Mind the generation gap

Hi all,

Hope you're doing well this evening.

I got back yesterday early afternoon - I tried to stay up as long as I could but was starting to feel woozy after 5 p.m. or so.

I slept until 9 this morning.

It's nice to be back, that's for sure.

Anyway, let me go back to the recap...

Where did I leave you last?

So yeah, the hot springs experience...

Just to demo, my dad takes me into the bathroom to show me what hot springs water looks like - It's a good thing too, cause if I had no warning, the sight of the water would have had me running for the hills.

So apparently, hot springs water (in this context) is all natural, coming from source within the mountains that I was never got to see. I'm sure if I had my hiking gear on, I would be able to go to the source, but I wasn't that motivated.

And as a sidenote, I keep on calling it hot springs water because I'm actually not sure what to call it - and from my prior experirence, "spring water" is what eventually comes to me in bottles. On the other hand, pure unmolested hot springs water should never be bottled.

Ever.

Anyway, back to the experience. So my dad turns on the hot water spigot and this cloudy water first comes out, and then it gets progressively darker. If you wanted to make a hasty generalization, you could just say it's "muddy." But it's not mud per se - I'm sure there's a little natural earth in there for good measure, but the hot springs water is chock full of mineral goodness.

Cloudy, brownish-grey goodness.

So like I said, I'm glad my dad prepped me and let me know what was up. When you turn on the water (pretty much anywhere) you expect crystal clear water to come out right?

So let's see, the smell was a quite different as well - My first impression was it smelled like water that had a lot of iron in it.

Are ya grossed out yet?

Honestly, if I wasn't into trying everything at least once, I'd be really hesitant - But I had heard so much about how good hot springs water was for your skin, and how it's really relaxing.

Once you got used to the smell and look of the water, it wasn't too bad. I'm not much of a tub soaker, but I was in there for a good half hour or so.

Before doing the hot springs thing, I had told my dad that I wasn't much of a soaker, so he knocked on the door a few times to make sure I hadn't fallen asleep. :)

The trip up the mountain had been in the evening / nighttime so you couldn't see much outside. But the trip back turned out to be not as fun.

I got bus sick.

Luckily, I did not yack - but I wasn't the same after that. I was super sensitive to smells after that. Any food that was being cooked outside, or any unidentified scents made me feel not very good. Plus, I completely lost my appetite for a few days.

On the funnier side, the bus that we took back from the mountain had a subwoofer. So we were jamming to some sort of Chinese music with a heavy bassline. And we were sitting far enough back where that's all we heard.

Thump thump thump. Rumble rumble rumble.

Plus, did I mention that the majority of the buses were manual transmission? That probably added to the bus sickness factor too.

So after the mountain excursion, we rode another bus back to Taipei. We had this bus driver that hauled ass on the highway. People drive pretty crazy in the city, so I expected it everywhere else - But this guy was driving pretty fast. Passing cars on the left and right, weaving throughout traffic, changing lanes (while cars were still in them), you name it. And best of all, we were in a bus. Again, I thought wwe were going to hit stuff, but we never did.

In Taipei we visited family and I was able to hang out with my cousin and her friend. They took me shopping all around the city. We went to everything from department stores to all of these little roadside stands and shops.

On a whole, the department stores were, well, department stores. Just varied in levels of poshness and store names. Not much different from the ones back home. Now the street vendors and alleyways that had little stores was where all the action was. The stores where everything was displayed and you could haggle over pricing.

After visiting a few of these stores, I just coudln't take it - I had to exit. Let me try to explain. Normally I'm used to shopping where there's nice, orderly displays (think Target or Costco on a weekday) and I get plenty of personal space - nobody's pushing me out of the way to get to stuff, I can leisurely look through stuff.

Shopping at some of these places felt like what Brawl-Mart was the day after Thanksgiving.

OK ok, maybe not that bad. But I had to get that dig in there.

So basically, I bought nothing during my visit in Taiwan. I took spending money and used hardly any of it. (shrug)

So ok, so me, my cousin, and her friend did some shopping around town, and then met up with my parents and other cousins at the Taipei 101 buildling.

(to be continued)