Taiwan Day Four: Zipper in the front/Say that in French

Taiwan Day 4 began innocently enough. A long (3+ hours) bus ride to a surfy-ish beach town called Kenting. En route, we passed through Heng Chun, a village of witchery and a giant banjo. In Kenting, we alight and eat at a Thai/Myanmarian restaurant. Post meal, let the chaos ensue.

Our primary goal in Kenting was to snorkel. We walked along the road, passing "Hotel California," dudes, and babes.
We managed to overcome some major language barriers ("Nar?!" doesn't help so much when attempting to rent snorkeling gear) and successfully purchased a snorkeling experience.

Ah, but the rub.

We had no means of transporting ourselves to the actual snorkeling location. If only a random stranger with lace windows and fake artillery would have collected us that morning. Enter Monday Hero. He rents mopeds to dudes and babes. However, he will only rent to dudes and babes with international drivers' licenses. For whatever reason, he took it upon himself to ensure our snorkeling happiness and called a taxi for us.

At the snorkeling place, we changed into our gear and took another weird gray taxi bus with two new friends to the shore.

Astounding experience. Everyone has seen photos and underwater footage, but it is nothing--absolutely nothing--like seeing it in real life. Maybe part of it is the element of surprise. A massive school of fish suddenly streamed out of a hole in a coral boulder and swam directly under me. A snake-like eel thing (my bio friends are impressed with my terminology, I'm sure)--anyway, the eel thing wove itself around corals, plants, and my leg. Dozens of varieties of fish swam, fought, hid, ate and chased each other in the aquatic metropolis as I floated above it, trying not to inadvertently touch anything. I could have stayed out there for hours, but apparently it was cold and the guide made us go back after only 45 minutes.
Several times, I strayed too far from the pack and had to be beckoned to return to the fold. The waves sometimes crashed over my head and into my respiration tube. This solidified for me, in a very real and tangible way, what I have always known cerebrally: humans should not ever drink seawater. Coleridge said it best,
"Water, water every where,/And all the boards did shrink;/Water, water every where,/Nor any drop to drink." I used to think that Mariner was a bit of a wuss. I can feel his pain a bit more accurately now--same as Pi. Not that I've ever killed an albatross or shared a boat with a tiger--I can identify only with the water part.

Okay, so that was an unnecessary literary tangent to express that drinking saltwater sucks.

Upon our arrival on shore, they threw us in a big red van with about 15 new friends. After a mere two minutes, they plucked us from the red van and told us to get in the gray van (people telling us to get into gray vehicles would be a recurring theme if someone were to write an analytical paper about our trip. I haven't unpacked that metaphor yet, but I'm sure someone will). They took us back to the snorkeling place so we could shower with hoses, change clothes, and short circuit several hair dryers.
Our original gray van was to collect us at 5:30pm, but it was held up in traffic, so we had to attempt to attract a ride the old-fashioned way:

(All photos stolen from Meaghan)
It worked, and they sent a different gray van with several new friends inside: 5 Chinese people and 2 ridiculously good-looking French men. The strikingly handsome French men were also heading back to Taipei via the High Speed Rail. We ended up in the same car, but parted ways in Taipei as we ventured to our hostel of the evening. The "main guy" at the hostel was Brad from Texas. He's an architect and a fascinating personage. He was just in Hong Kong last week on one of those I-Need-To-Leave-Taiwan-To-Renew-My-Visa trips. Meaghan and I met up with him to show off our city.

To round out this whole expedition--we got up the next morning, ate breakfast with a secretive Australian guy (later learned he does what, McG--mail-order brides?) and went directly to the airport.

Crazy trip...next up: Beijing!! Going next weekend with fellow American and theatre supporter extraordinaire, David.

In case anyone is wondering, I am still working. A lot. We have many shows all the time. Before I hit the Jing, I'm hoping, if I'm not too overwhelmed with life, to blog about "The Odd Couple" and my epic meeting of Junot Diaz. And the shenanigans in my apartment--anyone need sequins? All this and more, oh so much more.