Rotary Friendship Exchange - Rotary District 5960

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Taiwan trip 2/3/12 The plane ride, yesterday, was nothing short of miserably long and uncomfortable. I suppose that is the best you can expect if you travel coach for more than 30 hours straight. That includes the boring layovers at each of 3 airports. The longest flight was 12 to 14 hours. I kind of lost track of the exact time but it was on that order for sure. I watched 3 movies and slept a lot. It was still very boring and tiring. The return trip was not much different but at least I could think about all the wonderful things that I had seen and the great people I met. I am getting ahead of my self now so let me jump back to the first day in Taipei, Taiwan. Our Rotary Friendship Exchange team arrived on different days and at different times. Five of us arrived, late evening, on the 2/1/12. One couple arrived in the morning of 2/1/12. One couple arrived 2/3/12. The last person arrived on 2/5/12. When we arrived, there were several Rotarians waiting for us outside customs. One of them offered to exchange money if we wanted. The exchange rate was 29 point something when I checked before leaving home but the Rotarian offered to exchange at 30 New Taiwan Dollars (NTD) for each US Dollar (USD). I exchanged money there in the airport. Our hosts presented us with a lanyard and badge (same badge on both sides so if it flipped, it did not matter). The greeters helped us with our bags and we split up to go with our host family. My host family took me to their home. They showed me my quarters, we talked for a little while and then we went to bed. My quarters were much better than I have at home. Our hosts were very fluent in English. We had 3 people in our team that spoke a language that the Taiwan people general understood and were able to communicate with those Taiwan people that were not comfortable with English. Communication was very easy for all of us. If we talked to someone that was struggling with English, either a host or one of our team members helped out with translation. That was great because I have trouble with English let alone another language. I awoke before 7am and my hosts were up and about the same time. They called me to come get breakfast. I had no idea what was typical for breakfast. Apparently, it is common to have a 5-course breakfast. We had tea, a bowl of soap, some fruit, some fruit juice, 2 eggs and bacon, plus assorted breads. I don’t eat that much at home. The host told me they like to eat a hearty meal in the morning. I told them that while I am staying could I please just have some oatmeal, fruit, bread and tea. That was fine with them but Ali (my host) still ate the big meal. He particularly liked eggs. For the rest of the visit in Taiwan, my hosts kept saying “how can he be so big because he eats so little?” I think the kind of food makes the difference. I ate lots but actually lost 12 pounds during my 2-week visit. I ate more vegetables and seafood than I would typically eat in a year at home. Well, maybe not quite that much but certainly a big difference. A typical lunch was a box lunch but even that had a lot of food in it. It contained lots of vegetables, some fruit and a small portion of some kind of meat. We were wined and dined almost every evening. We attended 3 very fancy dinners. The District Governor hosted one dinner in New Taipei with an honored guest that was Taiwan’s member of the International Rotary Fund Board of Trustees. A Rotary Club in Yilan hosted the second and multiple clubs from Hualien hosted the third dinner. Each was a 10 coarse meal. I have not seen such a spread anywhere in my life. It looked like smorgasbord only it was laid out on a large lazy susan in the center of our table so everyone at the table could help themselves to whatever they wanted. It was amazing that I ate and ate and never seemed to get full. There were a few things that I did not like but for the most part, everything was delicious. The food was not spicy at all. I was told when there was a spicy dish or if one of the small dishes with seasoning sauce was spicy and I avoided them. I now know that squid and octopus won’t be on my list of things to eat again. I found seaweed to be much like spinach which I like a lot. I enjoyed the soups. Some soup looked like bullion based. Other soup looked chowder based. I enjoyed the sea cucumbers. The table had elaborate presentations of many different foods. All meals, regardless of content, typically included red wine. The teacups (much smaller compared to our cups) and wineglasses were replenished as soon as they got low. Every meal included many toasts. I quickly realized that I better just sip on each toast to remain sober. One of my favorites was what they called a miniature lobster. I am not very fond of lobster but this one was a bit bigger than a shrimp and tasted great. Most of our team chose to use chopsticks for all meals. We were offered silverware at some meals but most of us chose not to use them. Much of the traveling we did, to go from one interesting place to another, was done with a tour bus that our RFE Team hired. This action was planned before the trip started. Our hosts paid for all the transportation, some meals and kept track of the expenses for us so we could refund the host before we left Taiwan. Two weeks of shuttling around in the tour bus, the subway for the trip northeast of Taipei and a public bus took us to East Coast of Taiwan. The expenses also included the tour bus along the East Coast, the train ride back to Taipei and a few box lunches came to a total of $240 USD per person. I could not believe how Page 2
inexpensive it was. We got dropped off at the entrance to each place and picked up at the same place when we were ready to leave. While I am talking about expenses, let me tell you what the trip cost in total. I added up all of my pre-trip expenses (shirts, badges, pins, host gifts, plane fare etc) and all the cash spent on things I wanted to bring back home with me came to a total of less than $3,000. I ended up buying a suitcase (bigger than a carry-on) to hold all the things I brought back. We saw many things that could probably be seen on the Internet but seeing them in person and talking to the people at these places gave me memories that will always be accessible whenever I choose to think about them. We got up around 7am, kept busy most days until 9 or 10pm when we got back to our temporary homes. Temple on Old Street of Saxia 2/3/12 The first sight we went to see was a Temple and the Old Street of Saxia. The mayor of the city was visiting the temple when we toured and as we left, one of our hosts told us that the mayor would like a picture with our group. That was fine with us so we got together and several media photographers started snapping pictures. We asked if they would take some pictures with our camera and they graciously agreed. As you can see, they took a great picture. Although there was obviously lots of gold and other precious items inside the temple, there was no sign of special security. People came and went as they pleased. It was very crowded most of the time. The people in the area during our photo shoot seemed to be busy with what they were doing and did not pay much attention to our presence. Page 3
Page 1: Rotary Friendship Exchange “Trip
Page 5 and 6: Pottery making 2/3/12 We learned ea
Page 7 and 8: First host home 2/4/12 Our first si
Page 9 and 10: We noticed a beautiful building on
Page 11 and 12: Next we visited the S. Y. S. Memori
Page 13 and 14: Again, the day ended late and we we
Page 15 and 16: We were about to get on our tour bu
Page 17 and 18: I got tired and sat down behind the
Page 19 and 20: After breakfast, we went to visit m
Page 21 and 22: After dinner, we returned to our ho
Page 23 and 24: Some time during the day, I took a
Page 25 and 26: We stopped at a place that makes cl
Page 27 and 28: We ate lunch and then began our tra
Page 29 and 30: Joint Hualien club meeting 2/9/12 W
Page 31 and 32: Stone and Resource Industry R&D Cen
Page 33 and 34: We went to the B&B to rest and chan
Page 35 and 36: National Forest building display 2/
Page 37 and 38: Buildings at the high end of the go
Page 39 and 40: Intentionally blank Page 39

Rotary Friendship Exchange - Rotary District 5960

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?