You Get What You Need

Bay of Kotor, Montenegro

As we rounded the boot of Italy, I cleared my plate of mostly Mediterranean-style grilled vegetables — eggplant, bell pepper, zucchini, tomato, all with visible sear marks but barely seasoned — and went back for another. I wasn’t sure if I was still hungry, but I heaped this fresh plate, still warm from the dishwasher, with more vegetables, cheeses, focaccia, cured meats. They made a real effort to offer some food representative of the region we were sailing through.

And to be honest, I could have eaten more.

They weren’t empty calories. Most of the food on our cruise was acceptable, if you ignored the “soft tortillas” that had been sitting under a heat lamp for so long they’d baked into a hard mass, the sugar-free iced tea that tasted like dirt or the watered-down coffee with nowhere near enough caffeine. You can get real coffee on a cruise ship, but you have to pay for it.

And yet, even with attempts at healthy choices, I just kept feeling hungry. I ate and ate, and wanted to eat some more. I could have just about anything I wanted, but none of it quite filled me up.

Talking about a Mediterranean cruise might seem like an odd choice for a Taiwan-focused blog, but I do think it’s relevant. Lao Ren Cha is intentionally named to represent a very slow brewing process, a take-your-time opening of the tea leaves: I’ve lived in this country for almost two decades, I am mostly self-taught in Mandarin (not perfectly, but well enough), I’ve visited every inhabited outlying island and spent time in every county on the Taiwan mainland, but I can’t say I fully and deeply understand Taiwan. There’s always more to learn.

My husband and I travel this way as well, or try to. My dream vacation is to find a tiny slice of a place and explore it as deeply as time will allow. I want at least two full days in any given city, even the “boring” ones. In fact, that’s usually not enough. Two weeks just for eastern Java? About the same for Georgia? Two months in Turkey? All wholly insufficient.

So why take a cruise stopping in five countries over ten days — Italy, Malta, Greece, Montenegro and Croatia? Would that not be far too little time in any one place?

We did it because it was the best way to organize a family trip with my in-laws, who prefer cruises, and my brother and sister-in-law, who don’t mind them. The in-laws have traveled our way (over land, spending more time in each place) more than once to spend time with us. It’s our turn to try their way. I was happy to do it. I still am. It might also be our last trip before WWIII or the resource wars break out. 

The port calls were indeed too quick, though. In and out, Sicily in a day. Pompeii in half a day. Crowds pouring in, making destinations more unpleasant than they needed to be. I got the feeling most of the places we visited were a lot more pleasant after we left. Yes, we -- I'm not better than the other visitors.

I can’t say the tea leaves opened for any one destination.

I haven’t disliked taking a cruise, though. It’s easy to hop on a high soapbox or higher horse and say cruises are always terrible, or aren’t really traveling, or look like miserable trips for miserable people. It’s easy to be a travel bougie and think that makes you better than the average tourist, but it doesn’t.

Dubrovnik, Croatia

It took a lot of convincing to get me to go, though. I worried about all sorts of things: where does the poop go? How could the food possibly be good? Isn’t a cruise ship basically a massive environmental disaster? Do they treat the crew well? 

The answers to these questions are complicated (except for the poop -- it's treated and dumped as 'gray water' in the open sea, away from conservation areas).

Environmentally, the fuel needed is questionable at best. It's a lot, but having seen the resources poured into and polliution pouring out of land-based tourist facilities, especially big resorts, cruise ships seem like they actually might be more efficient. No one who travels is entirely innocent, as airplanes are one of the worst polluters as well. If you travel, you pollute. But, there is a case to be made that cruises pollute more than other forms of travel.

Very little food is wasted: we see a lot of the same ingredients in different dishes. There are almost no single-use plastics. If passengers could be convinced to give up bottled water (also a problem in general, and not just with tourists), there would be none. Everything else is paper, wood or recyclable aluminum. 

And the waste? It's not good.

Labor conditions for everyone but officers would generally be considered unacceptable in the West -- more about that later.

Knowing this, we still decided to do the trip. Spending time with family does matter, and with two older travelers who have done things our way on previous trips, it was a trade-off we were willing to make.

What about other people, though?

Chania, Crete

One friend who has money to burn says she prefers them because you’re almost completely disconnected from the world if you don’t buy the overpriced wi-fi package. If she’s on a regular trip, she can’t quite shed her workaholic nature. “But if people are trying to reach me but I’m somewhere between Barbados and Curaçao with no service, there’s not much they can do, and I won’t feel compelled to get any work done,” she once told me.

I agree with this wholeheartedly. We chose not to buy the wi-fi either, thinking a digital detox would do us good. It has: we’re sleeping better, reading more and feeling more relaxed. I don’t even miss being on social media regularly.

It’s also easy to see exactly who cruises are for when, to put it bluntly, you look at who takes them. Our cruise was mostly older people, some families, and many disabled travelers. That is, people who’d spent their fittest years working and saved travel for retirement: anyone can arrange a trip on their own if they really want to, but it gets harder to lug backpacks or suitcases around as one gets older. For disabled travelers, it’s a lot easier to book a trip where you understand the accessibility in advance and won’t be surprised with a set of stairs you can’t climb, a long walk you can’t endure, or a set of meal options you can’t eat.

For others, it’s a way to keep kids happy and entertained — say whatever you want about how you’d parent differently, you don’t actually know what personality or needs your kid is going to have, or how difficult some kids can be until you try to travel with them. Another friend of mine did the full Mediterranean rigmarole because he and his wife wanted to see everything, they had plenty of money but not a lot of time, and their pre-teen son wasn’t interested in much of it. Cruise ships have options for situations like that.



Yet another friend who occasionally does cruises geared at families where one member has autism. It’s one way to travel while ensuring a predictable environment that may minimize, say, the chance of a meltdown.

Then there are the travelers who want a floating hotel room with excellent service that moves around, so they can visit lots of places. That, to be honest, is one of the most appealing draws of a cruise. You can unpack and stay unpacked. Also, to be blunt: the cocktails are very good and they don’t skimp. 

Mt. Aetna, Sicily

And yes, there are the ones who have no special circumstances but want to say they’ve traveled but also desire it to be as safe and sanitized as possible: food they know they’ll eat, entirely predictable bus trips, services they know they’ll have access to. I know many ‘intrepid traveler’ types (the ones who call themselves “travelers, not tourists” without an ounce of self-reflection) who would dismiss this final group as unworthy of the beauty of travel, but honestly, that’s unkind. You really never know who a person is inside, or why they’ve chosen the safe option, or what experience might open them up to some new possibility. A lot of these ‘I am the very best kind of traveler’ folks might try to practice the non-judgmentalism they preach.

Still, I felt a bit out of place on what is essentially a massive floating Disney World where every staff member is helpful and friendly, and constantly asks if you’re having a good time. I always felt like I had to say it was great — magical, amazing, wonderful — even when it wasn’t. 

Pompeii was a hot mess: herded through a “cameo factory” that was more of a glorified souvenir shop with a bathroom you could use, then racing through the ruins, seeing this and that, half a fresco maybe, the infamous phallus on the sidewalk pointing to a brothel. With thirty or so people in your group surrounding you, a little radio in your ear so you could hear the guide, sunglasses and a sun hat, every one of my senses was being assaulted and I didn’t really see anything. 

In 2018, I took a train from Rome with my sister. We wandered around Pompeii at our own pace and used Google to figure out what things were. We found entire rooms with the paint intact, and talked about what we were seeing or just interesting things in life. When we felt we’d feasted enough on what Pompeii had to offer, we caught the train back to Napoli for pizza, and then on to Rome.

That 2018 Pompeii visit was better, and it's not close. 

Others on our our said Sorrento was “wonderful” — were streets of souvenir shops all they wanted? Should I judge them for that? I felt I could have really liked the town if I’d gotten an Airbnb outside the “historical” (tourist) district and spent a week, not 90 minutes. 

The tour guide for this trip was a nice guy named Sal who clearly had a nasty cold and wanted nothing more than to be at home drinking restorative hot beverages while watching crappy TV and waiting for the meds to kick in.

“But I have to work, you know,” he said as I handed him a BronkAid.

I’m not sure how I feel about propping up that kind of economy.



                    

Valletta, Malta

Things improved on Mt. Aetna: it’s harder to get to, so a tour made sense, and the crater was truly impressive. What the excursions call “time on your own”, however, usually turned out to be 1-2 hours in a town, not enough to both eat and walk around (lunch is not usually provided, so you really must eat, and often the only eateries you have time to walk to are tourist traps with awful food). In Sorrento we gulped down an overpriced meal and then tried to walk around, only to find street after street of souvenir shops.

In Catania we decided to forgo the whole tourist trap nonsense. We had an hour, and there was no reasonable way to have fun in any city with that little time. I had data on land, so I hopped online and found a highly-rated restaurant where we lunched in a sun-drenched courtyard filled with just the right amount of Sicilian chaos. We had salty olives and horse steaks (yes, horse). I had home-made rigatoni so massive it flopped over, covered in a savory pistachio cream sauce and guanciale. Six euros for a half liter of white wine, and the most delicious little chocolate thing I’ve ever shoved in my face hole.

The salty olives mattered: nothing on the ship is sufficiently salted. I felt like the sultan in that old Arab fable about three daughters, where the third showed her love by bringing her father salt. He thought it was a worthless gift until he tried living without it — he was so miserable, his food so tasteless, that he proclaimed he’d give his kingdom for a few flakes of it.

My kingdom, for some salty fucking olives in the Mediterranean, of all places.

We left stuffed, but had to run back to meet our tour group. That one meal was the only thing we had time for in urban Sicily, and we had to leave before doppio espresso or grappa had even been a possibility. The Sicilian family running the place seemed confused about why we cut out so quickly; they didn’t seem to get a lot of cruise ship daytrippers.

I didn’t get a lot of Sicily, but that meal will stay with me, on my hips and in my mind. On the ship I can get anything I want, but actually spending time on land in a place, I may get what I need.

Once we stopped doing lots of excursions, my experience became dramatically more interesting. Malta and Crete were outstanding, because we were just a family walking around and having fun. That togetherness, not endless group tours, is what I wanted and needed from this trip. The Montenegro bus trip was only somewhat chaotic, and I ended up loving Kotor itself.

One of my favorite things to do in Europe is find a pretty cafe in a quiet lane and watch the world go by over a Campari spritz (an Aperol spritz is fine, but Campari is better). Nobody needs this exactly, but it’s my favorite kind of travel. I can have as many spritzes of any liqueur that I’d like on the ship. I don’t dislike being on the ship. But a Campari spritz at one of the bars isn’t quite the same as sipping it in a travertine-bricked, vine-covered cafe in some corner of Rome. It’s the same drink, but somehow less filling.

The other thing the ship has is a massive staff. They’re from around the world, but mostly the “Global South”, if you like that term. I don’t, but can’t put my finger on why. It reads as condescending. The large proportion seem to be from the Philippines. They all work very hard to keep every guest happy — if you even hint that you want something, the nearest worker will drop everything to help.

This creates a very comfortable experience which makes me a little uncomfortable. These are probably considered very good jobs, and people need jobs. The idealist in me cries out that nobody should have to work as support staff — servants, basically — to keep a gaggle of white, mostly American, travelers happy and sated. The realist in me wonders what exactly would happen if those jobs didn’t exist. It’s easy to say “socialism would fix it!!” but that’s insanely non-specific and none of the praxis for it has worked so far. 

Because a cruise ship is pure distilled capitalism, upsells and “events” mostly designed to entice you to spend money are common. It’s just as infuriating as the low-caffeine coffee.

As for my fellow ship-mates, they are mostly quite friendly. But as we’re being herded out to excursions, I feel like we’re all doughy cattle (yes, myself included) mooing and grunting off to truncated experiences. Some of them talk loudly about how “President Trump is stopping those illegal immigrants from coming over and getting free health care!” I want these people to see more of the world, but they seem happy with just one day. Not even a day: an hour here, an hour there. I doubt they’re learning much.

After Sicily, I soaked in one of the indoor hot tubs for awhile. A woman joined me; I learned quickly that she was Peruvian and spoke only Spanish. I marginally speak something that passes for half-remembered high school Spanish, which I picked up because my French teacher saw potential in my autodidactic language learning. We still chatted for about half an hour, don’t ask me how. This was her first cruise, and she was loving it — she explained that she was a bit shy to try to communicate across language barriers (I am not), but tours were usually available in Spanish, and it allowed her to visit lots of non-Spanish speaking countries.

Doing insane charades (don’t ask how I explain problems like a yeast infection) to negotiate meaning with people with whom I share not even a word doesn’t scare me, but who am I to judge those for whom that’s a real barrier to travel?

On our voyage I also kept running into a small group of well-tailored Filipina lesbians. The maitre’d at the dining room always greeted them with a compliment. After this, I noticed that my shipmates included not just older and disabled travelers, for whom the accessibility options on a cruise are a godsend, but a fairly large cohort of LGBT+ passengers from around the world. I imagine it must soothe some to know that they always have welcoming accommodation as they see the world.

We saw my husband's parents in their most relaxed state, which for them doesn’t include carting luggage to a series of hotels rooms, and it was wonderful. For various reasons, this may be our last family trip for awhile, and I valued it.

I'm also getting a bit of what I want: I started this trip by working remotely from my sister's apartment in London. I got to drink Campari spritzes in various Rome neighborhoods, and again in many other ports. We bookended the cruise with a few days in Rome and a few in Ljubljana, giving us time to see more of both cities. 

My intention is not to lay down a polemic about cruises. It’s not my preferred mode of travel, but I may take one again. There are true upsides: you do see a lot of different places. If you truly want to explore any one of them in-depth, it might plant a seed to encourage you to come back on your own. They go to places I doubt I’d ever make it to on my own, from the Shetland and Orkney islands to the tip of South America. That trip gives you just one day in Ushuaia, but that’s one more day than I’d be likely to get otherwise.

After Sicily, the port calls improved. We wandered around Valletta, Malta, eating rabbit stew for lunch and sending the in-laws back to the ship when they were ready to take a rest. I had my Campari spritz in an outdoor European cafe and followed them. We did much the same in Crete. The scenic drive in Montenegro was a bit of a mess, but everyone enjoyed the prosciutto, cheese and wine. As we approach Croatia, I’m a little sad that it’s coming to an end.

People often ask why I’ve stayed in Taiwan so long. What am I even doing there? I don’t know. All I can say is that it doesn’t always give me what I want, but that slow process of understanding and partially (never entirely) integrating into the local language and culture, and contributing to the best of my ability so that I’m a net positive as a presence there, is the sort of slow-brewed tea that gives me some ineffable thing I need.

On the second to last day of our trip, I was having trouble falling asleep and wanted some hot tea and fresh air. I threw on a sweatshirt and headed up to the buffet, where there was no food at such a late hour, but tea and coffee were always available. I took my mug of herbal tea, perhaps a brewed a little quickly but still satisfying and walked around the exterior upper decks of the ship. People were still hanging out in the closed bars, or watching Jurassic World on the Lido Deck. Different music played in each, some areas lit up, others darkened. A basketball game going on somewhere I couldn’t see. It was a little surreal.

Somewhere in my ramblings, I came across a dark side deck full of stargazers. A crew member had distributed headphones with an audio guide about the constellations. I arrived late and didn’t take one, but standing in a throng of silent shipmates, heads turned to the sky like churchgoers in a late-night Adriatic fever dream, I saw that there is indeed more to do on a cruise ship than eat mediocre food and get herded onto tour buses. I could also sit in the middle of a wine-dark sea and look at the heavens.

I sensed a new dimension of what it means not to judge. This doesn’t extend to the guy who wouldn’t stop lying about “illegals” getting free healthcare, but to everyone else, I get it. And I hope that one guy finds a better emotional support villain to blame for his unhappiness. 

I don’t care about Jurassic World, but you do. That’s great. I think we don’t spend nearly enough time in each destination, but you think the excursions are too long. You want a bus to take you everywhere, or maybe you need that for accessibility reasons. It’s not my first choice, but okay! It doesn’t quite fill me up — I’ve left each destination feeling like I could have spent a week or more there — but it’s also more than empty calories.

It’s easy to extend ‘to each their own’ to people whose choices we can on some level understand. It’s a lot harder when nothing about your preferences align with theirs, or you’ve forgotten that people have constellations of reasons why they don’t want to or simply can’t travel the way people like me might prefer. It's extremely easy when you don't hold yourself accountable for the ways you pollute and tolerate poor working conditions, or worse, think you've solved the problem of ethical consumption in your own life. I promise, you haven't. 

I didn’t always get what I wanted on the Majestic Princess, but even though it’s the exact opposite of slow-growing roots in a new country over decades, I got something I needed there too.

Everything I've learned about leaving and returning to Taiwan during a COVID outbreak

I wanna be where the people are...

We've just arrived back in Taiwan after a month in the United States. I'd read a lot about what it would be like to return, and had some idea of what our arrival and quarantine experience would be like. However, most of those posts were written before the big outbreak in Taiwan; coming back now feels fundamentally different than I suspect it would have just a few months ago. So, I thought I'd write about it. 

The rules regarding who can quarantine at home -- which differ between local cases and incoming travelers -- are not particularly clear. Yes, incoming travelers can quarantine at home if they have a residence with no other non-quarantine people, and their residence isn't subdivided into multiple addresses. Brendan and I are quarantining together, so yes, two travelers returning on the same day can stay in the same residence. No, you do not need two separate bathrooms. 

In fact, nobody will even check your apartment. I already kind of knew this from a friend in a position to know these things -- if your apartment meets the "one person per residence" requirements, I was told that "the CECC doesn't care about how many bathrooms you have." Somehow, however, I had this idea in my head that upon arrival or perhaps the day after, someone would come and inspect our quarantine quarters. That didn't happen (and thinking about it now, I don't see how it could have). I'd spent a lot of time fretting about this, when it amounted to nothing at all. 

But let's rewind a bit and talk about the requirements both to leave and return. Many people insisted that to board the plane in either direction you'd need a PCR test, which would be a considerable financial outlay. That turned out not to be true: to leave, you need whatever the airline and arrival country require. For us, that was a rapid antigen test done at a lab. We did this at minimal cost at Taiwan Adventist Hospital, which we chose for proximity as well as ease of registration (of all hospitals offering tests, theirs was the only one with a website that made sense.) It was also one of the few offering antigen tests, not just PCRs, and didn't extort foreigners (Tzu Chi, I'm looking at you -- your discriminatory fees should be illegal and I'm thinking of filing a complaint.)  Choose something nearby as you'll have to return for your results. 

We also thought travel insurance would be smart. Unfortunately, affordable Taiwan-based plans require you to pay up-front and then make a claim, which I didn't want to deal with. US-based plans are based on residency, not citizenship, so aren't available to us as they only cover international trips out of the United States and back. I called Allianz to ask about this and got horrible customer service ("well, I think we have an office in China," they told me. "But I don't live in China," I said. "It's the Republic of China!" You can guess how I replied.) Other plans like World Nomads would cover us but were far too expensive. We ended up going with IMG as they have a network in the US, offer COVID coverage and trip+health insurance, and had the lowest prices. 

You'll need the antigen test results and a travel declaration (generally available through your airline's website) to fly out, as well as proof of vaccination. Leaving Taiwan turned out to be the only time we had to prove our vaccination status; I'm still happy I obtained an international yellow card at Taipei Medical University Hospital. The digital certificate also works and is free (the WHO-issued yellow card costs about NT$900), but what can I say? I'm analog. Again, hospitals have very unclear procedures for registering for this service. At Taipei Medical, in theory you can register online for "family medicine". In practice, none of the doctors on the menu seem to have any availability -- it's better to call (no, the receptionist won't necessarily speak English.)

Arriving in the US is nothing at all -- there's no quarantine, nobody checks who you are or where you're going, you're just released into the country as though there is no pandemic. Returning to Taiwan, of course, is a different story. 

We ended our visit in New York City, where in theory you can get a free PCR test. However, there's a bit of an outbreak there now, and results are not guaranteed within the required 48-hour window. You might get lucky, but if you don't, you'll need a last-minute appointment and that'll cost you (the place we booked was charging $389 for same-day results). We made appointments in advance for next-day results at $175 -- the test itself is still free, but the guaranteed turnaround will cost you. Fortunately, we were able to cancel our quarantine hotel, and the returned deposits on our rooms more than covered the cost of the tests. The results will generally be emailed to you, and showing the document on your phone is fine.

          

Nick Kembel has an excellent post which discusses the Quarantine Entry Form, so I won't go into too much detail. The automatic screenshot system didn't work for me (it kept blipping out), but it turns out the only thing anyone will look at is that first page saying you've submitted it with a bar code. A few of the questions on the form are confusing, however. Here's a quick redux:

1.) For "purpose of coming to Taiwan", we selected "back home" even though we're not Taiwanese, as none of the other options applied. 

2.) Even though we were quarantining together, we each selected quarantining at home with "one person per residence". At no point does the form clarify that two people on the same flight can choose this. 

3.) For the test results, as we were coming from the US, we selected that we did want the saliva test, and did want the results. 

4.) On my phone, the field for my APRC number kept reverting to my passport number, so check that before you hit "next". The form also kept switching my day of birth to the 1st, even though I wasn't born on the first of the month. Fortunately, you can go back and edit the form before you submit. 

5. When noting transportation from the airport to your quarantine location, the two options are not very clear. Choose the one that is not "arrange your own vehicle". 

6.) When you're done, the system's screenshot may or may not work (it worked for Brendan but not for me). Make sure you have your own screenshot too. You can do it on your phone -- a process I found frustrating as it kept blipping out -- or on your computer, if you send yourself screenshots.

You can complete this form once you have a quarantine location and negative test result. We did ours the night before.

Upon checking in for our flight, we learned that if you don't have a Taiwanese passport, you can't do it in advance as you need to show proof of a visa (yes, APRCs obviously count). The automatic check-in machines at the airport also stop you at this point, and it took awhile for us to flag a clerk and get all of our documents approved -- negative test result, quarantine entry form submission screenshot, APRCs. This delay caused us to be in the last boarding group, which was somewhat annoying as flights are no longer as empty as they once were. 

Even with far stricter entry requirements, Taoyuan airport offered a smoother, better-organized process than Newark (or any US airport, really). Generally speaking, all you have to do is follow everyone else. I strongly recommend using the bathroom as soon as possible, if you need it, as it may be awhile before you can use one again. 

On arrival, there are two lines: one for those who received a confirmation text from the MOHW that their quarantine form was approved (check your texts when you arrive!), and one for those who have no confirmation and need it manually checked. If you have the text, click the link to open your approval page and screenshot that. 

You'll be handed your spit cup and a piece of paper with your information on it; hold onto this. You don't actually do the spit test until you exit the airport. This is slightly annoying as it means you have to carry it through baggage claim, but the process is now much faster -- you no longer have to wait at the airport for your results. 

For the first time in years, we had to actually go to an immigration counter to be let in the country, and received a passport stamp. This part was fairly easy, though I could imagine the lines getting quite long. 

At that point you'll pass through customs and follow the lines to the spit test location. Nobody will ask you if you need to use an ATM, so if you need one, speak up (I ended up having to run back into the terminal, which was allowed). I didn't need a SIM card, but it seemed like those who did were in for a long-ish wait at Chunghwa Telecom. Notably, none of the other providers' booths were still open when we arrived. That was irritating for me as I had to pay my phone bill after being away for a month, but I was able to ask a friend to do it for me. 

At some point in this process you'll be handed a sticker to wear that indicates you're transferring to quarantine, and two home test kits -- one to take on your last day of quarantine, and one to be used if you experience symptoms.

Once you leave the terminal you are sent outside to do your spit test. There's a video on how to do this set to adorable guitar music on Youtube, and instructions in the booth. You don't actually need to stand there for a full minute -- you just need to be sure you have sufficient saliva in your mouth. 

Finally, you'll be sent to the quarantine taxi line. They'll take a photo of your health declaration certificate on your phone (that's the approval text you get from the MOHW on arrival and use the last six digits of your passport number to open, or have done manually if you don't have a text message approval -- not a new document). By the time you get to the front, you'll have been sprayed down in a bit of hygiene theater, and be put into a taxi which already knows your destination. 

The next day, we each got calls from the CECC. (No visit and no snacks unfortunately. I'd been looking forward to the snacks.) They asked us if we needed help with food, water or garbage disposal during our quarantine, and let us know that we'd receive a daily text about our health -- "press 1 if you feel fine, press 2 if you don't". Nobody asked us to take our daily temperature, but of course we're keeping an eye on it anyway. This seems like a smart way to handle thinly-spread resources: someone is keeping an eye on us, but it's not as intense or scrutinizing as I'd imagined from reports of quarantining people back when Taiwan had few or no cases. 

We were lucky enough to have one of our cat sitters fill our fridge with fresh groceries using money we'd left behind, so quarantine for us is mostly just chillin' at home. Here's one thing I hadn't realized, though: I get over jet lag much faster when I can go outside, or have things to do and places to be. Without that -- especially without direct access to sunlight -- I'm feeling the effects much more strongly. I've fallen asleep both afternoons that we've been back, and just felt generally discombobulated in my new time zone. For the first time ever, I got over jet lag in the US faster than I am managing it in Taiwan; usually it's the opposite. My sleep cycle is a straight-up mess right now. We have good natural light in our living room, but I need sun. I might stick my head out the window for awhile tomorrow.

This morning we received our test results and got our first text. Otherwise, honestly, quarantine is just like chilling at home. 

All in all, despite the recent outbreak, my impression is that the government is doing a solid job allocating its resources well. The quarantine entry form is still confusing, but the arrival process is pretty smooth, and they seem to have streamlined their focus on inbound travel quarantiners. 

The consequences of Taiwan's exclusion in international affairs are not abstract

Screenshot from the South Park episode where Randy kills Winnie the Pooh in China

Years ago I was having a one-on-one class with an adult student who - athough we didn't talk about politics much - seemed to lean pro-KMT, and had a strong enough identification with the ROC for me to have noticed it. Although generally we avoided the topic - I think she knew where I stood, it's not hard to tell - we did once talk about whether it mattered if Taiwan were a UN member nation. I said it did.

She disagreed, saying it didn't really make a difference as membership in such organizations confers abstract benefits at best. I mentioned the data-sharing of organizations like the WHO, and she pointed out that Taiwan handled SARS just fine without them (I'm not so sure about that, but...whatever). To her, these organizations conducted endless meetings and discussed an awful lot, but didn't actually do much of anything, and had no real political power, so it was not only fine not to participate, but preferable to stay locked out as the Republic of China, rather than be allowed in as Taiwan, because the ROC still mattered on some level.

Yeah, well, you can see why we didn't talk about politics that much. Anyway. 

In the past two days, a number of countries have banned entry to non-citizens traveling from China, or suspended flights from/to China. Italy banned incoming flights, Vietnam halted all air travel, Australia, the US and Israel are denying non-citizens coming from China entry, and Qatar Airways has suspended flights. This is of course all thanks to the panic about the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus.

All of this happened despte the fact that the World Health Organization (WHO)  did not recommend suspending flights (source: above link). And yet, two of these countries - Italy and Vietnam - included Taiwan or Taiwan's flagship airline in their bans. 

It's worth noting that Taiwan's flagship airline is very confusingly named China Airlines. 

Vietnam has since reversed its ban on air travel to and from Taiwan, but Italy has not. 

And this is why my student was wrong. While it's true that "health statistics" and "information sharing" and "taking part in discussions" all seem very abstract, air travel is concrete and real. 

When international organizations like the WHO, Interpol and International China Asskissers Organization International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) exclude Taiwan - and in ICAO's case, blocks anyone who questions this exclusion on social media, myself included - it gives national governments the cover to follow suit and just treat Taiwan as a part of China.

This has real-world, concrete effects. When flights to and from your country are at risk of being suspended because some dingbat decided your country should be included in a China travel ban as "a part of China", that's not abstract. That's real canceled flights on real airplanes, real lost business, real travelers with real suitcases stuck in real airports. That's real people who are trapped in a place and can't get home (it's unclear to me if travelers from Taiwan would have been able to circumvent the Italian and Vietnamese bans by flying through another country, however, changing a ticket that way costs real money from real bank accounts). 

Yes, I was blocked. By the way, ahem, did you know you can follow Lao Ren Cha on Facebook? 

I want to be very clear here: I don't think the dingbats who made these decisions actually believe Taiwan is a part of China. At best it's highly unlikely. Consider the cultural, economic and geographic ties between Vietnam and Taiwan, as well as a fair amount of well-publicized controversy surrounding these ties. There's just no way that Vietnamese policymakers don't know that Taiwan is a thing.

More likely, the airhead bureaucrat who made these decisions either simply doesn't care, or is perfectly aware that Taiwan is separate from China with a separate (and more effective) healthcare system and far fewer confirmed coronavirus cases, but doesn't want to anger China. So they use this exclusion from international organizations and their own country's lack of official recognition as cover for their bad decisions, thinking they're doing the right thing by keeping China happy. 

My student was just a person with an opinion rather than a politician, lobbyist, writer or policy analyst. However, it's also fairly common for people with more influence to try and soften the way Taiwan's current situation looks. For example, one might say it is acceptable for Taiwan to just have observer status. While an improvement, no, that would not be "okay", it would be a pittance - begging for scraps when we deserve a full seat at the table.

Others say that "unofficial" ties with other countries are good enough. Often, they are, but I'd contend this is still not good enough. 

It's true that Taiwan's formal diplomatic relations are not necessarily our friends or allies. Though some of them do speak up in support of Taiwan in those international organizations, for the most part they are the result of 'checkbook diplomacy' and thus offer little benefit, while being fairly easily lured away. In the meantime, countries that do not officially recognize Taiwan show support regardless - recently, the US, Canada and Japan have all said Taiwan deserves some sort of status at the WHO. 

However, I'd still contend that it does matter - if your country does not recognize Taiwan, it's easier for your lazier or more malevolent, China-fearing bureaucrats to just lump it in with China. Then Taiwan has to "scramble" through unofficial channels to essentially beg - like a starving orphan - not to be hurt in very concrete ways by being included in China policy. 

And all this happens despite the fact that Taiwan is not a starving orphan. It's a wealthy heir to human rights and democratic norms in Asia. 

We deserve better - full recognition and a full seat at the table, and we deserve not to have to beg for it in a whisper from the back door, like a hungry maid creeping from the servant's quarters, asking the master's less-cruel son whether she can have a scrap of extra bread after dinner. 

And the benefits of a fairer arrangement are not 'abstract' at all.

It's not just about calling Taiwan "China" as a destination (also, Air Canada sucks)

When Air Canada and other airlines around the world changed the way they listed Taiwan as a destination by labeling it incorrectly as "China", that was insult enough.

But another deeper issue is made worse by this change: that of mistaking Taiwanese for Chinese - that is, the Republic of China for the People's Republic of China - when they are trying to travel.

It's already happening, and rather than talk at you about it, I'm going to hand my platform over to someone this happened to recently. Her public Facebook post about the incident is in Mandarin, but no account exists in English. I'm providing one here (with my own translation):


I want to talk about the fact that I was denied boarding by Air Canada last month.

Recap:

My flight was from Toronto to Columbus Airport, then to Vancouver and back to Taiwan. I had already checked in online. When I went to check my bags, the ground staff first asked me if I had a tourist visa for Canada. I said that I'd applied for an ETA (Electronic Travel Authorization) and the clerk then asked if I had nationality in the US or Canada. I didn't. Then she told me that this meant I wouldn't be able to fly. She explained that the ETA only allows me to fly into a single city in Canada, but my flight transfers across two Canadian cities, so I had to call customer service to change the ticket.

It took me 20-30 minutes to get through to customer service (the last time it took about an hour), and my boyfriend also helped me check the Canadian visa/ETA regulations so we could show them that the transfer was within 48 hours and therefore within regulation. The ground crew still denied boarding, and the boarding time passed.

Here's the truth of what happened:
I had no idea what was going on with the strange regulations regarding the ETA, which I'd never heard of before, and which Taiwanese citizens are clearly exempt from. After returning home, I immediately began searching for answers. I finally discovered that Canada has this requirement for "Chinese" citizens. Of course my passport is from the "Republic of China" (ed: which is not the same as "Chinese") and I became extremely angry! 

After returning to the airport two days later, the ground staff was going to refuse me again. After I disputed this with the staff, they gave me the good news: "ok, you can board" - but didn't seem embarrassed about their previous mistakes at all. I was furious all over again.  Of! Course! I! Always! Had! The! Right! To! Board! 

Air Canada's attitude in dealing with this?  Terrible ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! (it deserves a hundred exclamation points).

The ground staff said the supervisor whom they queried at the time issued the rejection. The supervisor they said was on duty that day said that he was "not the supervisor that day". So I don't know why I was denied boarding, again and again. No one dares to tell me why I was rejected two days ago. Later on, with the same ETA, holding the same flight itinerary, this time I could fly, and nobody dared to just admit they'd confused Taiwan with China! ! ! ! ! ! (let's add another hundred exclamation points).

When I filled out the appeal form afterwards, I found that there was no Taiwan in the options for choosing nationality, only "Taiwan, China." Then I remembered that last year China put pressure on many airlines in the world to fall in line with the "One China Principle" (ed: China's policy that Taiwan is a part of China - not to be confused with the One China Policy). Perhaps this ridiculous mistake was caused by the fact that Taiwan is classified as 'China' in Air Canada's internal computer system. 

No one used to think that airlines had anything to do with politics. Just when you tell yourself that politics is just politics, that as you live your life doing other things like going out to eat or watching TV, and that politics is just a small part of that life - in the end, it turns out that everything is political.

I am even more curious whether you everyday people are really able to accept being treated as 'the same' as Chinese so readily. Are you really willing to sacrifice the existing rights you have as Taiwanese and become Chinese? As we reject the poor quality of 'Made in China' internationally*, do we have to give up being Made in Taiwan and be considered Made in China? 

*I think meaning, "when we stand up for ourselves as Taiwanese in the international arena and when China tries to force us back", but that's my own interpretation of what she means here as it sounds very metaphorical in a Taiwanese way

China won't do anything if you say 'no' to them

I'm hoping to add to this list in the future, but willing to publish now - and here's what I want to say.

It's OK to say no to Beijing's demands regarding the naming and designation of Taiwan. China may push and whine and scream and threaten, but at the end of the day, if you hold the line, nothing comes of it. In specific, rare instances where it has, it's because an entire industry has caved and so the CCP can flex its muscles without worry.

Take the latest LSE sculpture controversy that Chinese students manufactured. As of now, The World Turned Upside Down has still not been changed. I can confirm this as of April 14th: 

Photo used with permission

No official decision has been made, but seeing as it's no longer in the news, I doubt it will continue to be an issue.

And what has Beijing threatened or done in retaliation?

Nothing. Nothing at all. I've checked every news source I can find on this, and there's nada. Zero.

LSE said they were going to shelve the issue, and silence reigned. The Economist intoned that China could threaten to cut off student enrollment as they said they might do at Oxford:

When Louise Richardson, vice-chancellor of Oxford University, was asked by the Chinese embassy to prevent Lord Patten, the university’s chancellor (a largely ceremonial role), from visiting Hong Kong, she refused.... 

British universities have worked hard to court the Chinese, and the rush of students paying hefty international fees demonstrates the benefits of this approach. But as the LSE is now finding out, it is not without drawbacks. When threatened with receiving fewer Chinese students by the Chinese embassy, Ms Richardson of Oxford replied that there were many Indians who would be happy to take their place. 

But so far that has not materialized, and as far as I'm aware it never came to anything at Oxford, either. That allows us to add Oxford University to our list of institutions that have refused Chinese demands and suffered no real repercussions.

Then there was the incident at the Lions Club, which has chapters in Taiwan (in China, they have their own Lions Club which apparently cooperates with the Lions Club International). The China chapter tried to force the international organization to change Taiwan's designation...and failed.

Has there been any blowback against the Lions Club by Chinese authorities since?

As far as I can find, there has been none.

And here's one that may surprise you. Remember when we all thought that an Air New Zealand flight was denied landing in China because the Chinese government had requested that the airline change its designation of Taiwan to show it as part of China?

Turns out that's likely not the case. One website reported it, and everyone just took it as true. But even Reuters - that bastion of bad Taiwan reporting - didn't think there was enough evidence to the story to even report it as a possibility. And as The Guardian pointed out, there's no definitive evidence that this was the reason, and in fact reported that:

China’s foreign affairs spokesperson Hua Chunying said the Air New Zealand flight had turned around on its own accord. “Due to temporary glitch in dispatchment, this airplane failed to obtain a landing permit with its destination and decided of its own accord to return en route.”

Beijing is quite clear on the line it takes with international airlines; it has no reason to lie about this.

So I went and checked. Guess what!

Air New Zealand still doesn't refer to Taiwan as a part of China. On its route map, it puts Taiwan in capital letters just as it does with every other country.

At least in Taiwan, their website opens with a reference to Taiwan:





...and Taipei is just referred to as "Taipei" as a destination they fly to, as with every other city.

 Are you hearing news reports about Air New Zealand being denied the ability to fly to China, because they never heeded the request that they change Taiwan's designation? No?

That's because it never happened. Air New Zealand doesn't call Taiwan "China" and yet they are still able to fly to several cities in China, and keep Shanghai as a hub!

What this means is that all those other airlines never actually had to change Taiwan's designation. There was no risk. There's no way China would have banned all of them, seeing as it won't even ban one.

The same could have been true for organizations that have already bent the knee to Emperor Xi - such as the international English proficiency testing organizations IELTS and TOEFL - I fail to see why they felt it was necessary. Do they really think China would ban IELTS or TOEFL testing? With all of the rich princelings that powerful parents want to send to study abroad? Please. There was no risk here; they just bent over because they like it rough, I suppose. If anything, organizations like IELTS bring pain on themselves when their own governments castigate them over their stupid decisions.

And, of course, while China might cause trouble for international news publications, the New York Times, The Economist and more who refer to Taiwan as "Taiwan" are already blocked in China. I suspect most would agree as well that censoring their content so as to appease China - assuring their reporters access or keeping their sites unblocked - would irreparably damage their credibility as sources of reputable journalism regardless. So, there is no reason going forward for them to make any changes either.

In short, let this be my announcement to the international organizations and businesses of the world: you don't have to give in to Beijing's demands on Taiwan.

It's clear that they don't actually do anything to retaliate if you show them the door.

When a "Taiwan separatist" goes to China...

The temples here remind me of the ones in South Korea, and one of them (not this one) is a Matsu temple, of all things!  

I'm going to say something that should seem sort-of obvious but might shock a few people anyway.

I like China.

I still hate the CCP, though.

Some of you are probably thinking "why wouldn't you? The people are friendly, the food is great, the history, literature, architecture and culture are fascinating, the scenery is often stunning. There's a lot to like in China!"

And some of you are surely thinking "but they're our mortal enemies! And all the pollution! And the government! It's so oppressive!"

Both of these groups are right.

I've spent a week here running a training course, and was also in Shanghai recently. And I have to say that although I felt a little nervous beforehand for reasons I'll explain below, I would overall say that I had good experiences here. The people - the managers I've worked with, the trainees - have been so friendly and hospitable. Of course, I knew already that people in China are usually very welcoming to foreign visitors. The managers worked hard to ensure that I was comfortable, happy and well-fed while here; I ate like a king. The trainees worked their butts off, were an exceptional class and just all around great to work with, as well as being friendly and willing to learn. It was an honor to work with them, and more importantly, I genuinely like them.

Of course, the food is as spectacular as I remember it. I haven't had much time to go out and actually do anything, however, as these are purely work trips.

And I've found that if two conditions are met, this proud Taiwan "separatist" does like visiting China: the first is that it's only enjoyable on days when pollution isn't bad. The day a pollution and dust storm blew through was awful. The days the air has been breathable have been fine.

The second is that I have fast, consistent access to the open Internet. Without that, I can't even talk to my husband as neither of us uses any social media or chat apps that are allowed in China. I can't do much of anything: the majority of things I enjoy doing online consistently are banned in China, and in 2019 it's just not acceptable to me that my access be restricted.

VPNs don't work well - if you can get them to connect (which they won't always do), they can be slow and the connection can be lost. The only way to travel, I've found, is through one of those Wifi hotspots you can get at the airport in Taiwan. They bounce you right over the Great Firewall quickly and consistently, and cost a little under NT$200/day (my company paid for it).

This might seem like a dumb thing to say to some of you - white girl realizes China's not so bad after all! would be an uncharitable but possible way to characterize it - but remember I've spent the better part of the last decade devoting my time to writing about politics in Taiwan and Asia from a pro-independence standpoint. After awhile you start to think of China as 'the enemy' rather than a beautiful country full of lovely people.

The CCP is the enemy. China's just a country. How can one hate a country?

I'll only say one thing on the other side of that perspective: being here with unrestricted Internet access takes away the most obvious way that China's police state makes itself known. Everything else is normal: great bars with great music (though nothing with particularly thoughtful lyrics), great cafes, great shopping, great food. People living their lives. Fear doesn't lurk around every corner. Xinjiang and Tibet are far away. A great deal of literature is still banned, but they don't always check carefully.

Without the daily annoyance of wondering whether or not you'll be able to get online, you'd be forgiven for forgetting that you're living in a place run by authoritarians who want to annex a neighboring democracy and are perpetrating both cultural and literal genocides in their western provinces. The CCP seems to have figured out - after, uh, some trial and error - that if you force people to give up all cultural touchstones and push them into a gray Communist hellscape, they aren't going to like you very much. But if they can eat, drink, wear, listen to and buy whatever they like and you give them a home-grown social network, that's enough for huge swaths of the population. They might just leave you be.

If you're from China and are used to the Internet issue, you're used to getting state-approved news, you've never seen a banned book, you've been raised to think Taiwan is yours by right and Xinjiang and Tibet seem far away indeed, it must be easy to otherwise forget exactly who is running things. You might even support them: China's gotten a lot nicer in the past 20 years, after all.

I'm not the first to say it, but so much for the idea that economic growth inevitably brings political liberalization.

I prefer living in Taiwan for sure; it's my home. One of my requirements in a place to live is that it be free, and Taiwan is: I feel safe expressing myself openly there, and my friends enjoy democratic norms I feel are crucial. I do not, and will never, consider Taiwan to be a part of China, and I don't intend to live in China. I will still criticize the Chinese Communist Party until I draw my last breath. I'll stay in the fight against their aggressively expansionist policies. In that sense, I'm still in the trenches. You will never see me become one of those Westerners who apologizes for Beijing's brutal authoritarianism and aggressive expansionism. I stand for universal human rights, self-determination, and freedom and that will never change. The CCP will always be an enemy.

In other words, all the shiny things brought about by economic growth shouldn't be enough to tempt Taiwan toward China; Taiwan's sovereignty is about more than that. It's not enough to tempt me, either. My true freedom is worth more. 

But on a clear day, if you have a good portable hotspot, it's pretty good to visit - and I wouldn't mind coming back.

So what made me nervous? Well, being here for work, I couldn't just say what I thought about Taiwan because agreeing to come at all basically means I've agreed that I'm a representative of the company and not here in a personal capacity. That (Taiwanese) company treats me well; I want them to do well and this is good business for them. In any case, nobody asked.

To be honest, I don't know what I would have done if someone had.

On a street of Hui (Chinese Muslim) restaurants in Shenyang

It's usually not that hard to keep my political views to myself at work, but when you know you can't say anything because it's your job to make your employer's Chinese client happy, being hyper-aware of it makes it more likely to slip out because what you can't say is always on your mind. Like how telling a kid she can't do something just makes her want to do that thing more, know what I mean? Though some managers here figured out, of course I never told any trainees, nor would I.

Because of this, I did feel a bit 'closed': advocating for Taiwan isn't the only thing in my life, but it's a big part of it. Ensuring that none of my trainees was aware of that part of my life, and that they knew me in a professional capacity rather than a personal and political one did entail pretending that part of myself didn't exist for a week, and not just during work hours. We all stayed in the same hotel; I saw them at every meal. In that sense, being only about 3/4 of who I actually am was like cutting off my left arm. I could function, but it wasn't the whole me.

That said, I never compromised. I stood for the national anthem because it's required, but I did not put my hand on my heart (I couldn't have sung it even if asked). I always referred to "Taiwan" and China": no "Mainland", "province" or anything like that passed my lips. Because it was relevant to a class discussion, I mentioned that NTU was founded "when Taiwan was Japanese". I didn't pretend or lie. I walked a thin line between holding to my principles in my language use, but also not offering that information about myself.

But I'll tell you, while the trainees never found out about my political views, the two managers who helped run the course did. One is Taiwanese so I just told him. The other is Chinese but figured it out through my language use and hearing me talk with the Taiwanese manager. She was surprisingly cool with it. If you are open, you will find people who can accept the whole you - the problem is, you won't find out who those people are until you say something, by which time it might be too late.

When she did find out and we could finally just talk openly about these things, the whole feeling just changed. We went from friendly work acquaintances who shared our meals with small talk punctuated with quiet periods to people who could actually have discussions.

And to be frank, that's what made me decide that I did, in fact, enjoy this trip to China. The air's been okay (which I'm told is unusual), the hotspot works, fine. But really, it's the ability to be not just myself, but my whole self, around at least a few other people.

So I'll end with this: pro-Beijing types love to talk about how Chinese and Taiwanese have some sort of special relationship or understanding due to cultural, ethnic and historical ties. A relationship they often claim no-one else can understand, a special affinity. I've heard it both hinted and said obliquely that this creates a special affinity between individuals as well in which they understand each other as ultimately culturally Chinese.

I'm here to tell you that it's not true.

Until that breakthrough toward the end of my trip, I found that when I was out with a mixed group of Taiwanese and Chinese, they were amicable. You might think there was some special cultural affinity or set of tacit understandings that we clunky interlopers could never comprehend which transcended politics.

And yet, I could see the ways in which my Taiwanese colleagues and acquaintances held back whenever it was a mixed group. It was very subtle, like buttoning a bit closer to the collar than one ordinarily buttons. Zipping up a jacket just a little higher than usual. You'd have to be watching for it to see it, but it was there.

The second the company changed and it was all Taiwanese, it was like a collective unconscious breath was let out. The belt loosened. The words loosened.

I know this because, although I am not Taiwanese, I was treated as one in these situations. I felt it too. I even mentioned it explicitly, and the others readily agreed. It wasn't dislike, they pointed out. They liked their Chinese counterparts - you just had to be careful what you said. Among other Taiwanese and the Honorary (that's me), you could speak more freely.

And that same feeling came back the second the Chinese manager indicated that she was fine with my beliefs. Jackets unzipped, collars loosened, guts unsucked.

It has nothing to do with ethnicity, history cultural 'affinity', or even being Taiwanese. If you understand Taiwan's situation and what it stands for, you're in.

If not, you could be as genetically similar as anything, but you're out.

While many of my trainees are likely openminded about Taiwan, it breaks my heart a little to realize that some of them might think less of me if they knew what my real views on Taiwan were - that I stand for everything they were taught to stand against. 

That's one of the great tragedies of Beijing's warmongering over Taiwan: if they'd just accept that Taiwan is already independent and wants to stay that way - if they'd just respect that Taiwan has the right to determine its own future - a lot more Taiwanese and Chinese would likely be truly open with each other on a personal level, and there would be a lot more closeness between them. More friendships would form, and the world would be a better place.

My first for MyTaiwanTour: traveling in Taiwan as a woman and a person

A piece of mine is featured in the MyTaiwanTour blog this week - hopefully the first of many - on traveling the world as a woman (it's not possible to unhook gender from experience especially when traveling abroad, among different cultures and people) and also as a person, pointing to the (mostly) good and (some) bad of being a foreign woman in Taiwan.

I hope you'll check it out!

I have to say, I wouldn't be here, in Taiwan, nor would I have stayed so long if I didn't feel comfortable as a person here - not just as a gendered person, but as a whole one. It's not perfect - no place is - but I do not feel nearly as constrained by my gender here as I have in other parts of the world.

The Tourism Paradox

Taiwan, have a look in the mirror. You are just as worthy of tourism as Vietnam.

Brendan and I spent lunar new year in Vietnam - as anyone who has lived in Taiwan knows, if you don't have family to visit, it's about as boring as Christmas Day must be for foreigners in the US with nowhere to go. We usually skip town, and have only avoided Vietnam so far because we were worried that it would be more difficult to visit because they also have a lunar new year holiday (Tet, which you know if you've heard of the Tet Offensive, which I hope you have). There were some Tet-related crowds and complications, however, overall I'd say our fears were unfounded.

And that's where my regular travel post about Vietnam ends, because frankly, you can read all you want to about it anywhere else. I actually want to talk about Taiwan, then show you some pictures from Vietnam for a related reason. In any case, Vietnam is entrenched on the tourist map, with hordes of visitors from around the world coming every day. You might even say Vietnam is the new Thailand (but hasn't quite reached the levels of "Foreigner Playland" that Thailand seems to have, or Bali, for that matter). That's not necessarily always a bad thing, but overall you don't need my input - though I'll say one thing anyway: skip the lots-of-hotels-and-so-so-beach by the highway at Nha Trang and find yourself a quieter beach (we really liked Jungle Beach, well to the north of Nha Trang). We transferred from our ride from Jungle Beach to the bus there, and even in that short glimpse I was deeply unimpressed with what was essentially a tourist drag on a strip of sand.

That's it, though. What I want to talk about is more closely related to Taiwan. It's nothing new - other people have made the same arguments - I possibly have as well, and simply forgotten - but I'll say it anyway. 

Tourists who go to Vietnam - and there are many, from every continent - are likely to come away thinking something along the lines of "wow, Vietnam is a great place in Asia for lively street life, great street food, architecture and interesting night markets! Such a cool country! Really some of the best Asia has to offer!"

The compliment would be warranted - Vietnam is truly great. We enjoyed ourselves immensely. But I couldn't help but think as these masses of folks of all different colors, creeds and national origins - though let's be honest, they were mostly white or Chinese - wandered through Hoi An's packed night market oohing and aahing over the food stalls and shopping opportunities - that Taiwan has these things too.

In fact, I think I may have exclaimed to no one in particular at some point, "hey! Taiwan has all of this too, but so few people come!"

OK, this is not entirely fair: Taiwan has a fairly bustling tourism industry, mostly made up of visitors from nearby Asian countries, and it has been on the rise since the dreaded Chinese tour groups finally, mercifully left. But it's really a small slice of the pie compared to the people pouring into Vietnam, and with noticeably fewer Westerners or anyone from any other continent. That feels so rare in Taiwan - Western backpackers - that even though I hosted one briefly (we knew each other from the old Lonely Planet Thorn Tree - remember that? I was channamasala), when I ran into some at Yonghe Soy Milk I was genuinely surprised. 

Few people not from the region come to Taiwan, so few can leave thinking "wow, Taiwan is so cool - lively street life, vibrant night markets, street food, old buildings, traditional culture - really a great destination!" All these distinctions that could be heaped on Taiwan are heaped on Vietnam.

I can basically see exactly this at a night market in Taiwan, but tourists are enchanted by brightly colored shaved ice street stalls in Vietnam, not here. 

I could go into the reasons why this is, but will keep it brief - in the end it comes down to China trying to erase Taiwan as a unique entity in the global consciousness, and the Taiwanese government doing a poor job of promoting tourism outside of Asia. I could write a lot more about this, but I'll save that for another post.

The central question, in fact, is this:

Part of me doesn't want this to change. I would very much like to keep Taiwan to myself. Possibly, because I am a curmudgeonly old git, I would see these backpackers I am now lamenting a dearth of, should they finally descend on Taiwan, and basically think GET OFF MY LAWN. I rather like living in an undiscovered gem of a country that isn't packed with the banana pancake set, or the wealthier set that includes their parents. I like that local culture is wonderfully uncommodified. I like that Lishan, my favorite mountain town, is a gritty little place where the most interesting things to do are read books and enjoy the view as you eat fresh fruit. All of the things that can make Taiwan annoying and inaccessible (like having to rent a car to go anywhere, and never being quite sure when temple festivals are) also make it wonderful and authentic.

It's uncharitable, but I must acknowledge that aspect of my thinking. If we did get all these tourists, we could expect every town of interest - Sanxia, Beipu, Daxi, Tainan, Lugang, Jiaoxi, Hualien, Kenting, Jiufen, Jinguashi and more - they'd all be exponentially more crowded than they already are (which is pretty damn crowded). This part is obvious, but what that means is that more businesses selling crap souvenirs - as though there aren't enough already - and other things aimed entirely at tourists will start opening, and soon enough what is now confined to a single awful lane in Jiufen will be found in every one of these towns. I do not relish that. I make no secret of my dislike for tour buses - I understand why people take them, but I always try to run ahead of the crowd of people about to be disgorged, and they do clog up the roads.

This is also uncharitable of me: what makes me so special that I get to enjoy these experiences but other foreigners shouldn't be able to come for a short time to do so as well? Of course that is a logical dead-end, and I admit this. When friends and acquaintances visit, I am delighted to show them around and try to give them valuable cultural experiences, so it's a bit hypocritical of me to be okay with that but not with a greater volume of travelers.



However, rather like someone from Sesame Street might try to push Oscar the Grouch back in his trash can so he'll stop complaining for a minute, my better nature is telling the shouty old man who lives in my heart to quit it and think rationally.

Because, despite all of these issues, I do think it is worth braving the dreaded tour buses and banana pancakers that increased global (as in, beyond Asia) tourism would bring for the many benefits it could have.

We have gorgeous historic architecture too!

First and foremost, one of the reasons so many people around the world don't know much about Taiwan is that they've never even considered visiting. Not everyone will read the history section of their guidebook or listen to a tour guide talking about it, but enough will do so that perhaps, just perhaps, Taiwan might escape the purgatory of having the world think whatever China wants them to think about this lovely country, because they don't care enough to inquire more deeply (that's just human nature) and haven't thought to visit and see for themselves.

Secondly, I have to say Vietnam has great tourism infrastructure. Public transport within cities is lacking - and that is a problem if you want to leave the central areas of either Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City - but no matter where you are, it is reasonably easy to arrange a ride to anything you can't walk to. For those looking to save money, they can take small group tours to, say, the mausoleums and temples outside of downtown Hue, or a group tour - some small, others not - to My Son, about an hour from Hoi An. For those willing to spend a bit more, no town is too small to not have xe om, or motorbike taxis, to take you where you need to go, and you can always arrange a car and driver (at least in the more touristy areas we visited). Hotels are not only happy to do this, they expect it. It's part of their job.



In Taiwan you might well find it impossible to see much of the scenic beauty of the country because, while you can usually get a bus to the general area of a place, to go beyond that you have to drive. There are often no taxis outside of the cities, and when there are, they are expensive to charter - not that it matters if you simply can't get one. Once in one of the smaller towns, including my perennial favorite place to get away (Lishan, in the far east of Taichung county - I refuse to call it Taichung city because it's not a city), you basically have to hike/walk/bike or depend on the kindness of locals to give you short rides. Otherwise, if you cannot or do not want to drive, you're basically screwed in much of the country. It's still one of my biggest complaints about Taiwan outside of Taipei. People defend it - oh you can just rent a scooter (not everyone can drive a scooter, nor wants to, and some foreigners have run into problems renting them without a specific scooter license) - but I'm sorry, it's really not okay and I do not accept feeble excuses. Don't even try, I'm not interested in hearing a weak-ass defense of Taiwan's crappy public transport at a local level (connections between cities are okay) outside of Taipei.

If we did start getting a larger volume of global tourists, I do think this would change. You'd have a lot of people who either couldn't or wouldn't want to drive, and suddenly people making money as hired drivers or running shuttle buses would start appearing in most places you might like to go. It wouldn't be complete, but it would be an improvement on a situation the government hasn't seen fit to improve otherwise. I'm not always a fan of the free market, but in this case it would probably fix the problem to have demand exist to facilitate the creation of supply. 

It would probably also lead to more of Taiwan's heritage architecture being restored, though I could see a good amount of it being turned into yet more souvenir shops and hotels. But refurbishing a Japanese colonial building into a boutique hotel is better than letting it moulder, no?

There are downsides of course - the poor east coast would suffer terribly, with much of the best seafront property taken up by hotels and resorts a la Sri Lanka and Vietnam. All of the above issues regarding crowding wouldn't exactly go away. More of the beautiful parts of Kenting would start to look like, well, the not-beautiful part of Kenting (Kenting town, which I avoid). More of Sun Moon Fucking Lake(tm) would start to look like the annoying part of Sun Moon Fucking Lake(tm) where hotels blot out the lake view. A lot of the best of Taiwan is, frankly, too small to accommodate that many tourists. It's not a big country and the old streets, buildings and small towns are also, well, not big. Imagine tour buses descending on Beipu. A nightmare!

I don't really want to see Taiwanese culture commodified, either. I like my all-night aboriginal festivals and do not want to watch the most popular form of engaging with indigenous culture to be one-hour dances downtown, the way Kathakali, water and shadow puppets and Kandyan dance are commodified and pruned to fit tourist tastes, for tourist consumption. I can tell you a fair amount, although I'm no expert, on pas'ta'ai. I can't tell you much at all about Kandyan dance although I packed myself into a theater to watch two hours of it with about 500 other tourists. I can only tell you slightly more about Kathakali because I attended a performance while studying in southern India. But the connection isn't there the way it is with going to the all-night real deal in the mountains. I would not want the Hsinchu pas'ta'ai to become similarly commodified and agree with a friend of mine that the way these 'cultural' or 'eco' experiences are packaged for travelers is hugely problematic.

To take another example, the one temple festival I was able to pin down a date for while my cousin was in Taiwan was in Sanxia, and was so crowded with tourists - mostly domestic, probably some Chinese - that while I wasn't able to be there, my sister reports there were so many people that you couldn't really see anything. I don't want that to be every temple parade: I like seeing one go down the street, grabbing a beer at 7-11 and then chilling out, watching it go by. Some of the most attractive parts of the countryside are already crowded enough - I don't want them to become more crowded.




On the other hand, consider Japan, where even the most rural destination usually offers some mode of transport, even if it's your hot spring hotel in the mountains picking you up from a bus station in a shuttle - and yet Japan does manage to have gorgeous countryside.

But, is it worth it to increase the international exposure of Taiwan, and get more people thinking about it as a unique place with its own unique culture and history rather than some country in Asia that they consider vaguely Chinese or confuse with Thailand? On a more secondary point, is it worth it to make the best of Taiwan more accessible to those who can't otherwise go?

Honestly - shut up Oscar - yes, I do think it is.

Not that we shouldn't do this carefully. I don't really want Taiwan to become another Thailand (as lovely as Thailand is, you have to admit, it's kind of a big-nose amusement park in some ways). I am heartened to see plenty of young, engaged Taiwanese grasping that simply swinging open the doors and offering "cultural experiences" devoid of depth to buses full of tourists is not going to be good for Taiwan. As it is now, to really appreciate and enjoy Taiwan, you have to dig. You have to do your homework. You have to know the history and cultural underpinnings to enjoy them. It's not as easy as taking a temple tour, grabbing a beer and going to the beach, the way it is in much of Southeast Asia.

I'd like to see Taiwan develop that way - if the main goal is to raise global understanding of Taiwan, then a travel experience that pushes travelers to learn more about it to appreciate it might be a good way to go (but of course would mean fewer people would come - plenty of folks do just want the easy vacation). A "you are welcome here, we have the infrastructure [please guys let's build the infrastructure, I hate having to rent cars] but we're not going to change for you" attitude, I think, is a good one to take. A "we have lots of history and historic sites, but you have to actually read the history to appreciate them" is one, too.

That may seem incompatible with attracting global tourists, but I do not think it is irreconcilable or impossible.

And now, please enjoy some photos from Vietnam.

I will concede that outside of lantern festival in Taiwan, Vietnam has better lanterns. 

But come on you can totally see cool tile floors and old dudes chillin' at desks in temples in Taiwan - not that most foreign tourists (outside of Asia) would know that, because they don't come. 

No really, skip Nha Trang. This is better. 

This is seriously the very first thing I saw in Ho Chi Minh City. 

There was also a purple pigeon, and I have no idea how either of them got that way. 

If you turn around and look the way Ho Chi Minh is facing, you'll see a grand boulevard full of profit-turning stores, which is kinda weird if you think about it.