posted by wtanaka at
11/24/2002 03:36:00 AM
Today was spent in Taroko Gorge near Hualian on the east coast of Taiwan. We took a local bus there in the morning, which took a while. We arrived at the small town of tianxiang and tried to hike all the way back down the gorge, a total of 19 km. About 5:30p.m., the remaining twilight was getting pretty dim. A taxi stopped to pick us up. Cliff ended up doing most of the negotiation with the taxi driver, brave of him. Along the way, I tried to ask the taxi driver a few questions, but he didn't respond at all. Either he didn't understand me, or he was frustrated that we didn't get out at the auxilliary stops along the way to zhongshan road that he was suggesting we see.
posted by wtanaka at
11/24/2002 03:35:00 AM
Tonight's dinner came from a corner food stall in the night market here in Hualian. Nobody there spoke English. Cliff tried to ask for a menu with hand gestures, and we received a menu in the form of a piece of paper with the names of different dishes in Chinese and empty spaces next to the names for tick marks.
The woman there understood our situation enough to start bringing us random trays of food (presumably ones that had been sitting out for a little while). Everybody else that was working there thought that this was completely hilarious.
Luckily, both the things that she brought us looked and tasted good. We ordered another.
