Chaiyi

July 20th Sunday, Imagine Chilren's School Office

I came into Taipei in a cloud of white that I could not penetrate, then ocean, then a coast. The ocean looked like it was five feet below me but it most have been hundreds or thousands. After the twelve hour, overnight bus ride from Penang Malaysia to Singapore, and after wandering about that city with my eight pounds of traveling stuff looking for the MRT station, and after finally arriving at the Changi airport, and after the flight which had taken an hour longer than usual (due to typoon, I learned later), I was finally arriving in Taipei. Of course, after arriving at Taipei at six o'clock, I was found and pushed into a van that took me one and a half hours away ot Taichung where I was put into a yellow taxi and taken to my hotel for that night. Much had lost power in Taichung so I could neither call or e-mail to confirm my arrival. It was still pouring here, where the typhoon had struck hardest (something like 600mm of rain, the news said) but the peculiar thing was that there hadn't been any wind at all as is usual with typhoon. That next morning, Adrian Wu picked me up (the man who had been my coorespondant and had lined me up with the job I finally took in Chaiyi). He lives in Taichung but drove me the next two hours to Chaiyi. Already, three and some hours south of Taipei, that sits upon the northern nose of Taiwan, I am in the south of the island, an hour or two away from Khaosiung, the southern most end of the island.

At the airport in Singapore, at a bookstore, I looked at the lonely planet entry for Chaiyi, and it basically said that Chaiyi wasn't the worst waste of time, that it could be seen in one day or two. It also said something like, "you can walk across the city in thirty minutes, but it's not something you would want to do because of all the smog." But the qualities that attract the tourist are not necessarily the same qualities that attrance a potential resident. This is what I hoped. More to come later.