Taiwan?!

Since November, my friend Rachel and I have been planning to do a bike trip somewhere in Japan, sometime in March.

We did not really think about the fact that most of Japan was going to still be really, really cold in March. We thought we’d just trot down with our bikes to Kyushu, one of the most southern islands of Japan, and happy-jolly-bike-trip away!

Turns out “trot down” looks a lot more like, “take a night bus to tokyo or osaka, and then take another night bus to fukuoka” and then enjoy biking for eight days while your tired-ass body tries to adjust to having 2 of the most wretched nights of sleep in its entire existence.

Yeah, so that’s not going to fly. Kyushu is too far away, too expensive to get to by plane, hell, Japan’s just too expensive in general to just go gallivanting around so we’re abandoning it altogether!

The cheapest place to fly to from Tokyo during the middle of March is, apparently, Taiwan. I’ve really never had any urge whatsoever to go to Taiwan. In fact, I think I can only remember one specific time in my life when the idea of Taiwan’s existence crossed my mind.

I was young, hadn’t started school yet. It was the day after Christmas. I’d received a wooden toy of some sort. It said, “Made in Taiwan” on the bottom of it. I asked my mom, “Where’s Taiwan?” She told me a lot of toys were made in Taiwan because it was cheaper to do it there. I immediately took that to mean that Santa’s workshop was in Taiwan and that’s where all the Christmas toys had come from forever and ever. In my mind, Taiwan was the adult name for the North Pole, it was snowy, full of red-and-white striped poles and columns, always smelled like hot cocoa, and was populated mostly with elves.

But then the idea of Taiwan completely slipped my mind.

I didn’t even know it was an island until yesterday.

I am, admittedly, woefully uninformed on the subject of Asian geography.

Anyways, I’m going there! Apparently it is an island split into Western plains and mountains along the Eastern coast. So, we’re headed East! With bikes! And a tent!

I can’t wait to get out of Japan.

<3