Driving in Taiwan

Something Fishy

"You know, I think I've come to accept driving in Taiwan" I said one day. "It's really just like being a fish in the ocean" I continued, getting more excited about what I thought was an extremely apt analogy. "The fish have no traffic rules, no swimming lessons, no highway patrol. They swim here they swim there. If they want to pass they pass. I doesn't matter what lane they're in. They don't care if someone makes a left turn in front of them and, except being eaten by other fish, there are no collisions and certainly no road rage. They just keep swimming, swimming swimming". By this time my hands were "swimming" around in the air and I started moving on to my next analogy. "It's just like a choreographed ballet..."

"Put your hands back on the wheel" Anting said.

"Sorry". I put my hands back on the wheel and remembered that, hey, I really was in the most dangerous driving locale I had ever experienced. Just then a scooter pulled out of the lane on my right without stopping (or looking) I had to slam on the brakes to avoid her. "Shit! Why do they do that? Why do they never look. One day I'm not going to be able to stop, and run one of them over".

"They don't look because if they look, then for sure there'll be an accident"

"What? What kind of logic is that?"

Road Rage

I guess haven't quite yet adjusted to driving in Taiwan. Sometimes, I can rationalize that people drive like lunatics here because this is a small island with a huge population and you have to drive aggressively to make any progress whatsoever. Most times, however, my frustration and rage grows with each infraction I witness (and let me tell you, they are plentiful). It just goes against every grain in my being to witness and be subject to these common occurrences:

turning right from the left lane;

turning left from the right lane;

passing a left turning car on the left;

passing a right turning car on the right;

scooters snaking through traffic on both sides of your car;

driving the wrong way down one way roads;

driving in the oncoming lane;

going through really stale red lights;

u-turns at anytime and anyplace;

cutting into long lines at the highway entrance right at the on-ramp.

double and triple parking; and my personal favourite

oncoming left turners always turning in front of us going straight drivers.

What I can't understand, however, is how there can be, with so many traffic infractions, so few incidents of road rage. Everyone seems to just calmly keep driving as if nothing happened even though their fellow driver just cut them off, did a u-turn in front of them, or just missed them after going through a red light. If any of these things happened in Canada wouldn't a chase ensue followed by an actual accident, yelling match or even physical violence? Haven't people been shot in Los Angeles for less? "Why is there so little road rage in Taiwan anyway?" I asked.

Culture Shock

"Because they know they do the same thing. At one time or another they'll want to do something crazy so they don't care" Anting answered, but still did not comfort this feeling of incongruity I was having.

"But most people are so polite, never wanting to offend anyone, never wanting to be selfish and ask for what they want. How come when driving, or lining up for the train or bus, or walking around they can be so rude and selfish?"

"Don't ask why".

But, here in Taiwan the concepts of personal space or first come first serve do not seem to be ingrained in the population. I guess when you have 25 million people living in a place the size of Vancouver Island these concepts seem luxurious. Part of adapting to living here has been getting used to the driving techniques, being constantly pushed or "cut off" when lining up for the train, and generally having people inside my personal space. It is quite hard, if not impossible, to get used to, and I constantly have to resist the urge to elbow some old lady who just pushed me out of the way (At the MRT stations they actually have painted lines on the floor to train people how to line up). It is a fact in Taiwan, however, that one must come to terms with. If you are from "the West" you will likely feel irritated by people in your "space", whether it be driving or walking.

The Accidents

You have to have a certain measure of skill to drive here as anything can happen at any time. You must be extra vigilant to avoid cars and scooters coming at you from every direction. Nobody seems to care what is beside them or behind them. Just look out the front, find the opening and seize the opportunity.

One thing you cannot do is try to enforce your rights. If I were to not stop for people cutting into my lane, turning left in front of me or these hundreds of scooters buzzing around me, I would have a kill at every block. Believe me, I have to fight every natural impulse I have to avoid "enforcing my rights", but instead I really try to get into a more zen-like forgiveness state. It hardly ever works however, and I usually drive around cursing and yelling "WHY?WHY?WHY?"

Even though everyone drives like a maniac, along with not many road rage incidents, there also does not seem to be a proportionately high amount of accidents. Having said that, however, we have witnessed a few. The seemingly most typical accident I witnessed involved a car coming out of an alley, not stopping and running into a scooter driving down the wrong side of the road. luckily no one was hurt, but both parties seemed to receive their just desserts for their idiotic driving.

On another occasion we were driving home late after a day long session of Majiang. Anting was driving in the left lane. As we approached our home a silver Accord passed us on the left (in the oncoming lane) at an unbelievable speed. I didn't think much of it until it seemed to be taking a fast left hand turn a few blocks ahead of us. What happened is that the guy swerved around a car stopped at a red light and then lost control. He first swerved right around the parked car, lost control, banked left into the oncoming traffic, and smashed head on into a van. It was quite frightening to see, especially considering the speed the Accord was traveling. We arrived on the scene seconds after the collision and the police a few minutes later. Fortunately the only one hurt was the driver of the Accord--again some justice.

The police

With the exception of not being able to turn right on a red light, the traffic rules are essentially the same as in BC. I often wonder why the police do not enforce the laws here. Admittedly, they would all get carpal tunnel syndrome writing tickets in the first few years while everyone got used to the enforcement, but it certainly would be a cash cow for the government. Unfortunately the police do not enforce traffic rules in the city and only occasionally on the highway. Perhaps this is because if everybody started following the traffic rules the entire island would be in gridlock. Who knows?

This does remind me however, of my daily laugh when I approach the intersection at the train station on my way to school. Before reaching this intersection, there is a driveway into the parking lot of the mall. Employed there is a parking attendant who takes his job very seriously. He will blow on his whistle, wave his neon wand, stop, and direct traffic with complete diligence. There is absolute order at this parking lot entrance.

Arriving at this intersection at the train station, however is a different story. There are absolutely no traffic control devices, no traffic lights, no traffic signs and no painting on the roadway. There is no 4 way stop rule at this intersection, nor is it first come first serve. You basically have to close your eyes, go through at a steady speed, and hope the others will stop.

Every day I see the same police officer standing on the corner. But he doesn't do what you would expect a police officer would do confronted with such complete chaos--direct traffic. Instead, he just stands there, like he's observing an experiment, doing absolutely nothing. It is just so funny to first come across the parking attendant, at his relatively tame parking lot entrance, directing traffic like an air traffic controller, half a block away from this police officer standing on the side of this dangerous, uncontrolled and chaotic intersection doing absolutely nothing.

Well, I guess I have ranted (and rambled) on enough. Thanks for letting me get that off my chest (It may save a few lives).

It is safe to say that driving in Taiwan can sometimes be dangerous and very often frustrating for a westerner, but, at the same time, provides an excellent method to hone those defensive driving skills.

Our New Place

Commercialism runs rampant in Taiwan. You walk down the street and are constantly bombarded with advertisements, business signs, people handing out leaflets, and businesses. Here it is very difficult to distinguish between residential areas and business areas. This is especially so in our city of Taoyuan. In Taipei, it is a little bit easier to distinguish between residential and commercial areas in the newer sections. In Taoyuan, however, where you live is likely where you work. Most buildings are three or four stories. The top floors are where you live and the bottom floor (the garage) is where you run your business. Your business could be anything from a restaurant to a car repair shop or from a pet store to a travel agency. Whatever the market will bear seems to be the rule. When walking down the street, you also have to maneuver through the other businesses that occupy the sidewalk. These more mobile businesses sell clothes, jewelry, and any kind of food imaginable. If you imagine 15-20 hotdog stands per block, you will have an idea. And, this is practically everywhere, not just in some certain areas.

With this kind of "commerce friendly" atmosphere, I guess we should not have been surprised that a disco opened up in our apartment building. But there we were, very surprised when it happened. We lived on the 15th floor and this dance club opened on the 9th floor. We had heard that a disco had been in that building before, but was not very successful and only lasted for six months. I guess this one survived by turning up the music and by being open from 10pm to 10am.

We tried to weather the storm for a few weeks, but the music was really loud. We called the police a few times, but once they came the music would be turned down for a few minutes and then back at full volume, or even louder. We were not getting enough sleep and getting grumpy so we moved into Anting's mom's place and then eventually into her brother's place. Fortunately her brother (Leo) is working in China and his wife Mikiko and two kids are living with Anting's mom so we have the place all to ourselves. Actually we really enjoy the place as it is much bigger than our first place and has a kitchen. The only downside is that it adds another 20 minutes to my commute to Taipei every day.

Here are a few pictures of the new place that we moved into in the beginning of January. We even have an extra bedroom for you to come stay. So, if you are ever in Taiwan and need a place to stay, you are more than welcome to stay with us!



The kichen and Dining Area



















The Living Room

Lantern Festival

Today, we decided to join a couple of my classmates, head into the mountains and enjoy the yearly Lantern Festival. We left early, as we live quite a ways south of our ultimate destination--Shi Fen (十分). We originally planned to leave in the afternoon, but after learning that several million other Taiwanese usually head to the same festival, we decided to leave a touch earlier to beat the crowds. Of course we forgot to return from Shi Fen early enough to beat the crowds on the way back, but more on that later.

The Lantern Festival occurs after Chinese New Year and while completely environmentally insensitive (everyone launches a wire and paper lantern levitated by a kerosene soaked and burning waxy paper into the air), it is quite a beautiful site. One buys a few lanterns, writes their wishes on the lanterns, and then, when the moment strikes, lights the lantern and launches it into the air. Of course it is quite important to have someone experienced assist with the first launch or so, as quite a few important operating instructions are often missed, resulting in less than ideal results. First, one has to remember that the lantern is made of paper and the engine soaked in kerosene. Before the lantern is inflated the engine has to be lit. Without proper care, the whole lantern can go up in flames before it even gets off the ground. Second, fill the lantern with hot air before releasing it. If there is not enough lift, the lantern quickly floats away from you, horizontally, dripping burning rocket fuel on the heads of the million other lantern aviators, causing much consternation. Third, and also very important, one must always look up before finding the ideal launching pad as there are buildings, trees and especially power lines that seem to be attracted to these lovely floating fireballs (see below).

We took our first train from Taoyuan to Taipei and met up with my classmates, Cassie and Jenny, at the Taipei main train station. From there we took a train to a small town and then transferred onto an MRT type train that went up to and through a string of five small towns in the mountains where we were heading. The train would head towards the end of the line, stop for a few minutes and then head back on the same rails. Our first destination was the end of the line, where we had a snack of red bean soup, bought some blank bamboo wishing stalks, wrote a few of our wishes thereon, and hung it on the fence (see above first picture). We stayed in the town and had some lunch, not realizing that the train would only come every two and a half hours. As a result, we had a leisurely lunch and then walked to the next town after missing one of the trains while we were eating.

At the next town and while it was daylight we attempted our first lantern. Fortunately, we had some assistance and learned the very important tips as listed above. These would be quite helpful for our night-time attempts. Our Lantern, missed the building, trees and powelines and floated off into the distance quite nicely.

Because of the massive crowds and because we wanted to go down the line on the train we devised a plan to take the train back up the line and then return with it down to Shi Fen where the nighttime festivities were going to take place. The plan worked and we were fortunate to find seats on the train back to Shi Fen. By the time we arrived, the sky was darkening and already thousands of floating lanterns filled the sky. Most of which were floating in formation off into the distance and over the distant hill out of sight and out of mind. We heard on the news the next day that some errant lanterns made their way to the Taipei Airport and caused a grass fire next to the runway (I am sure we were too far away for that to be one of our lanterns).


At Shi Fen we found a place to eat out on the balcony of a restaurant, ordered food and contemplated what we would wish for on our own lanterns. Anting came up with the idea that she was going to add a new more dangerous and extreme element to the lantern -- a string of fireworks. My protests fell on deaf ears as everyone in the group seemed to be unaware of any possible problem with lighting this already extremely flammable lantern and adding explosives to the equation, not to mention that this time around we had no supervision, oven mitts or protective headwear.

As we ate our dinner we watched several people successfully launch their lanterns and a few who tragically forgot to look before they launched. Some also, we observed, who chased around their lacking lift lanterns, frantically attempting to catch their fireball and then figure out how to extinguish it without themselves combusting--Dinner and a Show.

There was a steady stream of Lanterns in the air , but every so often there was a huge amount of them in the air at once. We found out that this was because at the stadium nearby they were releasing thousands of them at once.

The time came to launch our night time lanterns. The first three all went off without a hitch. We were very careful to ensure we applied all our lantern tips. Now came the moment of truth--the firecracker lantern. We decided it would be best to attach the firecracker to the middle of the bottom of the lantern so as to ensure balance on the take off. We also decided to light the firecracker fuse just seconds before launch in order to ensure that it would start exploding after it got quite high in the sky. Everything was going fine. The engine was lit. We waited the 20 seconds while the lantern filled with hot air. We could feel the lantern struggling to lift off against our resistance. We lifted it so that Anting could light the fuse and then...There was no fuse. The firecracker just immediately started exploding. The lantern barely had enough lift to pass over my head, singe my eyebrows and emit this deafening crackle that seemed to last an embarrassingly long time. (see the picture below for the moment of ignition). Fortunately the lantern gathered speed, managed to clear the parked cars, people, bridge and sail off into clear night.
As I mentioned earlier we had some trouble getting home. We had to fight through massive crowds of people and waited an hour an a half until we could get on the train back. It was incredible how packed the train was and people had to be shoe horned into the train cars. We arrived back in Taoyuan at about midnight after having previously deciding to go home at 7:30. After a definitely worthwhile experience we went straight to bed, me dreading the next school day, having not prepared my homework and Anting imagining some poor farmer picking up all those lanterns off his land the next morning.

At the Warner Village Movie Theatre complex in Taipei

101 at night

Taipei 101, the world's tallest office building. Notice the clear weather. This is quite rare, unless a typhoon is coming...

Health Care in Taiwan

In Class this week I started feeling like I was coming down with something. Indeed by Tuesday, I was feeling the effects of a full blown cold. After I got home from school I started my destined climb towards "the Climax" (You know those one or two days where you feel like a bag of piss (without the bag)). That night I cheered myself up with a national geographic special about an Avionca Flight that ran out of gas over New Jersey (I did learn the one good thing about running out of gas in a 727-- the plane does not explode on impact!).

The bad thing about being sick in Taiwan is that there is absolutely nothing on TV that I can understand or am interested in during the day. I thought since National Geographic seemed to be in "Air Crash Bonanza Week", that I could at least enjoy an hour of sheer terror. I really hate to fly, but for some reason I am facinated by these air disaster shows. Perhaps I just want to know what to look for in the moments before a crash so I can tell if my plane is about to crash. Unfortunately they had some documentary about the African Elephant, the movie channel was playing the Wedding Singer for the 15th time this month, and the other english channel was teaching basic english to the Taiwanese.

In any event, while I couldn't find anything to watch, I was also gaining a temperature. The Mandarin word for fever is "Fa Shao" and it sounds exactly like Goldmember talking about his dad. Therefore, I normally get a kick out of saying fever in Mandarin, but on Wednesday night, I was not feeling the humour of the situation. To top it off, I had to spend the whole day alone in our tiny appartment because Anting was in Taipei for a job interview and then had to go to a wedding in the evening. She also had no battery power in her cell phone.

Anting's Mom called me and asked if I wanted to go to the hospital. I was able to communicate that we would wait until Anting came home (she was expected at 10pm) and then go. She could at least ask the doctor at my request: "Is it SARS?"

Anting finally arrived at about 11:30, but at her mom's house. She still had to come home and see if I needed the hospital. She did arrive and we decided to go to the hospital. I was worried about SARS and the Avian Flu and feeling terrible. I was also expecting a 3 hour emergency room wait.

We arrived at the emergency a few minutes after midnight. The place was packed. There were about 20 beds in the ER all full of moaning and groaning patients. There were several people wandering in and out with IV's attached to them. Their family member would hold the IV drip bag, or they would hold it themselves. Anting left me in a seat at the entrance where I causually read a sign posted across from me that was in Chinese except for some numbers (that I assumed were steps to follow) and the dreaded acronym--SARS.

I was calmed down somewhat when this kindly fellow in a green lab coat came up to me and smiled. I knew being a foreigner was useful for something. I was going to get some special treatment! The bubble burst when he walked by and swept up a cigarette butt on the floor beside me.

Anting finally came back and before we did anything, I demanded that she tell me what the SARS notice said. She said "Oh it's nothing, just that you will be arrested if you refuse to take a SARS test"

"OK", I thought "I'll take the test. I don't want to be arrested." I then settled in expecting a long wait. Surprisingly, a few moments later my name was called and was examined by the nurse. Very shortly after that, the Doctor appeared! He took my history, with Anting's assistance and he typed everything into a computer terminal. Moments later I was having an injection to reduce the fever and then sent across the hall to the payment window and the pharmacy window next to it. We paid $40 CDN for the visit and the medication, went to the pharmacy and the drugs were all ready to be picked up.

By Thursday night I was having some solid snot (the sure sign I was getting better) and started preparing my homework. I was back in school on Friday and went out for dinner with Anting and a couple of her friends that night.

I feel much better now and also am impressed with the Taiwan health system. Canada's health officials should come over here and take some notes.

Anting and Mei at the beach house Bar-b-que

Sunset at the beach in Fulong.

Lunch in Fulong with Mei, and her Co-workers