Dear reader,

I recently went on a trip to East Asia, so here are some highlights for your perusal:

Taipei, Taiwan

Taipei is an urban jungle. It is hot but you can hide from the heat in the pervasive covered sidewalks, and appreciate the sprouts of green on the roofs and sides of buildings.

It is also impressively timely. Train arrivals are estimated in seconds, they can give 90 second pedestrian crossing timings, and the traffic lights for cars also give a countdown (if you zoom in, it says ‘32’).

This view at a tea house in Jiufen makes me want to draw/paint; there is something endearing and calming about the constrained pockets of movement amongst wide swaths of stillness, of people socializing and having tea, a bus stop where people sit and automotives drive by, and a narrow street where pedestrians meander their way to their next destination.

Food in Taiwan was solid asian food, but not the most memorable. The best food we had in Taiwan was this beef noodle soup that suspiciously preluded food poisoning in two of our five-person party. Besides that, I was easily appeased by the cheap ice cream (often <$1), especially how it was cheap even near the touristy places.

A suggestion from the Geopark:

Guangzhou, China

Whereas Taiwan was similar to Japan in its politeness, this is one of the first signs I saw in Hong Kong. I was somewhat relieved, because it seemed to imply that there is a norm of jaywalking.

We took the high speed train from Hong Kong to Guangzhou. The landscape is grey (mostly the sky actually) and unusual.

Nearby is Baiyun Mountain.

I am not as fond of the culture – smoking is common, people try to enter subway trains before letting people exit; no one stands to the right of the escalator; partly because no one really tries to walk up the escalator; maybe related to people walking slow and rather lethargically. It is subtlely depressing.

It is partially redeemed by its abundance of unusually cute cats.

And some humble wisdom that I agree with:

Hong Kong, ???

Hong Kong is a 3D city, with altitude changes and visible hills/mountains scenery like SF, but even more so than SF with its pedestrian overpasses and the proximity of its mountains.

..and also the proliferate number of many-storied apartments. Can you distinguish the luxury 40-story apartments?

The food was more to my taste, especially with the wonton mein and red bean ice.

It was solidly my favorite city.

And tada, that was two weeks of my life!

Commercial flights dependably amaze me.

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…this is what a travel log is supposed to be like, right? How did I do?

‘Wow, such insightful, valuable observations!’, you might kindly say, as a supportive, dear reader.

Thank you, unnecessarily kind of you, etc – but I have a confession to make: I started this blog to have aspirationally useful dissections/analyses about things, but alas, this seems to moonlight as a venting blog from time to time. I guess, I am compelled to put out on the public internet that usual of notions of fun can very much suck, and perhaps some naive traveler will stumble across this blog and derive some amusement from how pathetically difficult I found this (e.g. I did not go to Baiyun Mountain myself; that is a pic from wikipedia and that day, I took a break by sitting at McDonald’s and reading a book instead). Yes, these observtions are very valuable, valuable in the sense that it was expensive to obtain them – I am pitifully still recovering from this trip more than a week later.

‘Wasn’t this a vacation?’, asks the now confused reader.

I like that Europeans make a distinction between a holiday and a vacation – a holiday is to relax, and a vacation is to explore. I noticed that I had directed surprisingly little attention to this international trip before going, and I belatedly realized it was partly because there was some trepidation – I’m pleased to report that my intution has matured over the years and was onto something. But it had conveniently forgotten the details of what family vacations have been like, so I was treated to nostalgic feelings of antsy-ness and an urge to detach from the group. And while it is freshly salient on my mind, let me note for my forgetful future self that it was a mildly excruciating two weeks: I am not sufficiently entertained by nature, nor logistics, I am not a foodie, and staccato ‘conversations’ are draining and demoralizing. Add tediously slow walking on top of that.

I find that I eventually become quite frazzled with the insufficient engagement/stimulation, with the tldr; being that I feel like absolutely awful company with the wrong people.

I think it is common to hate family vacations, but why I’m complaining here is because my family are nice and reasonable people. I’m complaining because I don’t quite understand why this particular discrepancy exists – why is this not enough for me when it seems to be enough for most people? Somehow, I’m bad at things that seem like they’re suppose to be easy to enjoy: hiking, watching movies, going out to eat, etc. Why do I not understand? What am I missing?

The only practical takeaway I have for now is to be more particular about the company I’m with. Which I’m usually salient of. So maybe, to have better escape plans.