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.

Who should Taiwan open for?

For not quite two years now, Taiwan's borders have been closed to most people. In on-and-off policies, students, resident visa holders, foreign blue-collar labor, businesspeople and others have been permitted to enter...or not. Tourists have been firmly shut out. As the rest of the world (wisely or not) begins to re-open and "live with COVID", there's been debate about whether Taiwan should do the same. 

Some of this discussion has been quite reasonable: allowing students, family members of citizens and residents and people who have accepted jobs are all logical policies to support. Other points have been, shall we say, less trenchant -- for example, the push to let tourists back in. 

So, let me change the tone here and just lay it out. Yes, we should let family members -- especially spouses and children -- of both citizens and residents into Taiwan. Most spouses of citizens can now do so, but family members of non-citizen residents remain barred from entry. This is wrong. Quarantine and contact tracing have been fairly successful -- I see no reason not to let students and people with jobs waiting for them in as well. A special category of visa you can petition for if your situation gives you personal reasons to go to Taiwan can also be made available: for, example, unmarried partners, siblings and other family members.

Tourists, however? No. 

There was a recent article in The Guardian about this, but I don't want to focus on it. The discussion has been going on longer than that, and the attitude is widespread enough to merit a general response rather than a targeted breakdown. 

International tourism is a little over 4% of the economy. That's not nothing. I'm not saying the hotels, restaurants and tour businesses affected aren't important. But let's be honest -- it's a thin slice of what makes Taiwan hum. Even if Taiwan were more of a tourist-dependent place like, say, Bali, I'm not sure I'd be in favor of opening up. At such a small slice of what makes Taiwan go, however? Absolutely not.

Am I personally in favor of giving up a zero-COVID life and risking an outbreak in Taiwan so we can get that 4% or so humming again? No. Why should I? Why should anyone?

I'm sorry, hotels in Kenting, but I'm not  willing to give up the more or less normal life we can now have in Taiwan so that you can get more customers. I am certainly not willing to risk my health for it! I don't think many people are, nor should they be. Your business is simply not as important to me as normalcy in daily life in Taiwan and a near-zero chance of catching COVID -- for everyone who lives here. When vaccination rates rise that can change, but we're not there yet.

Perhaps think of strategies to entice domestic customers to take all that annual leave they're not spending on international travel to stay at your hotels during the week. 

Besides, re-opening for tourism would mean doing away with the quarantine. I suppose borders could be opened but the quarantine kept in place, which would certainly deter tourists but be tolerable to those with reasons to make the trip. However, we're still at the point where it's better to actively discourage non-essential travel, and framing it that way does the opposite. Perhaps in a few months, especially if quarantine capacity could be increased, that would be a conversation worth having. But by the time that happens, we'll also have higher vaccination rates anyway.

Honestly, I'm sick of the quarantine regulations too. We all are. I would very much like to go back to the US to see my family, some of whom I have not seen in person since 2018. My grandmother is 95 years old and I worry every day that things won't get better in time for me to see her again. It's just a sad financial fact that quarantine hotel rooms for my husband and I are simply not financially feasible after a genuinely rough summer. 

But the fact is that the quarantine has helped catch imported cases, and we still need it until vaccination rates are higher. Mandatory 2-week quarantines and international tourism are simply not compatible.

Besides, opening up for tourism would guarantee an outbreak -- for this reason, the entire premise of the argument is flawed. An outbreak wouldn't exactly cause tourists to pour in, would it? It would not only depress the exact sort of inbound travel that opening up would aim to bring in, it would depress domestic tourism too. We know this because that's exactly what happened during the May outbreak. I was in Tainan recently and the B&B owner admitted that from May until the "soft lockdown" ended, allowing indoor venues to re-open, they didn't have a single guest. Now, they have some -- we weren't the only people staying there. A fresh outbreak would mean none.

What's more, the risk such a move would bring would devastate a far greater chunk of the economy than the sliver fueled by international tourism. Business that rely on local custom -- restaurants, shops, cafes, smaller hotels catering mostly to local crowds, even cram schools as much as I dislike them -- all took a hit from the May outbreak. Many closed: the hotel I liked in Taichung which seemed to mostly attract young Taiwanese weekenders on mid-range budgets, the Konica shop I'd use to print out photos for relatives, more than one cafe I liked as well as several restaurants, gone. My own income was briefly torpedoed, as was my husband's, though fortunately at different points.

They didn't close, and we didn't have to dip into savings, because there weren't international tourists. That all happened because the domestic economy was affected. Risk that again for that tiny 4%, which probably wouldn't even reach 4%? No thanks.

I don't think the CECC is being particularly wishy-washy about this, either. It's true that they haven't set clear milestones for re-opening or changing quarantine rules. It's true that they won't state clearly what vaccination percentage will be considered "sufficient". But that makes sense to me: this is literally an evolving disaster, and it's evolving because people are not smart. They hear ignorant takes about vaccines and hesitate to protect themselves and others. They make obviously logically flawed arguments about "re-opening", which brings further outbreaks.

Oh yes, and they complain that "we can't find mayonnaise" -- or something -- when supply chains are disrupted around the world and there is indeed mayonnaise to be had. I have some in my fridge. It's available. I'm certainly not interested in risking my health and life because some guy whined to The Guardian that there isn't enough mayo. Come on.

The virus mutates, it becomes more infections, and all the milestones have to change. 

I don't call an evolving response to an evolving problem wishy-washiness or lack of clarity. I call that being flexible, which is exactly the right way to be. There is some strain, but the whole world is strained. By comparison, Taiwan is not a festering hellhole due to bad policies (though there have been some, I admit). It's stayed pretty good, due to (mostly) good policies.

So yes, by all means let's push the government to consider allowing home quarantine for the vaccinated at some point in the almost-predictable future. Let's push to allow people who should have the right to be here -- family, workers, students -- to be allowed in. Certainly, let's look at further relief as necessary for the worst-affected sectors. If you're able, take some time off during the week and go use those quiet tourist facilities while they're not crowded. Give the hoteliers and tour operators a bit of domestic custom. I'm looking at some trips I can take myself, now that life in Taiwan is closer to normal again.

But no, it is not time to re-open for international tourists. It's just not. 

Update: Speaking up works - YouBike will allow foreign residents to register

Here's the great thing about Taiwan - when something actually gets done, it happens so efficiently and with such personal care, that it can be astounding. 

Of course, this assumes that something is done properly in the first place, which isn't always the case (see: every English language education initiative the government has ever announced).

But yesterday, YouBike did (mostly) the right thing, and so fast that the news cycle could barely keep up with it. 

After the news broke that YouBike's new insurance scheme wasn't available to foreign residents or tourists, and therefore foreign residents and tourists could not register their EasyCards to use YouBikes normally but would have to go through complicated and expensive processes each time they wanted to rent, we positively tsunamied them (I made a new verb!) with complaints. 

Within a day those of us who complained by e-mail received a reply that they would talk to the Department of Transportation about the issue, and then they actually did so. Now, foreign residents would be able to register their EasyCards to use YouBike on December 24th. (This is quite acceptable; it will surely take time to update the code).

The city government even released a statement acknowledging the volume of complaints:





I honestly believe that in the country I come from, those complaints would have simply been ignored. If a solution came, it would be long after the fact with no clear notification made. (Not that any American cities except New York have remotely acceptable public transportation in the first place, mind you, and even New York's transit smells end-to-end like pee). If you were lucky you might get a form letter in reply that did not actually address your issue in any substantive way.

There are good and bad things to say about the course of events. I'm in a positive "we got stuff done!" in a positive mood, so let's start with the good.

What we've learned from this is that speaking up works. It works!

There were a lot of comments on social media saying we were just "complainers", "first world whiners" or "guests in this country" who should never complain, or that we couldn't possibly get the problem fixed so the only choice was to accept it.

What they didn't realize was that this wasn't whining, it was strategy. The more people make noise, the more likely the problem will get fixed. If even 5% of the people who read this post wrote to the city government, that's still several hundred e-mails they received. 

And we did get the problem fixed, so all those "don't complain, you can't change it" people were simply wrong.

That doesn't mean everything's great because the problem is solved, however.

Tourists still have to go through the more cumbersome process of one-time rentals, which require an NT$2000 deposit on a card which is not refunded for up to 15 days. The process also takes a lot longer, and it's frankly silly that Taipei city encourages tourists to get EasyCards but then doesn't make them useable for YouBikes. The city rolled out YouBikes in part to appeal to tourists, and routinely recommends tourists use them (here's one example, originally published in Taipei magazine. Making rentals annoying and expensive for tourists is self-defeating when all they have to do is add code to the system that opts foreign visitors out of the new insurance scheme that caused this whole mess. 

And, of course, the quick turnaround we got on this issue does highlight "expat privilege" to an extent. I discussed the issue with a few students who said they didn't think of the Taipei city government as particularly responsive, and we may have gotten the problem solved in a day simply because we were foreigners. Not only that, but we were mostly (though not entirely) white "expat" foreigners who tend to get preferential treatment.

To be frank, that almost certainly played a role. Let's not pretend it didn't. 

Which means that, if we can make change by speaking out as a privileged group, maybe we should do that more often, in service of goals that benefit people who are more likely to be ignored by the powers that be.

Finally, there's the fact that this simply should not have been a problem in the first place. I doubt it was active discrimination, but rather that the impact of the new policy on non-citizens was simply not considered. That results in discriminatory impact. Discrimination can exist in impact just as much as intent (if not more so).

To avoid these sorts of issues in the future, the government can't just passively ignore the foreign community and pretend that's the same as 'not discriminating'. It has to actively consider its actions through the lens of understanding that the city it governs has foreign residents, too, and that its tourism strategy should be coherent and synchronized across departments. 

Sorry Kaohsiung, but Barcelona you ain't

The view from the British Consulate at Takao
You're a pretty city, Kaohsiung, and I enjoy visiting you, but you can't justify a tourism tax

So, Big Uncle Dirk Han Kuo-yu is talking about introducing a foreign tourism tax in Kaohsiung. As Taiwan News reported (yes, Taiwan News does report things), the tax would be aimed at foreign tourists, not domestic ones, charging (for example) NT$100/day, typically payable at hotels.

In this way, the plan is modeled on city taxes currently in place in several European cities which are also popular tourist destinations. This year alone, I paid tourism taxes in Lisbon, Porto, Rome and Siena (and may have paid one in Milan; I don't remember.) The taxes in Europe range from €1 (or less) to as much as €3 per day.

With that in mind, Kaohsiung's proposed tax would be at the high end even for major European destinations. Rome, for example, was €3/day. NT$100 is about US$3/day.

I have a few issues with this. I'm not against tourism taxes generally - the infrastructure of many major European cities has to support not only residents but visitors. Despite the adage that "if you want less of something, tax it; if you want more of something, subsidize it", the taxes are low enough that they are unlikely to deter tourists, especially those who've traveled a long way.

That said, such taxes are usually levied in places where tourism is already strong. Dirky-doo wants to 'prioritise tourism' which doesn't seem to be particularly strong in Kaohsiung (some discussion of numbers found below). The effect won't be brushed off as a minor fee, as it generally is in other places where tourism numbers are already massive. It will deter tourists, not promote them. How exactly are these two policies meant to align? Or, perhaps Big Uncle Dirk is full of crap and always has been, and it doesn't matter if his ideas make no sense jointly or severally?

It makes sense that, in addition to bolstering the economy through spending on their visit, that tourists should also contribute directly to the local government for the purpose of maintaining the infrastructure that they themselves strain. How much of this money actually goes to this, however, is not at all clear. For example, this explainer of where Penang's tourist taxes go doesn't look at all as though they do anything useful. I wouldn't want my money going to some committee organizing useless conferences and chartering flights from Wuhan. Some discussions of tourism tax have the revenue going into general government operational funds - also not a strong sell to tourists wondering why they're paying out.

But let's be honest here. It doesn't seem to me that Kaohsiung is a city whose infrastructure is unduly strained by the number of tourists who visit. If anything, tourism numbers there are...okay, but flagging, though the data is a bit outdated here. You can find some more numbers in the various tables here - they're national statistics, not Kaohsiung-specific, and relevant data is spread across several spreadsheets.

But these national numbers for Taiwan can be compared to, say, the number of tourists going to Barcelona, Spain alone (one city - not even all of Spain, let alone all of Europe). Barcelona is a good example as it's a city which is increasingly suffering from a glut of tourists it can't handle, and which locals increasingly don't want to handle. (Barcelona's tourism tax is variable based on the accommodation chosen).

I know you do get tourists, Kaohsiung. But I'm sorry, you are not Barcelona.

Kaohsiung, honey, you don't have massive infrastructure or overcrowding issues the way European cities do. Your public transit system is finally turning a profit (which I'm not even sure public transit needs to do, but isn't a bad thing.) There aren't hordes of foreigners crowding your streets or causing environmental damage. You don't need the money for the same reasons that European cities do.

What's more, I don't really think Kaohsiung has the draws that these other cities do. While its architectural heritage interests me, it's not exactly mind-blowing to your average international visitor. There's no Roman Forum, Sagrada Familia or even Jeronimos Monastery or Sao Jorge castle in Kaohsiung. The city has gotten brighter and lovelier over the years (so Big Uncle Dirk campaigning on it being a dingy old city run into the ground by the DPP is especially offensive to me in how deliberately wrong it is) but it just isn't the sort of wow-bang-sparkle destination that can justify something like a tourism tax.

In fact, it's a really quick way to convince tourists to go to other parts of Taiwan. Most international visitors to Taiwan are Asian, and they don't necessarily have the spending money that tourists to Europe do (the Asians with heaps of cash head west), or if they do, they'll save that for their trip to Rome, not their trip to Kaohsiung.

And, of course, it also leads to a few other questions.

First, how would visitors from China be treated? In the statistical links above, you can see that they are treated separately from other foreign arrivals. Yet they are the biggest group of non-domestic tourists by a very wide margin, so not taxing them would basically invalidate the whole point of the tourism tax to begin with. Dirk is an unabashed unificationist dressed in a populist's clothing and, although I'm speculating here, probably conflates "promoting tourism" with "promoting Chinese tourism", which is apparent given his desire to increase flight connections to China (ignore the dumb headline). I would not at all be surprised if he declared that visitors from China were "domestic" and therefore not subject to the fee.

Second, most other "foreign" visitors to Kaohsiung actually live in other cities in Taiwan, like me, and most visitors overall to the city are domestic (source: see Focus Taiwan link above). Although Big Uncle Dirk says domestic tourists wouldn't be included (which is not the norm in Europe, where all visitors pay as it's essentially a hotel occupancy tax). I have to wonder whether foreign residents, who are technically domestic tourists, would be similarly exempt. I know that if I found out I'd have to pay this tax because I don't look like a domestic tourist...well, see how fast I would not visit Kaohsiung, just on principle (or I'd stay with my friend in Dashe, even though that's a bit far from the city.)

Yes, tourism has a lot of indirect economic benefits; some will say that these are sufficient and it's unnecessary to add a tax on top of what tourists already spend to be in a city. However, these benefits are variable and often have deleterious costs associated with them (same link), are often not much at all if a large number of tourists are on a shoestring budget (say, gap year kids in Thailand or people on cut-rate Chinese group tours). There are also a number of disadvantages including exploitation of local labor and environmental effects, and most tourism dollars appear not to stay in the local economy (ignore the jingoistic headline). This makes sense; for example, in developing countries, labor costs are low relative to what major hotel chains charge for rooms. Most of that money likely goes to the international conglomeration that owns the hotel, not the local economy that the hotel is in, though there may be other economic benefits.

But I don't see how any of it matters for Kaohsiung, a city whose main economic driver is not tourism, and a city which doesn't experience the worst effects of tourism (aside from some slight overcrowding at Shizhiwan and Cijing Island). Why do they need a tourism tax which will drive tourists away, won't be charged to the bulk of tourists because they're domestic, may not be charged to Chinese tourists, and therefore just causes annoyance without much benefit, and arising from no great need?

Go see "Nude" in Kaohsiung - and Taiwan, promote your events better!

Go see Nude!

Last weekend, I had the good fortune to go to Kaohsiung for a few days to take part in a tourism-related conference. That part was interesting, but not something I feel the need to blog about.

Being down there, however, gave me the chance to see one of my oldest and closest friends in Taiwan. Helping to run the family business mean she doesn't have a lot of time to come to Taipei, so we often see each other when I'm able to head down south. For those of you who think I'm a public transit snob who won't grace an old-school Taiwanese scooter with her precious princess bum, I actually had a blast riding around Kaohsiung county (technically 'city' but that was a stupid change and I won't dignify it) and downtown on the back of her scooter. I just won't drive one myself, because I value my life.


 


Anyway, we decided to check out the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Art, which is currently hosting "Nude", an exhibit of works on loan from the Tate Modern in London.

The theme of the exhibit is nudity in modern art, and it discusses (with well-planned wall panels in English and Chinese) the evolution of nudity in art through the late 19th century to the modern era. It includes some stunning - and some head-scratching - cutting-edge modern work along side classics by Matisse, Rodin, Renoir and Picasso.

To be frank, it was just an amazing exhibit. It was fine art of a high calibre which is a real treat in Taiwan, with a smattering of well-known masters but not necessarily focusing only on the big names. It featured Rodin's Kiss, which is one of the great works of Western sculpture. The evening we went, a concert was being planned around it featuring modern works of classical music.

Photographs were not allowed, so you'll have to make do with a shot of the brochure and some postcards I purchased.

A Matisse and a Nevinson

The exhibit runs through October 28 and costs NT$280 (with concessions including a student discount), so you still have time. Go see it!

I mean, I was just in London. I went to the Tate Modern. I didn't get to see stuff this great there!

Here's what keeps nagging me: I had heard that this was taking place through the local grapevine, though it wasn't promoted in any way that made a huge impact on me. I had forgotten that it was still running, and in fact though I wouldn't get to see it as I was away for most of the summer. My local friend had to remind me that it was still an option.

When I got back to my hotel, I searched a bit to see where news of the exhibit could be found by tourists (plenty if information is available in Chinese, and the exhibit seemed to be locally popular, with the museum staying open until 8:30pm that Friday). A few articles from over the summer mentioned it, including the Focus Taiwan one linked above. After that, nothing.

A visitor searching for events in Kaohsiung in September or October (perhaps even August) would have trouble finding out that this exhibit existed, especially if they were a foreign tourist searching in English. The information is there, but it's hard to find for travelers. About to attend a conference on tourism promotion in Taiwan, this struck me as especially strange.

As a traveler in Kaohsiung - although a domestic one, as Taipei is my home - I was keen to see the exhibit, and yet would likely not have thought to go if not for my friend. And I actually had known about it! Imagine a foreign tourist here who hadn't seen any of the local news items featuring it when it opened. They'd have no idea.

Here's an example of what I mean. If you search for events in Kaohsiung, you might come across this website by the Kaohsiung City Government. It's actually a pretty good website in a variety of languages, which is already exceptional for Taiwan (where websites in English are often so terribly-designed, unclear and devoid of real information that they are essentially unusable and, I have to assume, only exist for decorative purposes or so that someone could give their nominally-English-speaking nephew a website development contract).

But if you actually search for events, say, this weekend, this is what you get:

Same thing for no keyword, "art", "museum" and "nude"

Nothing.

Put in some keywords (I tried "museum", "art", "nude" and "tate") - still nothing. A tourist using this site would never have found the sublime exhibit I was lucky to see.

It really seems as though events in Taiwan are either heavily publicized but terrible, or great but not promoted well or consistently.

So, hey, Taiwan. You can do better. You have interesting events that travelers will want to know about. Make sure they do!

Re-learning Taiwan

When you think of tourism in Taiwan - domestic and, to some degree perhaps, international - you probably think of at least a few of these:

- Night markets
- Old streets
- Local crafts (e.g. woodcarving or porcelain)
- Regional foods (e.g. 肉圓 in Zhanghua and mochi in Hualien)
- "Taiwanese" culinary cultural icons (think the toilet restaurant and bubble tea)
- Shopping and eating in Taipei, including the massive ATT4Fun and eslite
- Hiking, cycling etc.
- "Cultural creative parks" like Songshan Tobacco Factory and Huashan
- The National Palace Museum
- Tourist destinations like Jiufen, Alishan, Sun Moon Lake, Tainan, Kenting and Taroko Gorge
- (Maybe) Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall
- Indigenous festivals and dances
- Temple festivals

Some of these are great - Tainan is unimpeachably fantastic, though perhaps growing a bit gentrified or at least on the cusp of it happening - and the outdoor sports are bar-none amazing.

For the rest, though, slowly and steadily most of the pleasure I might have once been able to derive from them has been chipped away over the years as I seek to learn more about Taiwan.

Night markets are still kinda great, but a lot of the "famous" foods are made famous by savvy promotion rather than actual deliciousness, and with the piling on of food scandals over the years, I can never be quite sure that the snacks I'm getting are safe to ingest.

I appreciate the attempt to preserve the architecture of Taiwan's old streets - and some still do a reasonably good job of this (Hukou, Xiluo and Xinpu are still quite nice, and Dihua Street is still on the right side of fun, although I worry the scales will tip). Yet, a number of them have been turned into shopping drags selling touted "local delicacies" and shop after shop of "traditional items" (think old-fashioned kids' toys and wooden massage implements). They're basically all the same, nothing local or special about them.

Those local crafts? Well...I can't say I'll be buying any Taiwanese wood products or returning to Sanyi anytime soon. And Yingge sells some lovely ceramics, but historically was more known for making bricks, not fine vases.


Regional foods? Michael Turton has already covered that minefield:

All over Taiwan, if you say a city name, like Changhua or Hsinchu, people associate a food with it automatically (ba wan and mi fen). Even foreigners know many of these associations. This attitude is common in Taiwan, but it is rare in the rest of the world....

Why? It’s political, of course. In most countries tourism consists of local history and nature. I grew up in Michigan, where we visited the Upper Peninsula and state parks for nature, and local battlefields and forts for history. No one ever suggested that the state’s prodigious cherry production should be its key association. But in Taiwan, the food association functions to keep locals from associating places with their history, and thus, developing associations with local history that in turn would support and build local identities… Hence, in Taiwan, local domestic tourism is not historical tourism, but food tourism.

I'll add to that some ethical issues: I love bluefin tuna, but...well...hmm. Okay maybe not.
All I gotta say about the toilet restaurant is UGH not the toilet restaurant again, and I do like bubble tea but the aforementioned food safety scandals make me a bit wary of it. Also, it's way too easy to weirdly exoticize it as some Mystical Eastern Thing that Asian People do that Civilized Countries Have Just Discovered.

Hehuan Mountain is gorgeous - and not on the list of "famous tourist sites" in Taiwan
(sorry for the low-res photo, I took it years ago and had to gank a low-quality copy from a previous post)

Let's machine-gun through the rest of that list quickly.

Shopping in Taipei? Eslite is a huge international company, not a plucky local chain (and frankly their selection of English-language books tends towards the pedestrian, and they have a weirdly tiny selection of English-language books about Taiwan). Those Xinyi malls? I've been complaining for years that good local street-side restaurants that give Taipei its atmosphere are being gobbled up into one massive East District food court, and I do not like it one bit. For example, Opa Greek Taverna was great. Then it moved to ATT4Fun, and it's kind of terrible. We never go anymore. The Diner was a lovely place in a lane of Dunhua Road with some outdoor seating (there is still one on Rui'an Street but little-to-no outdoor seats). Now it's a big restaurant in a mall. Blech.

Those "cultural and creative parks" are pretty corporatized and rarely house the most innovative artists in Taiwan. Songshan, for example, has a Liuligongfang (or at least it used to - I haven't been in awhile and it may have closed) and is bordered by yet another eslite.

ALL THE STUFF IN THE NATIONAL PALACE MUSEUM COMES FROM CHINA IT'S NOT EVEN TAIWANESE UGH. 

(I mean it's fine to visit if you are interested in Chinese history but don't go there thinking you are going to learn about Taiwan. I generally don't recommend it to visitors who are interested in Taiwan, only those who are primarily interested in China.)

And I don't even think I need to tell you what the problem is with Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall.

Temple festivals? Watch out, it's not always what you think.

And are you really sure you want to go to an indigenous festival where you might not be welcome, to see performances by tribes who have been unfairly historically stereotyped as good at three things: singing, dancing and drinking?

And almost all of the famous tourist destinations listed above have been disfigured by tourist infrastructure, with Sun Moon ****ing Lake being among the most degraded. From one side you can't even see the lake from most parts of the town unless you stay in one of the expensive - and often not very good - hotels ringing it (the good ones are very expensive). Taroko is still beautiful, but marred by controversy and a very ugly cement factory with its management that has very ugly morals. Jiufen has lovely views but is so blighted with tourists that it can be difficult to enjoy these days. 

* * *

So where did that leave me, once I came to these realizations? That everything I liked about Taiwan was a sham? That Taiwan has nothing of interest for tourists? That everything good about Taiwan was invented to keep the country from discovering its real roots?

No.

I was depressed for a time, once it really hit home that so little of what is commonly touted about Taiwan actually embodies Taiwan's strengths, and much of it has been co-opted by forces I'd rather not encourage (like the encroaching uniformity of the old streets and the ghastly tourist infrastructure in scenic spots. I figure themed restaurants aren't hurting anyone). It can be hard to take, learning that things you thought you liked had all of these layers of complexity and undercurrents of problems that make them difficult to keep loving.

I had to tear it all down to build something better - because this country has so much more to offer than sun cakes and Sun Moon Lake. I had to quite literally re-learn Taiwan so I could talk about it for what really makes it great, not just the tourist hype that is so often riddled with problems.

I won't tell people not to go to Taroko or even Alishan (I will generally advise against Sun Moon Lake but if a tourist chooses to go, they might not have an awful time), but I will recommend they go not just to Tainan - god I love that city - but to direct their attention to the national parks, the East Rift Valley, relatively quiet areas of natural beauty like Hehuanshan, Lishan, the Taoyuan grassland/Wangkengtou/Caoling Old Trail part of Yilan, and of course Taiwan's stunning outlying islands. I haven't been to Green Island yet but Matsu, Kinmen, Lanyu Island, Penghu - I love them all. I'll send them to the eastern coast of Pingdong and down to Cape Eluanbi, but have them avoid Kenting itself (there are better beaches anyhow). I'll send them to Lukang, which still has something of a small-town feel, or to explore the smaller towns of Hsinchu county by car. I'll only bring them to Jiufen on a weekday, and if we go I'll insist we hike up to the Japanese shrine above Jinguashi ("yeah you thought Taiwan was Chinese but this ain't Chinese at all"), or approach the town from the Xiaotzukeng Old Trail.

There is so much to see and do in Taiwan - take it from me, someone who's done a lot here, and yet has never actually been to Alishan - that you can have a fantastic time even if you don't go to Sun Moon Lake or buy mochi in Hualien. (Feel free to buy taro cakes in Dajia, just make sure you go to the smaller shops and get them fresh from the oven, stay away from the prepackaged ones which are...fine.)

And it's enjoy the food - just enjoy it for its own sake, eat good stuff where you find it, without buying too much into the "local food as local identity" hype. Some foods really are local - you aren't going to get better milkfish congee than in Kaohsiung, and you can't beat eel noodles or shrimp roll rice in Tainan. You just can't.

I'm still not sure how to promote this Taiwan - the Taiwan I re-learned - to the world. International tourists are more into things like the National Palace Museum than, say, an architectural history of Taipei or learning about Taiwan's vibrant civic engagement, not to mention what Taiwanese history and current political issues have to teach (and warn) the rest of the world. It took years of ripping away beliefs instilled by tourism promotion to see what makes Taiwan worthwhile, a dedication visitors generally don't have (though the number of visitors who come for awhile and end up staying is surprising. We all know that person who'd planned to come for a month and backpack and now lives here full-time, or the one who came to "teach English" [heh] for a year or two and move on who is still here a dozen years later...ahem.)

But now that I know what I've re-learned, I can certainly try.

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.