Ben Post #6
Whelp. How about that.
Currently sitting in LAX. It is 6:09am, Tanna is asleep on the floor, and a lady already told me that I don’t know how to read since being in the US.
Nice to see you too!
Anyways, last post was written on Jan 25th, two months ago. So, a lot to cover.
First things first — Tanna turned her hair gray. Bold move, yes, I know, but she’s pulling it off, per the usual.
We were still in Ha Giang, and it was Tet time. We had just been working 12 hour days for 6 days straight ending with some not so helpful late night chicken feet, corn wine, and cheap beer sessions. They were legendary.
Our manager was Josh. Solid dude. He was the leader of the beverage intake.
Another accomplice was Nicole, our only guest for three days. Absolute Gem. Why for three days was she at a hotel in the middle of nowhere? Well, motorbike riding did not turn out to be her thing at the time, and all the busses stopped running because it was Tet in Vietnam. So, Nicole and her Choco pies (local treat she frequented) came along on many of our adventures.
Then, Tanna gave me a haircut. That was fun, and it has actually turned out quite well. Grandma P approved. A friend remarked I looked “too healthy now,” which took as a great compliment and quickly put that to bed.
We then went BACK on to the Ha Giang Loop. Only difference this time is that it was raining. Which was slightly uncomfortable but we had fun, as we do.
After a few more days of fun, we then left our positions as Guest Relations Coordinators at Bong hostel in Ha Giang Vietnam. Not without some last jolly times with out coworkers Ann and Trung
So, we headed back to Hanoi and met up with Phil and MArles! Wowza’s that was a fun time. We are super thankful they came amidst growing Corona concerns.
We initially hung out in Ha Noi for a few days, exploring the city, and helping Marles answer all her questions, including the legendary “What are they doing?!?!?!” (People were eating on the little stool — a fair question!)
After that, off the Ha Long Bay for a little nature exploration.
From Hanoi, we jetted off to the caves while staying at the Vin Pearl.
And we made it happen! Marles had wanted to go to the caves for months and we did it!
We also go slightly more than she bargained for — as we ended up swimming in a cave with bats flying around — in the dark! Sheeeesh!
From Dong Hoi (where the caves were) we took a train down to Hoi An. Our sweet sweet hoi an.
Kind a crazy to see the difference between pre-corona and mid-corona Hoi An. NOT a lot of people, but many things to do — and so much shopping to be had!
After many fine days of exploration throughout the fine country of Vietnam, many many lessons in haggling, the acquisition of enough bags to outfit a small battalion, and our fair share of tigers, we bid adieu to Phil and Marles for their return back to the old US of A. It was sad to see them go as we knew at that time that we wouldn’t be seeing family for a while like we had been every few weeks for 2–3 months. Again, very thankful that we had that time with them — it was fantastic!
After that time, we had some time to spend in the wonderful city of Hanoi. We spent those days working and enjoying some time with the Vietnamese People.
We then went to the Sapa region to climb Mount Fansipan. This mountain is the tallest in SE Asia. Our journey took 7 hours to hike up and then….we took the cable car down. Were very tired once we got up there.
After Fansipan, we had a few more days to in Hanoi before heading to Taiwan.
Now, at this point, our original plan started coming apart. We were going to go to South Korea and Japan after Taiwan, but with the corona virus things changed.
This first change was that our flight from Taipei to Busan South Korea was cancelled. From there, things generally deteriorated and Japan was cancelled as well.
Upon arriving in Taipei, Taiwan our first general thought was that this place was so quiet. Just no noise outside besides the traffic in the streets. Compare that to Vietnam which essentially seemed at the time like a College Gameday party every single hour of every day, and this place was quite tame.
While in Taipei for a few days, we did some bee-boppin’ and came across the msot interesting restaurant: The Modern Toilet Museum.
I also got to go fly fishing with a local dude named Ding who I go into more detail on below. Super fun, caught one NFL football sized carp at a stock pond.
Then, two days later, we began what was to be a difficult and rewarding journey bicycling around the whole of Taiwan.
Background on this: totally my idea. Tanna was a trooper and decided to go along with it. Taiwan is home to the bicycle manufacturer Giant Bicycles, and thus they have a big bicycling culture. They completed a route around the whole island in 2017 and it is now a rite of passage of sorts for the Taiwanese people to cycle (or walk!) all the way around the island.
Taking off on day 1, we were expecting a difficult ride. The schedule was 100km ride (62 miles), and had a difficulty rating of 4/6 stars.
Things went quite well, and we ended the day 8 hours later in the town of Hsinchu. We also spent the next Day in Hsinchu just hanging out and exploring Taiwan and resting our buns as we were pretty beat.
From Hsinchu, we cycled to the larger city of Taichung. Yet another long bike day, we settled in that night and grabbed some dinner and beers with a guy we met named Dan on the ride in. Dan was a Canadian of the utmost friendliness. This friendliness, at times, was a liiiiiiiiitle bit much for dear Tanny, but we edned up having fun with the man and in general were happy to see another Western face to talk to.
From Taichung, we headed to Chiayi. 2/6 day, which was a fun day. We stopped by the Rainbow village first about an hour in to the ride. I also broke my second iPhone that day (fun!) when it fell off the front phone holder on my phone and I ran it right over. I am now the proud owner of two phones that are completely spider webbed (the first being another fall taken 6 weeks earlier when we had quite the spill on some motorbike sin Ha Giang.).
WE also spent the night in the finely named “Ever Delightful Business Hotel.” Delightful it was.
Most unique thing that happened at the EDBH was that upon checking in they said “We have to take your temperature as you are a foreigner.” So, we complied and got our domes beamed by one of those forehead temperature scanners they are using to monitor who does and does not have the Coronavirus. We passed (few!) and were allowed to stay in the hotel.
The next day we biked from Chiayi to Tainan. This day included some fun / odd / unique Taiwanese sightseeing that included this huge blue shoe (it is a wedding chapel) and the Taiwanese salt mountain.
Side note here — there are a bunch of stray dogs in Asia. They are all over the place, and pretty common to see. We had seen them in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, and Indonesia and had no problems.
For some reason, in Taiwan, the stray dogs are MEAN. IT is like the hyena elephant graveyard in Lion King. Just nasty little scoundrels.
Our main conflict came when we were cycling from the blue shoe to the salt mountain (yes I know this sounds like Alice in Wonderland). We have just finished biking through some salt flats where they make salt, and had seen a bunch of dogs that looked like Scar supporters.
We round the corner on to a flat road (had been on some nasty gravely stuff — thanks google maps), and were biking pretty much in the middle of the road.
After about 5 minutes, we start getting barked at (again) from a large brown dog on our left side.
This one was chained up, so we’re thinking “Ok, this is fine let’s just keep on….”
Out of nowhere the biggest black dog we have seen all week starts sprinting and barking towards Tanna (who is in the front). She speeds off and this monster beast comes looking at me and literally running right at my bike.
He goes to jump and bite me (mouth open, front legs off the ground) and I kicked him straight in the face. Hard. Full quadriceps extension to the jaw.
From there I put the head down and kept biking, in case this guy had the Jaw of Mike Tyson. Luckily, upon looking back he was walking away slightly stunned.
So there you have it and have been warned. Taiwanese dogs are assholes.
Two ways to get them to stop running at you (probably applicable to all dogs):
- You can bark at a dog and if your bark is louder and lower he/she will most likely back off. This happened twice and works.
- You can kick it in the face. Dion’t use your hand right away as if they get one of your fingers that finger is going to be broken.
Did not think I would be blogging on dog defense techniques but hey life is an adventure, and when the times call for it, kick the dog in the face.
Ok, so after we got done kicking dogs, looking at blue shoes, and visiting salt mountains, we arrived in Tainan. Tainan was a wonderful place!
We ended the night by taking down some local brews and BBQ and using the coloring supplies available to draw each other at Dinner. A very fun thing to do it you are ever looking to spice up dinner time.
After Tainan, we biked to Kaohsiung, where we stayed two days. The second biggest city in Taiwan, they had a fun little art area, as well as the “Dome of Light” to which we had a bunch of fun walking around and exploring.
After two days in Khaosiung, we embarked on what was said to be a 2/6 day difficulty. This was an epic falsehood.
We ended up biking 97 KM, the last 30 of which were generally uphill, into the wind, and it was raining.
We had a come to Jesus meeting of sorts when things got extra tough. But, Mrs. Tough Buns ended up finishing the day and we gobbled up a whole mess of the best dumplings we had ever tasted.
The next day was a rest day. What to do on a rest day? Well explore teh local attractions! This included visiting the Deer paradise park and the Taiwanese national aquarium.
The Deer park is pretty sad, as the deer look underfed and just walk around and eat little niblets from the Taiwanese kids. Fun for the kids, but the deer look SAD.
Tan loved it.
The aquarium was really top notch and very cool.
After the aquarium we went to a local brewhouse that we found on google maps. It was quite cool but it opened at 11am and closed at 5:30pm every day. As if to deter people from coming. We likened it to a daycare center that is only open from 10pm — 4am.
We spent the night at the Hechung (which we liked to call “Hedgehog”) night market, which was super fun.
The next day we had the monumental task of biking 115km, half of that over the mountain range that is the center of Taiwan.
The climb up was hard, but manageable. A tough challenge, but we made it.
After hitting the top, we flew down in about 20 minutes. This was very fun but also wild because it took us 3 hours to bike, then just 20 minutes to bike down. From there we made our usual 7-Eleven lunch stop and refueled for what was scheduled as another 3.5 hours of cycling up to our destination, the Zhiben hot springs.
This stretch of road, from 7-Eleven up to Zhiben proved to be the most frustrating thing we have both done on the whole trip. Imagine cycling uphill, in to an oceanic wind, the weather is overcast, and there are semi-trucks 5 feet from you zipping by every 30 seconds.
We made it 40 of 50 km up the hill, before getting stuck in the dark at another (surprise!) 7-Eleven, when some local Taiwanese helped us get a taxi up to the hot springs hotel.
That night we were very, very tired. We had started cycling at 9am and stopped at 7pm when it got too dark and dangerous to keep going. We quickly hit the hot spring pool at the hotel — a welcome respite of therapeutic relaxation — and then were planning to go out to dinner when Tanny just plopped own on the bed and fell asleep.
This was our hardest day cycling, and I had never imagined that the trip would bring us to that point of difficulty. I apologized at that point to Tanna for not thinking this through further before going, and would definitely not have planned this part of our journey having known that we would have an adversary of such force.
On a positive note, we learned a lot about each other that day. Tan and I have not usually done long term strenuous physical activity together because I am a bit of a wack-o when it comes to that stuff, and it just not something Tan sees as a fun use of time. Having to go through that activity together was of great value to us to grow closer and learn about each other, so while we both would not want to do it again, we are happy that it happened.
The next day was St. Patrick’s day. Weird place to be on St. Patrick’s day, but of course we had a blast doing participating in Tanna’s favorite activity, “bee-boppin’.”
The day after St. Patrick's day, we had another cycling day. Now — there are trains everywhere in Taiwan so we could have biked, but the Mrs. was not ready to give us the quest. So, we biked up from Zhiben to Yuli.
This day was actually quite nice! A mild bike and we had fun. Ended the day with some surprisingly good Italian food. (Have not had Italian in months, so I am assuming our bar is very very low.)
From Yuli, the next day we had a fun set of activities set up in the town of Hualien. We had planned to go fly fishing (again — more Ben plans) with a local guy we had met online named Ding.
Ding makes fly fishing rods by hand using bamboo in Taipei, and operates his shop under the name of “Hatori Rod Company.” You can find his instagram page at this link. Really cool stuff and a great dude.
At this point, our legs were still shot, so we decided to take the train up to Hualien, which was fun. That night, we hit another night market and actually played some fun games. My favorite was the assault rifle air soft gun where I had to shoot balloons. I got 25/30 and am very upset at that number. The sighting was low. This, though, gave Tanna great confidence in our home defense potential say a zombie Apocalypse comes our way, wildly inflating my male ego for a hot second. #DudeStuff
The next day we woke up to a few texts from family saying “Hey — you should take a look at this.”
The state department had set their Travel Advisory Level to Level 4. Level 4 can be thought of as “DO NOT LEAVE AND IF YOU ARE GONE GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE NOW!”
Here is a screenshot of the letter, with what we believe is the most serious portion highlighted.
This presented us with a big decision.
Should we go home?
Life then gifted us with a 4 hour window when we had nothing to do. We contemplated and took a look at all the factors that could go in to a decision like this.
Arguments to stay in Taiwan
- It is likely the safest place to avoid the Corona-virus in the world as of March 19, 2020
- The dumplings are good
- We are able to socially distance ourselves pretty easily
- Cost of living is lower than the US
- We already have a flight scheduled for April 9, so if we stay until then we do not have to buy a new flight.
- Again, Taiwan is much safer than the USA. They have been through multiple respiratory related pandemics in the last 10 years (SARS, MERS) and have their infrastructure together to combat this.
- Safety and Health are better
- If we go home, we do not have US health insurance (our travel policy covers everywhere in the world except our beloved USA), so if we get sick or hurt our wallets are going to be in pain
- If we go home, we have to go through 3 airports that are going to be viral hot-spots.
- Doubling on the last point, the US is not seeming to handle the Virus well, so these airports are going to be extra dangerous.
- We will not need to quarantine ourselves, as Taiwan is functioning largely without impair at this point and we have plans to do some fun stuff (fish, couple tours, go to a whiskey distillery, go to a cat village, etc.)
Arguments to go Home
- If we stay in Taiwan, we are going to be staying there (and only there) indefinitely, as most countries are closing their borders. Do we want to have our COVID-19 headquarters be in Taiwan, or back home?
- We will not have to pay rent, as Phil and Marles were gracious enough to offer us their house in Ep to quarantine if we came home
- If we go home now, we do not have the potential fate of being in Taiwan for many months (this is a possibility) as Donny shuts down non-essential travel from any other country (as he has done with Canada) for multiple months.
- We have a fantastic support system in MN. We have NO support system in Taiwan, so if something happens we are on our own.
- If we get COVID-19 in Taiwan, then we run the risk of having to navigate a foreign healthcare system in the language of Mandarin Chinese, and not being nationals we will likely be prioritized last at a healthcare facility.
- Cost of living (even with free rent) is higher, but we will not be doing as much extra spending, so our net spending could be lower
- Our family would be happy if we came home.
- We can find ways to help our community if we come home. It is hard to do with isolation requirements, but there are things we can do.
- If we go home, our level of day to day uncertainty (and it’s partner in crime anxiety) will be greatly reduced.
So, while we waited outside of the very odd Tom Tom B&B for our fishing friend to come sitting on two extra seats that were taken out of a Van, we talked about it. Ding was running behind the time we thought we had set by about two hours, when we serendipitous got a text from the man who introduced us, Mehran.
So, we called Mehran (who is inches away from being a practicing nurse but they have cancelled all board exams because o COVID-19. I think this is a terrible decision as our healthcare system needs as many people as possible and Mern is a fighter, but alas I am not the healthcare system) and his gal pal Blaire (they are affectionately knows as “Blern”) just to take our minds off of it for a while.
When chatting with them (Nurse / Lawyer) we got a few new data points. For one, if we do get sick we can likely get coverage for our sickness because we are technically unemployed (have no W2 income to show for 2020).
Secondly, if we did not come home now, we would be looking at likely a 3 month time frame or more before we could come back. If you are reading this int he way future and think that “Whoah, the US could block all incoming CITIZENS for 3 months?” then the answer is — although not settled yet as of March 23, 2020 — yes. As of this point I firmly believe that there is a 75% or greater chance that this week or next (March 23 — April 3)that the US will shut down the borders even to citizens for an indefinite period of time.
And lastly, it was really nice to talk to some friends about it and get a new perspective.
So, we ended the call. Tan had already decided that she wanted to go home, but I was holding out because of the danger of having to go through 3 airports, two of which are run by the US which brought a plastic baseball bat to a knife fight on this one, which is more dangerous.
It was a weird and once in a lifetime (I hope decision), but I moved to agree and decided also that we should go home.
Logically, staying in Taiwan was safer from a health perspective. Financially no, but you can’t spend money if you’re dead anyways. And if we are sick we cannot help anybody.
So, what moved me personally? In hindsight, it was an emotional decision. I wanted to go home and help. However we could, I wanted to be there with our community to go through this together.
I am a firm believer that mutual suffering is one of if not the top thing that can bring people together. We now have a common enemy, and I did not want to be over in Taiwan sitting it out and being safe there, I wanted to help. We’ll see if I am able to do so and if that rings true.
So, after sitting for 4 hours we now had to snap back into go go go mode. I can imagine that this is what the military feeling of “Hurry up and wait.” feels like. Once a decision is made, it cascades through all the other decisions.
Found a flight the next day out of Taipei to LA.
Texted Ding and told him of the decision and fiercely apologized for having to ditch (him and a friend drove 3 hours from Taipei to Hualien to fish with us).
Packed all our stuff and went to the train station to buy tickets to Taipei.
Emailed the bicycle rental company to tell them we were coming home early.
Were alerted that we had to put our bicycles in bags to make it home. This was an astonishing comment in which I literally did this face. But, as with all things int he great Asian video game, we ended up finding some, completely disassembling out bikes, and put those suckers in some bags. $60 spent on bags (absolute ripoff).
7 hours later we were in a windowless hotel room in Taipei (our specialty!) for our last night of our journey abroad.
The next day was an anxious one. Either from stress or from lack of sleep or whatever, I had a stomach problem and a slight headache. Thought I had the virus (juries’ out on if I do), and my wonderful brain was just digging in tself deeper and deeper into possibilities of Taiwanese prison camp quarantine’s (this is not an actual thing but I have a very creative brain, which has pro’s and con’s.)
Woke up, waiting at Star bucks for 4 hours, headed to the train, faced my first scanner (the Taiwanese have infrared scanners pointed down entire hallways that you must walk though to get into the public transportation), and we ended up making it.
This calmed me down, but we had more coming so I didn’t rest on my laurels and literally worked to meditate my own stomach and headache issues away.
We ended up getting through the airport just fine and around 11:50pm Taiwan time went down to catch our flight.
Our flight was PACKED to the brim with Americans. Sold out flight with no empty seats.
It was funny to see out comrades all in a group. Not all of them had masks on? We had gloves and masks on? Why would you not have a mask on?
On the flight back, things went smooth besides one hour of constant turbulence over that part of Alaska where they shoot the crab hunters TV show.
On arrival at LAX, we were greeted by a massive disappointment.
No head fever scanners. Lines that were packed tightly together. ONE area that was providing hand sanitation for people. Many Americans (I must say, mostly 50+) not wearing masks or gloves or taking any sort of precaution.
Not any one person’s fault that I feel this way (present tense) about our lack of bio-security, and I also have not said the word bio-security until yesterday so I am no expert.
We spent the night in LAX Tom Bradley Terminal with some of our countries most forgotten individuals. Many with mental health issues whom had nowhere else to go. I wish them all the best and am thankful that LAX police were not kicking people out.
Personal highlight was when a lady said to me “You’d know if you knew how to read.” Nice to see you too, America!
After a near sleepless night (for me — Tan was fine and got 6 hours straight), we headed back in to the airport, and a matter of hours later we were home.
Thank you to Chris and Caitlyn for dropping us off a car to drive back to Phil and Marles house. Also, another thank you to Phil and Marles for letting us borrow a car to get back and use their house. You two are very very generous and we are not taking this for granted.
So, on March 22nd around 6:30pm, we got to our final destination, and our journey around the world ended.
While I have not quite processed the whole thing yet, and hope to put out some lessons we learned that other may find good perspective of in a future post, I would say as of now that is was very valuable to go on this adventure.
It’s not all unicorns, rainbows, instagram models and margaritas. There are lots of times when you have to battle cave trolls and the Ghost of Uncertainty, and nobody will ever tell you that if they’re looking for likes on the ‘gram.
That post, the post-trip-post, will come at a later time after some more reflection.
There will be no further posts from me on updates from this journey.
I hope that everyone has found some enjoyment and maybe even learned something from this series.
It is, selfishly, also a way for Tan and I to preserve our memories, and I look forward to reading back on these in the future.
What the future holds at this time, I have no idea.
We have a direction we want to go, but do not know what will happen along the way.
And we’re comfortable with that feeling.
Now, more than ever before.
Thanks,
Ben
