Taipei, Taiwan - September 15, 2003
Well, not only was today my last day in Taiwan, but I also have to work this evening in Seoul. Fortunately, the airplane is only a short two-hour flight, so that won't be that hard to do. While this has been a fairly short trip, I did enjoy my time here. Its also strange how quickly you get to know people and say goodbye to them as well. I feel I could easily stay in this hostel alot longer. Its too bad its time to go. If things were a little different, I'd just stay here and teach instead for awhile. I could definetely use the change of pace.
The morning itself was fairly uneventful. I do have to say that I think Taiwan has slightly more variety in food than Korea. I've actually seen Thai restaurants and such. It doesn't seem much as they are so plentiful in other countries, but I think Seoul only has a few for the however millions of people who live there. I saw a few more just randomly in Taipei. They also have a slightly larger selection of options in the 7-11 stores and such as well. I do get kind of sick of such limited options in Korea all of the time. Anyhow, Taipei isn't much better, but it is slightly better.
The other thing I was hoping to do now that I was leaving, was to take a picture of a bettlenut girl from the bus window on my way out of town. I didn't see nearly as many leaving as I did coming in, but I did see one and I was able to snap a picture with my disposable Fuji camera. (I think I'm the only one who hasn't went to digital). If you didn't read about the bettlenut girls in my previous entry, they are basically girls who work in tiny little glass houses, they wear tiny little colorful miniskirts and boots, and they just sell beetlenut all day to anyone. Beetlenut is basically this kind of addictive chew, probably something like chewing tobacco. Except this stuff has a more watery texture when spitten, and it comes out a very bright translucent red. Anyhow, I'll develop the film later and see if it came out okay.
Well, back on the plane, and I had my biggest noticeable difference between the two cultures. On my right side there was a Taiwanese guy. He was very relaxed and very relaxingly reading the newspaper. He was very polite and when he needed to get up, he smiled and very patiently waited until I made some kind of appropriate gesture which signaled for him to proceed. Meanwhile on my left side and across the aisle (fortunately) was a Korean man. He was very hyper, and turning every which way imagineable staring and looking at everyone and everything on the plane. At one point he kicked his shoes off, took up two seats, and leaned his back on the seats in front of him, and faced backwards. He was also constantly grabbing the chairs that were in front of them and jerking them as he moved around, which would jerk the passengers sitting in those seats. Basically he was just hyper hyper in true Korean style. While Taiwan and Korea seemed very similar in so many ways, this seemed to be their true difference and summed up the trip quite well for me.
Incidently, totally unrelated to that observation, when I left the plane and got on an airbus back into the city, one of the airline stewardesses (unfortunately a guy) happened to sit next to me. I didn't bring up any of this, but we began talking about his favorite cities and everything else. One of the things he distinctly talked about was how he hated dealing with Korean passengers. He said his favorite passengers were the Japanese, who always did whatever he asked. He said he always constantly had to tell Koreans the same thing over and over and over again and they'd never pay attention and never listen. He also talked about how little social skills that Korean has, as over and over their parents told them about the importance of an education, and many other things. But being such a poor country in the past, they just never learned how to socially behave. Anyhow, it was interesting listenting to a Korean sum up Koreans so well. We also agreed that Koreans are amazingly kind and have very good hearts, but they are just so annoying in that they don't really know how to behave in social situations. Anyhow, interesting stuff.
Also, all that being said, I was actually once again blown away with how beautiful Korean women were all over again. They have significantly more beauty to them then the Taiwanese in appearance. In general, the Taiwanese don't really dress that fashionably and don't apply much makeup or anything. They dress more in t-shirts, jeans in tennis shoes. They also have much thinner hair and lack the faces of Koreans. Korean women in particular have extremely thick hair, very defined features such as model-like cheekbones, perfect teeth and such. Taiwanese are the opposite. Korean women also know how to dress extremely well. Also, coming in off the airport, Seoul is a much bigger and more lively city. So it ended up that the trip was perfect in that I was glad to be back in Korea as well so that I could (hopefully) easily endure the next seven months of my work contract.
Next Journal Entry in Korea:
September 17, 2003
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Wintermoon2@yahoo.com