Taiwan, How I Love Thee...

Let me count the ways:

1. I love that local people stare at foreigners as if we are aliens. Or celebrities. It never gets old. I had forgotten this phenomenon, after blending in everywhere else in the world. I even had one old man follow me round the subway to see what tickets I bought, what train I got on... bless him.
2. I love hearing Chinese. It's a language unlike any other I have ever been surrounded by. I loved being able to "speak" it again, even though - to be fair - what came out was a unique brand of Chinspanglish! (Chinese + Spanglish + English)
3. I love how Taiwan has a endless supply of things that you don't need, but REALLY REALLY want anyway. You can get ANYTHING here. Absolutely anything. It rocks.
4. I love that Taipei is the most convenient, safest and cheapest city I have ever been to in all of my life. Crime DOES NOT EXIST. You can go anywhere, do anything, get anything and it's all accessible. It is an incredibly easy city to live in. The best I have EVER been to, from this perspective.
5. HEELS. I miss wearing high heels. I miss living in a city where you can buy high heels that are sexy and flattering and fabulous and CHEAP. Le sigh.
6. I love the 39 NT stores, the 10NT stores, the 100 NT stores (30NT = 1 US$). You can buy anything and everything and then some. It's a shopaholic's paradise!
7. I love the food in Taiwan. There are some things there that are SO delicious and SO unique: conveyor-belt sushi, beef-noodle soup, bubble-milk-tea, fried dumplings, crispy fried spicy seaweed, and an assortment of things that I wouldn't even know how to describe because I don't ACTUALLY know what's in them. But they taste SO DAMN GOOD!!!
8. I love the randomness of Taiwan! I love the noise and the chaos and the bizarre wonderfulness of it all! I love that on my last morning there, we were woken up and kept awake from 9 a.m for about 4 hours by a crazy parade in the streets, consisting of a cacophony of noises and instruments and drums and fireworks and people performing in outfits of gods, which the main road had been cordoned off for! And I also love the fact that - upon questioning - none of my Taiwanese friends had any clue as to the occasion therefore either!!!

Finally, and obviously, my favourite thing about Taiwan are the EXCEPTIONAL friends that I have there. Friends who are my family. From my girlfriends who put money together and paid for my Bachelorette Party weekend in my old home town, to my darling bestie Victoria who came to pick me up at the airport - wine bottle in hand for the bus-ride home, and who put me up in her glorious little apartment (the "Bunny Hutch") which may well be the coziest and warmest and loveliest little place I've ever been in! To my girl Ness, who prepared an AMAZING 12-course dinner for us all - even down to home-made sorbet, TWO different kinds, no less!!! To all of my friends, men and women, who love me and look after me and make me feel so blessed and so lucky... I love you all SO VERY MUCH.

And of course, as per the heading of this entry...

Taiwan... wo ayi ni. xoxox