black pearl milk tea, it is so yummy and soo addictive and apparently very fattening. More on "bubble tea" here.
Lots of posts coming up. Stay tuned.
,
I had no fancy expectations but I had been given all sorts of advice by my agent, the boyfriend, friends, relatives. “Go early, you have to fill up forms and stuff” “Don’t do any exchange at the airport” “Be careful with your luggage, most thefts take place on the airport”… All points noted and mind on full alert. And here I am sitting at the Kuala Lumpur airport floor (under newspapers) already made my first traveling mistake. Mango, my travel-buddy and me decide to go out to spend the night. We deposit our baggage at a secured counter for 50 MYR and then we realise we are too far from everything, so we come back. Having already spent the money for the baggage I pinch Mango as many times as I feel like, as it was her bright idea.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)