August 3, 2012

August 3rd, 2012

It's a Friday night and we relaxed today after 5 days on the road. Betty left last Friday for work, so we decided to hit the highway to see what we could see. Plan was to leave Sunday AM and head for the east coast. We were warned by our cousin Sharon, who lives here...more about her another day, that a Typhoon was developing and headed our way, but with the storm being a couple days out, decided to go for it anyway. The roads here are not what I've grown accoustomed to. The entire spine of the west coast is mountainous...not terribly high in altitude, but super steep, so the highway to the coast is windy and loaded with looonnng tunnels...the longest being about 8 miles.. Fun for some I suppose, but in a country known for frequent earthquakes, kinda creepy for a guy that has a mild phobia of being trapped in colapsed structures. With traffic, took about an hour and a half to hit the northern part of the east coast. Sidenote...Google Maps is pretty incredible. We put our destination into it in English, finds the spot on the map, plots out the directions (usually with a couple of alternative routes), gives distance and time to destination (which yours truly beat everytime), and then follows you as you go so if you veer of course, you'll know it right away. And it's totally free! Some of you are probably going, "duh where have you been' at this point, but have never had a need for directions like this before and am flat out in love with this thing. Sidenote II...Paul was in charge of the maps and was riding shotgun for the trip. Have to hand it to the kid, by the middle of day one, he was filling his role admirably. Looking for turns up ahead, DJing the CD player, getting food and drink ready, and most importantly, scanning the Google maps for the next 7-11. All you got to do is type in 7-11 into the maps and it'll show you where the next one is, and finding the next 7-11 is a critical part of life here. Sidenote III... 7-11 pretty much is the most important store in Taiwan. It is going to be hard to convey how essential and how many of them there are, but I've been in one at least twice daily since getting here. Sure, you can you get a Coke slurpee and a pack of smokes, but you can also pay almost any utlility bill (the cable bill comes with a UPC code, take it to 7-E where they scan and you pay it there), have packages delivered for pick-up, and buy a wide variety of food. I'll take some snaps later, but in addition to the hot dogs on the metal rollers (yes they do have them and no, have still never eaten one), but you can grab a variety of boxed lunches, hot (pork) buns, or this soup, where you can add in tofu, meat and a number of other snacks that I have yet to try (or know what they are). 7-11's are truly everywhere you look, we have three within 3 blocks of our place. And they all have (clean) bathrooms, albeit with squat pots. Which brings us to... Sidenote IV...the squat pot. If you know what they are and have used them before (and are not averse to a potty talk), please contact me offline as I need some help with the mechanics of them. I'd say it's 50/50 squat pot to "western" toilet, and so far, the Imbrogulio boys have managed to avoid using one, but poor Carolyn got indoctrinated in their use with no guidance at a 7-11 somewhere in no-wheresville. The look on her face coming out of the bathroom was classic...horror, disgust and a little bit humor. We all blamed mom for not having provided a proper tutorial. Anyway, we had to then traverse a windy road for another couple hundred kilometers to get to the east coast proper...took a good 3.5 hours. The road was good, one lane in each direction, but brutally twisty. Once you get stuck behind a truck or scooter, getting around them takes a lot of nerve as you can't see farther than the next bend, which came quick. Was a beautiful day, but poor Paul doesn't do well in the car and was feelin' it. I sorta knew it was going to be like that, but was far hairier and longer than I imagined. We hit the coast and decided to stop for the night. We (Google maps) found a hotel a few miles inland called Promised Land Resort and Lagoon. Was the only "hotel" for hours in any direction that wasn't a B&B, and we were interested in a pool at that point, so the decision was made. Checked in, changed into our swimming togs and made a bee-line for the pool. As soon as we hit the water, the lifeguards came running at us. Apparently, going into public swimming pools here without a bathing cap is verbotten. From my experience with the Chinese girls in the family, while their hair is luxurious, they lose it in drain clogging clumps. I've found Betty's hair everywhere...including the freezer...so our best guess was that to save their pools filtration systems, they require all people to wear caps. I looked it up when we got back and the internet indicattes this is the only country on earth with that requirement. Joke is on them, I have hair longer on other parts of my body than I do on my head. More later