What Happens When You Get Sick in Taiwan?

Nationalized healthcare! As often as we see Starbucks on every corner in the States, there are just as many healthcare facilities in Taiwan. And, after coming down with a cold, acupuncturist Dwayne suggested that we stop by one of these places to see a doc and pick up meds.


The standard process is for the patient to sit in a chair and rest one's arm on a little padded pillow. The doctor places three fingers on the side of your wrist to read any number of things. From there, he or she will discern what ails you and then determine which Chinese herbs would be best for your particular issue.

After the Chinese doctor confirmed my symptoms, he made an assortment of little pockets of medicine. If you've never taken Chinese medicine before, it can be pretty horrid — the sheer smell of it is intensely unappealing and the look of thick black liquid can get your stomach turning.

Traditionally, a whole medley of twigs and branches and who-knows-what-else are boiled for long periods of time in ceramic pots. (When I was younger, I remember seeing dried lizards on sticks.) Now, there's medicinal powder that dissolves more quickly, but can be still just as unpleasant. In fact, Andrew Zimmerman, widely known for being able to eat a whole host of absolutely bizarre foods, simply could not stomach a week's worth of Chinese medicine.

Luckily, this batch of medicine turned out not to be so bad. He promised that within three days, I'd be feeling much better. And, as of today, the doctor was right — congestion is easing up to the point that I'm ready to hit the surf in Taitung! And, all of this, including the doctors visit and medicine cost me US$10 as a foreigner. Had I been a Taiwanese resident, this likely would've been much less.





If you're curious as to how everyone else stays fit and healthy in Taiwan, it could be attributed to the fact that every public park has a bevy of well-maintained cardio and weight-resistance machines. Imagine if you took one of the state-of-the-art gyms in the States and converted all the machines into simple jungle gym pieces that function by your own weight resistance. Not only can you keep your heart healthy while socializing with friends beneath the open sky and gorgeously green foliage, you can do also good for your body on any of these:

When I Saw a Ghost in Taiwan...

After the press trip was over, I made my way to Yongan Market Station a bit outside of Taipei City, where Dwayne’s family members have a condo that we’re able to use for the rest of the week.

He greets me at the McDonald’s where we’ve agreed to meet, “I saw your face in the second story window!” and leads me around the corner of the subway station to where we’ll be spending the next few nights. We walk up five flights of stairs, each carrying a handle of my increasingly bulbous piece of luggage.

“Here’s the living room, kitchen, bathroom,” Dwayne says, as he gives me a tour of the condo. “These are the rooms that we can stay in, and that room right there is for my cousin, who uses this place occasionally when she’s in school. I don’t think she’ll be here for the next couple of weeks, so we can just use this place as home base.”

Bleary-eyed from 12 days of a non-stop “go-go-go-see-Taiwan-on-a-bike!” itinerary and exhausted from practicing an inordinate amount of patience with our tour guide who behaved like my Taiwanese mother in virtually eavery way, I pass out for the next 12 hours. 

In the morning, we wake and discover we’re right down the street from an incredibly colorful market filled fresh vegetables, meat chunks on chopping blocks being cleaved by middle-aged women wearing aprons and rubber boots, fish laying on ice that are tied in ways to look they’re still alive and dancing, dumplings made before our eyes, and even random tables of used clothing. It’s a continuous delight for our past and present senses as we happily meander past foodstuffs we enjoy now and things we loved as little children.

Being the nerd that I am, I am absolutely excited by the sheer learning experiences of watching how noodles are made, how tofu is created, and how yo tiao (the equivalent of unsweetened Chinese donuts) are fried. When we spot one of the vendors eating a scallion pancake, we both begin to drool and are immediately on the hunt for breakfast.

We start by pulling out change for freshly squeezed juice from a little cart just outside the market entrance. Just behind it, we spot a long rectangular table on the sidewalk filled with people slurping bowls of noodles, so we walk closer for inspection. Just a few doors down is a café with trays of Chinese-style breads and we quickly get in line and just start ordering.

“Dwayne, what do you call that?” I ask urgently, before the other customer walks away with his much coveted booty. Dwayne is busy asking the woman behind the counter for dou jian (fresh soy milk), so I keep poking his side to grab his attention.

After a few moments, we hunker down beside bottles of sauces and begin feasting. When we’re through, Dwayne and I continue our walking tour of the neighborhood. Little shops are everywhere as are busy streets, scooters whizzing by, and alluringly nondescript alleys. Every now and again we stop, and inevitably, our hands become a bit fuller with little plastic bags of things we simply could not resist.

“Want to head back?” Dwayne asks. “I’m ready to take a nap!”

“Me too!” I echo.

As we walk the few blocks back to the condo, we pass a large community park, an even grander Taiwan National Library, and countless more restaurants. We turn a corner and Dwayne unlocks the main gate at the bottom of the condo building. Huffing and puffing, we make our way up the multiple flights of stairs, continuing the conversation we were having from the street.

“Well, if we want to go to the south side of the island, then I think we should take the high speed rail to save us time,” he tells me.

Dwayne unlocks the two doors of his relative’s condo. I walk in ahead of him, and we lazily plunk our things down on the table.

“So, I’m thinking that we can leave on Tuesday,” Dwayne continues, as I turn away from him towards the kitchen to put things in the fridge.

When I turn back around, I am faced with a young Asian girl, long black hair drooping past her elbows silently staring at me from the hallway. She says nothing.

I almost start to scream. Visions of the movie, The Grudge, flash before me. My voice is caught in my throat as the two of us look at one another. She has dark, wide eyes and a long pale face that’s virtually invisible against the black shirt she is wearing.

Dwayne is still talking on my left. His back is turned towards us. “We should look up places to stay in Kenting tonight,” pulling sweet pastries out of the plastic bag and placing them on the table.

“Dwayne,” I call out. He’s still talking.

“DWAYNE,” I say louder, cutting him off.

“What?” This time, he turns around. He can tell something’s wrong.

I nod in the direction of our newfound friend. I am waiting. He doesn’t say anything for a second and, for a moment, I fear he doesn’t see her. I prepare to bolt out the front door if this ends up being the case.

It feels like minutes have gone by, so I almost ask aloud, “DO YOU SEE THE GIRL STANDING THERE?”

Instead, he starts to speak, “Oh hi, you must be my aunt’s grandniece.”

“Yes, she says meekly in Mandarin, “that’s me.”

“I didn’t know you’d be here,” Dwayne explains.

“Yeah, I have school next week, so I came in today for the next few days.”

They exchange niceties and chat about his experience in Taiwan thus far. Meanwhile, during this exchange of introductions between the two of them, I am still rooted in the same position as when I found her standing there. I try to calm my rattled heart.

“Do you have an English name?” Dwayne asks her.

“Vivian,” she responds.

“This is my girlfriend,” Dwayne motions to me. “Judy, meet Vivian. Vivian, meet Judy.”

“Hi,” I’m finally able to mutter. “Sorry for the mess!”

She smiles politely and when I move towards our things, she quickly tells us not to worry about cleaning them up.

“Well, I’m going to go to my room and study now,” and then she turns and retreats.

Once she closes the door, I look at Dwayne and start to tell him all the thoughts that had been going through my head the moment I found her just standing there, staring at me, when he hadn’t yet seen her there.

We both start laughing hysterically. “I know I’m into the woo-woo and all, but if she ended up being a ghost, I would’ve been like, ‘No thank you!’ and just bolted. If you didn’t end up seeing her standing there, I would definitely have just started running!” I told him. 

“Aw, you would’ve just left me here?” Dwayne asks.

“That’s right!” I tell him, and we fall onto the couch, wiping away tears of laughter.

 https://picasaweb.google.com/imalwayswriteworld/ACyclingTourOfTaiwan

How I Became a Mini-Celebrity in Taiwan...

Prior to coming onto this cycling press trip in Taiwan, I had no idea I'd be placed in the "Hardcore" versus the "Leisure" group — or that we'd be expected to participate in the Taiwan Cup 200K Self-Challenge, a "fun" race designed to essentially cover the same cycling route that the professional and international cyclists would complete a day after we did.

In the pre-dawn hours outside our Parkview hotel in Hualien County, Taiwan, the Giant support crew leader, An-an, worked in the dark to get our road bikes ready. The other five male journalists (Dennis, Doug, Ryley, Bin, Jason) and I come prepared with racing jerseys, padded spandex shorts, bottles of water, and a resolve to simply do the best we could. After all, I haven't gotten on a road bike in at least half a decade.

After a brief warm up around the parking lot of the hotel, we sit on the ground with our bento box breakfasts. Lily, our Mandarin "mom-like" tour guide asks us to pair up for the 125-mile and anticipated 12-hour ride ahead.

"This way, I can give each group a walkie-talkie in case anything happens!" she tells us, chirpily.

***

Before we know it, the guns are signaling the start of the race. Jason, Dennis, and Ryley take off at the start of the pack. Bin and I trail a little behind, and Doug and Lily bring up the rear.

The sun begins to rise on our left, illuminating a vastly tropical landscape and we can feel the encroaching heat. We cycle past a large water buffalo that Bin and I nervously hope is well tied down as we our approach. The group of cyclists around me make our way across bridges of traffic, and in a short while, we begin to leave the cityscape towards the rural backroads.

Shortly up the first hill, Bin's chain breaks. I slow in front of him, but he motions for me to keep going. At first, I pedal slowly, giving him time to catch up. A few minutes later, I pass the Giant support van and shout to An-an that Bin's cycle is in need of repair. An-an puts down his camera, gets into the car, and heads to help. (He's so even-keeled and mild-mannered that we are certain he's a saint.) I keep going.

The curves bring beautiful vistas at every bend. Unlike the ride we completed two days prior up Wuling Mountain, which happens to be the highest point of Taiwan's road system and regarded as one of the country's most difficult roads, every uphill trek is greeted with a breezy downhill. I trudge along, wondering how far I'll be able to go before I'll have to call it quits. (The longest distance I've ever ridden was 26.2 miles on a beach cruiser with my younger brother.)

As Bin said at the start of the race, "I'm just going to go to the point of failure!" and I figure that's a pretty good approach.

Before I know it, an hour and ten minutes have passed and I'm reaching the first 25-mile checkpoint. There are five checkpoints scattered throughout the race for cyclists to refuel on snacks and liquids. Because I feel quite good, I decide to keep on going. Bin hasn't yet caught up with me and I assume the other three riders must be much farther ahead. 

"Besides, if I stop now," I thought, "I'm not sure I'll get back on!"

The next 25 miles bring much of the same, alternating between slower moments where I can take out my phone and snap a few idyllic shots, and faster coasting along nicely paved roads. The night before, I created a "Taiwan Cup" playlist and am grateful for the pumpy tunes that are keeping me company.

Another hour and twenty minutes go by. I begin to calculate how long it would take for me to actually finish the entire race. 'If I keep up this pace, maybe I might have a shot at finishing?' I consider. I double-check my water supply, stand up and balance on the pedals to stretch out my back. I continue to remind myself that this should be a fun ride rather than a competition, so I just get jiggy with it and shake my tushie to get blood flowing in the sore parts.

'I can make it to the third checkpoint before stopping,' I think to myself, as I ride past the second 25-mile checkpoint. The cookies I hid in my jersey pocket before the start of the race can provide enough sugar to keep me pedaling on. Though the slices of watermelon and mounds of bananas look appetizing, I whiz on by.

Unbenownst to me this entire time, Lily was becoming increasingly alarmed that she hadn't seen me at either checkpoint — and neither had any of the other journalists in our group. They'd all been waiting at each 25-mile marker and when I didn't pass them by, Bin thought that I may have turned around and gone back to the hotel. 'If it's anything like the other day when we were cycling uphill, she couldn't possibly be ahead of everyone,' he later told me he'd said to Lily.

Lily began to phone everyone: the race organizers, the officials, the hotel, even calling my cell in hopes that I had turned it on for some reason and would receive her message. 

"Be on the lookout for cyclist 193!!" she urged everyone.

And so, the entire race was on the lookout for a female foreigner with bright blue shoes who had the number 193 plastered on her bike and helmet. Ten miles short of the third checkpoint, I hear joyous screeching passing in a van to my left. It was An-an, with Lily in the passenger seat, yelping in excitment that they had found me.

"Judy!! Here you are!!" she shouts, almost jumping out of the car.

An-an pulls up a short distance ahead, and I follow. We both stop, and he immediately gets out to open the back trunk to offer me sustenance.

"You are number one," he smiles at me in accented English.

I'm sure he's just being nice, supporting me with an "A-1-thumbs-up" the way that Chinese people so often do, and that maybe he doesn't really know what he's saying.

Lily races out towards me.

"Do you know how much we have been looking for you?!" she exclaims. "Ohmigosh, I have been phoning EVERYone. We had no idea where you were! And here you are, ahead of everyone else!"

I shake my head. "What?"

"Yes, all the other guys are way behind you!"

"Really?" I ask, incredulous.

"Yes!" she fills me in on her escapades. "I had faith in you! They all thought you were behind, but I knew you wouldn't have turned around! And here you, first in front of everyone!" 

It's amazing how much excitement this petite little woman can generate. I am shoving fruit and cookies and crackers into my mouth. The sweat has crystallized into salt on the sides of my forehead.

In a short while, Jason rides up to greet us, then Dennis and Ryley. Doug, who's been riding with Lily since the first checkpoint is taking professional photos of us all, telling us that Bin is bringing up the rear. Jason says that he feels good enough to keep going, and so do I, especially after refueling.

I stretch my lower body in a forward bend, then get back onto my bike. "I'll meet you guys at the next 25-mile stop," I say as I'm pedaling away, thinking that the next stop is just a few more kilometers away.

Unfortunately, it was much farther than I thought. I had been reading the green kilometer markers by the side of the road, thinking that they just happened to coincide with the distances of the race, and it turns out, the two didn't at all correspond. So, when I reached "100" on the sign by the side of the road, it was by no means an indicator of how far I had ridden in the race. There was still another 15 miles to go.

By the time I arrived at Checkpoint Three, a headache began to throb in my temples because of the midday sun and I was ready to call it quits. 'Welp, 75 miles is a pretty good effort,' I tell myself, especially since I had seen fewer than a handful of other female riders throughout this distance of the race.

As I pull up to my final destination, I'm greeted by an older man in an official neon yellow race jacket, encouraging me to take a break. "Have some water, some bananas," he says to me. Then, his eyes light up. He immediately starts exclaiming, "Wait, Rider 193!! You are Rider 193!!" 

I look at him confusedly.

"We have been looking everywhere for you!" he tells me in Mandarin. "Everyone thought you were lost, that you had gone down the wrong road! Sheesh, here you are. They said to look for a foreigner, but you do not look like a foreigner!"

This is true. I tell him that my group simply thought I was behind them, when actually, I was in front. 

"Aiya," he exclaims. The other officials at the checkpoint are also shaking their heads and staring at me. They use their walkie-talkies to relay the message to everyone else that I'm all right. "We had all the police looking for you, too! Come, take a seat in the shade."

He motions for me to hurry. I put my bike down and take a few steps towards him, then I'm stopped by another Taiwanese cyclist. 

"Dui bu qi. Can I take a picture with you, 193?" he asks.

"What?" unsure if I understand his Mandarin correctly.

"Can I take a picture?" he makes a photo-clicking gesture with his fingers, then points to himself, then to me, then to the both of us. He, and apparently a lot of other cyclists, had heard about the search for 193.

"Um, okay," I respond.

He hands his camera to another cyclist, then poses with me, pointing at my helmet with the 193 stuck on the front. When the cyclist is ready to hand the camera back to him, he says, "Wait, one more, one more!" and gets on my other side, then points at me in an ostentatious gesture again. I make a customary "Asian-photography-peace-sign" with my index and middle fingers.

"Thank you, 193!" the cyclist waves to me, as he prepares to get back onto his bike. "Thank you!" 

Later, I discover that 193 is the same number of the road we had been riding on throughout the race, so either the fellow cyclist thought it was a funny coincidence or, maybe because of all the hullabaloo that Lily created, he was documenting the odd occurrence of running into the race's mini-celebrity.

Heading to Taiwan Nov 1-20th!

I'll be participating in the Taiwan Tourism Bureau's Cycling & Lifestyle press tour from Nov 1-20th.

Here's a little bit about it:

The press tour will focus on introducing the coastal cycling/biking routes in Taiwan and offering participating press a personal experiences of Taiwanese healthy lifestyle - including hot spring/spa experience, Taiwan tea plantation visit, and Chinese herbal cooking and food tasting. All participating writers will be attending the opening of annual road cycling tournament "Taiwan Cup" on Nov. 6th in Hua-Lien and have an opportunities to meet/interview with international cycling teams from the China, the U.S., Spain, France, Romania, Colombia, Norway, Australia, Netherland, Ukraine, Japan and Taiwan.


And, after the official tour, we'll be heading to explore:

• The wonders of acupuncture, Chinese medicine, and tai qi practices, all of which are complementary for modern living practices, such as yoga and meditation.
• The little known fact that Taiwan boasts hundred of miles of untapped coastline for surf on its East Coast, which turns on during the winter months. For surfers (especially women) looking for incredible untapped surf comparable to well-known surf destinations around the world, Taiwan is a fantastic option! In fact, Surfline, the premier resource for surfing, recently featured a photo shoot of Taiwan to demonstrate its worthiness as a destination spot.

If you'd like to learn more, just contact me!