Travel Blog

It is said that sunshine is the best disinfectant.  Today I bear witness and present evidence to the fact.  I’ve been living in Kaohsiung for over a year and a half now.  I woke up today to an unbearable emotional state of being, commonly referred to as "waking up on the wrong side of the bed".  I call in sick.

After a morning of self-inflicted internal mental and emotional audit, and countless inquisitioning of the divine for possible transcendental root causes, I fail and decide to seek inner peace outside.  Luckily it was a clear breezy Spring day here in Kaohsiung.  In flip flop sandals, thai cotton pants, and T-shirt proclaiming "Pulchritudinous", I set off on a walk-about to find peace.  Noon.

I walked along the Love River by my house down to the harbor.  The Love River has been beautified over the past 5 years, with grass and trees planted along the river front.  A multitude of cafes sprung up to match.

No peace at the Love River.

I turn into DaRen Street, where just 2 blocks off the river, stands the Tao/Buddhist temple at which my family had been praying for over 50 years.  I stopped in to offer incense and prayed for inner peace. 

No peace at the temple.

I stopped across the street at a food stall that I religiously lunch after prayer.  Yummy steamed pork meatballs. 

No peace with meatballs.

Just 2 blocks further stood my elementary school.  I walked by and reminisced the blue shorts and white shirts whith my name and second grade ID stitched thereon. 

No peace with memories of dodgeball.

A 20 minute walk took me through Kaohsiung Fisherman’s Wharf to the boat docks of Gushan.  A 30 cent ferry ride across the harbor to the island of Cijin, brought me to a place a world away.  A 5 minute walk from the ferry landing across the narrow island and I find myself on a volcanic grey sanded beach.  I took a deep breath at the site of the horizon, peppered with cargo ships.

No peace in the horizon.

I sat under shading in deep introspection on an abandoned bamboo fishing boat, and futilly reviewed aspects from my life from every possible perspective.  The age old trick of distraction with a magazine enforced further futility.  I fell asleep to the sound of the waves for an hour.

No peace in the nap.

I woke to the sound of a 5 year old pigtailed girl playing with rocks and a Coca Cola bottle.  How easily children amuse themselves with just rocks and a Coke bottle!  Not feeling any lighter, I walk towards the hill at the end of the island.  Perched on this hill is an old Ching Dynasty cannon fort dating back to the 17th Century.  Through a series of boardwalks and trails, I findmyself circling upwards, past a lighthouse to the fort. 

It was 5pm, and the sun was setting.  There was a light breeze on my face.  I found a perfect corner bulwark with a near 270 degree view of the horizon, and watched the sun set over an hour.  Through the shades of purple and orange, my thoughts transformed from chaotic emotional distortion to calm and clarity.  Accompanied by deep breaths and a mental replay of Porcelain by Moby, I received one of the most amazing gifts from mother nature; a gift we oft take for granted.

We live in an ever-urbanized environment.  The digitization of our lives make us turn more inwards.  This unnatural course accumulates unknown tensions that clandestinely permeate our emotional wellbeing.  Stop for a moment and hear the call of nature.  If you happen to feel an unexplicable downturn in emotional wellbeing, I suggest paying a visit to our old friend, the Sunset. 

I found peace today.

My fellow Kaohsiungese friend, Pieter Vorster, inspired me to drive to YanShuei for the local version of the lantern festival.  The Lantern Festival occurs a few weeks after Chinese New Year, and under normal circumstances is painted with the imagery of a sea of children running along public grounds with handheld lanterns lit by tea candles.  Contrastingly in YanShuei, the town celebrates the worship of the war gods with an open invitation to fire off as many bottle rockets as possible …. at the attendees. 

The ceremony: there are about 8 temples in YanShuei, each housing the various gods from polydeist Taoism.  During this festival, carriages with pro wrestling-like metal cages encases the traveling god, and is taken to each of the other temples in town for "a visit".  Each temple honors each visiting god with a pyromaniacal display of fireworks.  A typical set up is a shelf 5 foot in height, lined with rockets side by side on multiple shelves pointed outwards on all four sides.  Attendees rush up and surround the rocket tower with only but a few feet of distance and POW!  Fireworks are shot simultaneously from the center of the tower into the sky and chains of firecrackers are lit under our feet.

Five of us, wearing standard protective gear including a full motorcycle helmet, gloves, heavy jacket and pants, and a towel wrapped around our necks are allowed to charge with thousands of other attendees dressed in the same fashion, at walls of bottle rockets fired directly at us.  The biggest one featured a wall of 250,000 rockets fired into the crowd underneath a waterfall of sparklers.  Pieter and I ran in front of a god carriage as 3 chains of firecrackers went off under our feet.  The carriage pushed through the crowd at high speed and flattened 10 people.  We crawled out from under with firecrackers bursting around us.  The war god givith no mercy. 

YanShuei for the evening looked like Sarajevo under seige.  Across the horizon hundreds of fireworks go up simultaneously like anti-aircraft guns.  The constant bursts of explosives surrounding us rang in our ears until the next day.  For those who wore synthetic jackets, the rockets melted holes to mark scars of war. 

The siege began at 630p and ended at 2am.  8+ hours in total.  Spain may having the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona.  New Orleans may have Mardi Gras.  Only in Taiwan can one charge at 250,000 bottle rockets.  One fond tip: follow the fire engines because you know something big is going to explode.  YanShuei 2007 is an open invitation for those tempted, or just plain crazy, like us. 

Fried Chicken.  I love fried chicken.  My vanity hates fried chicken.  Somewhere in this seemingly complex structure that I have called a brain, fried chicken creates a perfectly harmonious concoction of biochemical love and hate that zeros in on my pleasure sensors like pubescent boys to cheerleading uniforms.

Fried chicken is the epitome of guilty pleasure.  Tastes SO good.  Feels SO guilty.  It led me to ponder, why is it that most everything on earth that feels or tastes fantastic, is undoubtedly bad for us?  To name a few just from the letter "B": butter, bacon, Belgian chocolate, beer, bad boys a la James Bond, and bitchy girls a la Paris Hilton.  Definitely good for the soul.  Definitely bad for reality.  I offer no solutions, but plant a seed of curiosity that perhaps will lead you to a personal answer.

Let’s talk about food first.  If you were born in the middle of the rain forest, completely unaffected by what we know as society now, and your parents fed you creme de beetledung since birth and told you that it tastes good.  Would you know the difference?  Would your cerebral wirings convince you that creme de beetledung was "the shit" in culinary delights?  Pardon the slang and pun, in that order.

Now let’s talk about bad boys and bad girls.  You know the type.  Those that make you activate your long lost 8th grade crush tingles or tie up your stomach in knots followed by temprary aphrasia.  These people can make botany the most exciting date activity you’ve ever done.  They drive you made with their brash or abrasive personalities.  They ignore you, abuse you, douse your brain ina vat of their bad temper, and it only makes you want them more.  It feels good to be angry at them.  It feels good to love them. 

Dangerous men and provocative women are stimulating and unpredictable.  We’ve all been there before, and in fact, some of you may be there now.  If you’ve been there, take a minute to reminisce the soulfulness of diving in without care.  If you’re in it now, enjoy it while it lasts.  Some theorize that you don’t cherish something easily gained.  Therefore we aim to tame.  Taming a tough personality produces an overwhelming sense of accomplishment the likes of summiting a mountain.  Another likely theory is that going out with such a person is but a voyeuristic peek into a life otherwise lived.

The fact of the matter is that it is but another trial in life.  Live it.  We were meant to stir the emotional brew once in a while.  Feel the anger.  Feel the lust.  Feel the guilt.  Whatever truth is locked in the depths of our desires, we can only fully decode our souls by process of elimination.  Try being a dangerous man or a provocative woman.  If you don’t have the fortitude for the said experiment, you can always resort to the traditional large bucket of fried chicken.