Man Man Zou

As the title says, I’m getting a temporary taste the single life in Taiwan. Mark’s in Canada, and I finally get to see a little of what it’s like for many foreign females here.

Many of the females I know who come to live in Taiwan do so without a significant other. I’ve always been in admiration of them because it seems like a tough life. It’s much different from being single in North America, where if you run into any problem, there’s always someone around (even a stranger) to help. But here, there’s no one except the foreigner friends you’ve made. It leaves kind of an uneasy feeling.

I’ve talked to two girls, who have since returned to Canada, who said it was tough. Sure they had lots of friends, but they could never be sure who was really looking out for them. And I’m not saying it’s any easier for guys here, but they’ve just never ‘opened up’ about it.

So I’ve been able to see what it’s like, but of course it’s just been a week- woopidee-doo!

I scootered out to Lukang today, along one of my favorite roads in Taiwan- it’s right under a super highway, and runs along rice fields almost the whole way. There is hardly any traffic along it, because all the cars are up above. I just love it.

Lukang is a touristy traditional town in Changhua county, near the coast. There’s a popular temple there called Tien Ho Temple, along with dozens of vendors selling traditional snacks. Of all things, there was another temple parade put on by thugs, complete with the really cool painted face god guards (I don’t actually know what they’re called). Not surprisingly, since I was by myself, quite a few people tried talking to me. My Chinese seems to have gone down the drain in just a few days, because the conversations didn’t go as well as I would have expected.

I took a lot of photos, but the funniest thing was one of the old ladies selling paper money outside the temple. I remember last year at the same temple, I had my camera out, and the old paper money selling lady was shoo-ing me away because she didn’t want her picture taken. Well this year, I had my camera out again, and a lady came up to me (maybe the same one?) and tried shoo-ing me away. I gave her an angry look and said “I don’t want to take a picture of you!”- I mean how conceited of her to assume I wanted to take her photo! If only I knew how to say “buzz off!” in Chinese. Besides, I already have photos of paper sellers. Strange that the Tien Ho temple is about the only place in Taiwan where I’ve had something like that happen to me, and twice now.

I guess I had a touristy weekend, because on Saturday, I went to another attraction in Changhua county- Wang Gong. It’s a fishing village, about 25km from Yuanlin. It was a photography outing, in hopes for some nice shots of some boats with a sunset in the background (or something like that), but it was clouded over with some pretty intense looking clouds, so we left early to avoid scootering in the rain.

Wang Gong was a typical Taiwanese tourist attraction. There were a couple of old boats and some seafood vendors, but not much else in the way of fishing. In order to attract tourists, they recently built two big pedestrian bridges in random places for tourists to walk across, and then back. I’ll never, ever, understand tourist attractions in Taiwan. They almost always involve a few of the following: a patch of grass, paddle boats, goats, pedestrian bridges, KTV, really wacked food, cows, DIY projects, plastic statues of animals, and people on loudspeakers.