Man Man Zou

Mark and I spent our weekend, along all the staff and their families from our school, down in the southernmost tip of Taiwan, at a town called Kenting. Kenting (pronounced Gun-ting) is Taiwan’s tropical paradise. It is hot all year round, and attracts endless busloads of tourists every weekend (us unfortunately being one of them).

I will start by summing up that it was hot and beautiful and that Kenting is a beautiful place. But now I want to move on to the more interesting part- about how our weekend was filled with so many cultural problems and annoyances (complaints, negativity, and a cynical outlook on Taiwan continue, but I promise they’re interesting and it’s just due to the mood I am in after the weekend).

First of all we set off at 7am in a typical Taiwan superbus- fully wired for nonstop karaoke. Some people already smelled of alcohol, and half an hour later the karaoke music started. So there were Mark and I in a karaoke bus with about 50 Taiwanese and 5 South Africans. Unfortunately no one was speaking English, likely the biggest frustration of our entire weekend.

A couple of hours later we stopped at our first ‘tourist attraction’- an oyster farm. This was our second time touring an oyster farm in Taiwan- and it’s not something that needs to be seen twice. It wasn’t nearly as cool as the first oyster farm because the tide was up and we couldn’t even see any of the oysters growing. We did get to walk on some very nice soft sand along the ocean. I found it funny that no one swam on the nice open ocean area, but when we walked back to the nasty shallow inlet where all the oysters are growing we saw many kids swimming- this is due to the fact that most Taiwanese are scared to swim because they’ve never been taught.

Our second ‘tourist attraction’ was a salt mountain. And that’s exactly what it was, a mountain of salt. Now it seems we have exhausted all there is to do in Taiwan because along with the oyster farm, this was Mark’s second time visiting the mighty salt mountain. We wasted another hour or so at this site- the only cool thing was that you could buy salt popsicles (almond, or red bean flavour), and salt toothpaste.

Finally we pressed on to Kenting. The foreigners became quite openly bitchy about the karaoke, so for the rest of the trip they played movies. I’m quite sure this is due to the nasty attitude of some people towards the music, because every other tourist bus we passed was playing karaoke. I’m sure that if none of us foreigners were there our bus would have been playing karaoke as well.

We got to our very nice hotel around 5 or so and had only 45 minutes before we had to set off for the group dinner. The hotel, called Yoho Resort, was beyond my expectations and it seemed just like the movies. There were curvy pools here and there, waterfalls, small waterslides; basically everywhere you go you can just hop in the water for a dip if you want. I shook my head so many times this weekend at the way the Taiwanese do things, and here is one example: the hotel is on the beach, so the first thing we did with our short free time was gun it down to the beach. The beach wasn’t very nice, but we still waded in a ways. Mark was about 20m out, up to his knees in water, when a frustrated beach patroller ran out and blew his whistle at Mark. Apparently we’re not allowed to swim in the water of this beachfront hotel! Jeesh! (and this wasn’t the first time Mark got in trouble while staying at this resort- read on…)

So we reluctantly went out for the dinner. It seemed so silly to me to be staying at a very expensive resort ($250 a night), and not utilize it. There are many pools, spas, and even mini classes offered at this hotel. We didn’t get back until 9:30, after walking down Kenting Street- a street filled with beach merchandise from Thailand and Bali.

I thought it would be fun to take in an hour long dancing class that the resort offered, so 10 of us all decided to check it out. We waited and about 5 minutes after it should have started, a woman opened the door and told us to go inside. I was surprised to see it was a foreigner from Eastern Europe (judging by her accent) teaching the dance class. Without even saying hello or introducing us she started doing dance moves and counting 1..2..3..4. We were a little thrown off as I was imagining there would be something like a happy plump lady telling us things like “Yes! That’s it!” and “Wonderful!”- no matter how bad we were. Instead, this woman just showed us a routine about two times and stopped and said “OK now you do it, and quickly!” So people tried, though I know from a lot of experience that’s not how you learn dance moves, and of course we all failed. She rolled her eyes and showed us again, stopped, and told us to do it, QUICKLY! She didn’t get that we need to be watching her in order to do it. For no reason in particular she decided to come to me and stand beside me and show me the moves because I guess I needed special attention. Then again she told us to do it, and of course everyone failed miserably. So she goes to the front of the class and asks one of our friends to come to the front because she was not doing it right. Is that any way to treat a guest at a resort hotel? Anyway, her obvious eye rolling and horrible instruction continued and there was one move where you toss your head to the side and hold your arms out, and I looked back and there was poor Mark doing the moves with a little extra ‘ooomph’. She did not like this one bit and she charged to the back of the class and yelled at Mark about how “THIS IS A DANCE CLASS! DO YOU SEE THAT SIGN, IT SAYS DANCE STUDIO!!!!” Hooo-eeee! After giving her a mini spaz I got the hell out of there, along with Mark. I could not believe it; right from the start I was shocked. Of course I let the hotel know about this and hopefully they will do something about it. The Taiwanese are not confrontational and never react to things like this, so she could have been like this for a long time without anyone saying anything.

After that ordeal we went to a resort ‘party’ where people were drinking and singing karaoke but that didn’t last long because everyone was so tired from the long day. What a waste to be staying at such a nice hotel and only spend a few hours awake there.

Kenting has beautiful beaches, but we really had to fight to get to one. I can’t figure out why the Taiwanese are so attracted to go to Kenting, because they don’t utilize any special aspect of it. They could have just built the Yoho Resort anywhere and you wouldn’t know the difference since no one uses the beach. There was a tiny slot of time where we could go to the beach, so just three of us got on the superbus at 8am with our tour guide and went to the beach. No Taiwanese understood that we just wanted to go to a beach- a simple beach where you can swim and be in the sun. They all think that the beach needs to have activities (such as driving a loud ATV up and down the beach) or there is no reason to be there (again, due to the fact that they can’t swim, and they hate being in the sun because it might make them browner). It took a lot of persuasion to get our tour guide to take us to the nice secluded beach as she kept insisting we go to the other beach with all the ‘activities’. I guess they just don’t get us, and we just don’t get them.

After our short visit to the beautiful beach, we went back to the hotel to pick up everyone else. It was only 10am but we had to leave to get to our next stop, the National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium. It was a very impressive aquarium, I’ll say that, but we didn’t need to spend 5 hours there!!! So frustrating. We looked around for about three hours and then went back to the bus for the next two. I had a nice sleep there.

We eventually left and got home around 9:30. I was glad to be back, and I am really looking forward to going back to Kenting- on my own!! I feel that Kenting is a special place in Taiwan, but man, the weekend was kind of a nightmare!