Taiwan and Hong Kong


Hong Kong Skyline -
The spaceship of international capitalism has landed!
So i'm feeling a little sour about asia at the moment, cause i got ripped off by a fortune teller last night in Hong Kong at the very end of the famous temple street night market, full of plastic crap (wonderful, amazing plastic crap mind you), msg, smoke, noise and hectic rushing crowds. The wind was blowing her tent around her, and i thought why not? $70 later and the little i'd learned was basically summed up by the idea that i'll have good luck after the chinese new year in february. Great. As i was leaving, an aging prostitute balancing on stilts of high heels, deftly stepped across the prostrate beggar with one massive tumerous leg to try and capture my attention. Suddenly i do feel lucky after all...

Actually Asia, or at least the few parts of it that i saw in this trip, have captured my imagination in a unique way. While not always inspiring, Kaohsiung was a smoggy, dirty, beery paradise of not Melbourne (it was more like the Geelong of Taiwan). I realised that traveling can be boring, but that the more you learn about a country, the more interesting it is. The apparent love of the Taiwanese for painted moulded concrete in the shape of bamboo, wooden logs, or even fence posts, can thus be excused by their turbulent history.

Concrete Tiger, Plaster Dragon

Taiwan has been consecutively colonised by almost everyone who's anyone, which naturally makes it the place to be seen. Occupied by the indigenous tribes of polynesian origin, first came the Portuguese (who named it Formosa, or "beautiful island"), then the Spanish, then fought out between the Dutch and China, who made it the traditional retreat for failed coup leaders (more on this later), successfully passed to China for a few dynasties, then taken rudely by Japan, ceded under duress after World War Two to China again, then used as the retreat position for the Chinese Nationalists after the Civil War and the rise of Mao Ze Tung and Communism. Governed for 40 years under brutal martial law by above concrete loving nationalists, then add in a sprinkle of democracy and of course quickly followed by it's ideological adversary intense industrialisation. Stir and serve under grey sky.

The people of course were fantastic, if a little surprised to see a very white man with a funny punk haircut and bad tattoos getting changed on the train on the way to the airport/gig/tourist monument. Actually one of the interesting points for me was appearing for the first time as a total stranger within a foreign culture. As i was passing through Hong Kong i think that i got a better picture of the true multiculturalism that international capitalism creates. In Taiwan however, the white people are spread thin on the ground. So considering the trip I'm planning next year, the amount of attention i received was good practice for being the odd one out.

Funnily though that was mostly in the city. As we headed out into the country on a hired motorcycle after our gig had finished, the attention curiously diminished. Or so i thought, until my travelling companion helpfully pointed out that the locals were merely being more polite and waiting until we had passed before turning to stare. Lovely of them really. The country was an interesting mix of the ever present concrete, well signed destinations, and seriously tropical jungle beset by monsoons and typhoons and ordinary hoons destroying the roads and ripping great scars of life out of the forest. Roads would often suddenly slim down to half a lane shared between the motorcycle and truck - but what good roads they were! Plus we got to ruthlessly flog the shit of a sturdy chinese 125cc hire bike. Which surprisingly loved it - we weren't able to break it no matter how hard i tried. The future is SYM 125cc's everybody..

Vroooom!


The one thing that really unsettled me as a novice traveller in Asia was the constant pull of the desire to consume. Given such strong exchange rates, and the presence of locally made gaubles and baubles, dumplings, whatsists and plastic things, it was impossible to avoid the insistent though of "what can i spend money on?" "Should i eat, buy some new shoes or get that massage chair made entirely out of recycled flouro plastic?

Whatever the cost, the adventure of new places, new people and the road rules was thrilling and occasionally dangerous. The best mix i've always thought..

Till next time,
SKELTON



update: here's some more photos!
This Police officer gave us a guided tour of the mountains around Maolin in southern Taiwan after i asked him for help. Thats my bro Danielle on the right. We're standing on a suspension bridge over a gorge thats about 200 metres high and is used as shortcut for local motorcyclists. Ha!

This is what Sean the Saw will look like in 40 years...

Number One! Election time in Taiwan and everyone counts - even me!





Shiny birds made out of paper!



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