I had a slow morning, I am not going to lie. I bought some milk from the 7 Eleven, and had cereal AND tea for breakfast. Living the dream, right here. I can't afford to leave my fridge running all the time, so I just buy milk when I have the craving for tea. And I"m trying to finish this box of cereal that I bought, as an impulse buy. Terrible decision.
After a very quick Skype call with someone from back home, it was time to clean my room. Guess what? I found 183 NTU (taiwanese dollars) on my floor, in coins. It definitely helps to clean your room every once in a while. Although, now I have about 300 dollars worth of coins in my coins pocket of my wallet, and my wallet can barely close. That is not so good. I was bored and exhausted by 10:30, so I did what any college student would do in that situation: I took an hour nap to pass the time.
When I woke up at 11:30, I realized that I should probably eat some lunch before I went surfing. Yep, you read that right, surfing was on the agenda for today. There is always a first time for everything, and this, today, was going to be my first time surfing, and I was pumped. Also a little nervous, because I had no idea what to expect. I didn't know what I was supposed to wear, or just how stereotypical it was going to be. But this was just my darkside talking. I told it to bugger off, and then shot it in the head with my imaginary shotgun.
I went to the 7 Eleven to get lunch (which was just a warmed up beef and rice dish) because I didn't know where else to go, and I was going to be meeting Jan there so that we could go meet the guy who was going to be driving us to the coast. It was hot as all hell, but we walked from the 7 Eleven over to the entrance to the school, ready to surf. Naturally, as soon as we got to the school, we get a text from Evan, saying that he is going to be half an hour late, and that we should just stay home until he texts us. Too late now. So, in desperate need of some air conditioning, we walked to a cafe, and set about ordering some ice tropical fruit smoothies. Until Jan realized that he had forgotten the bulk of his cash in his room. Cash is sometimes handy, you know. It can sometimes speed the process up.
So we left, in search of his cash, which was back in his room. He went to his apartment to look for it, and I went to my dorm room to grab my umbrella. When at the beach, it is imperative to have some form of shade, and since I had never been to this particular beach before (nor did I even know where we were going) it seemed prudent to at least bring a small one myself.
And then it was time to run downstairs, and jump in Evan's car as he paused a red light just outside out of our house. Evan is a 20 year old in a 34 year old's body. As soon as he started driving, he told us that we had about an hour drive until we got to the coast, and that there was going to be 13 km long tunnel. Yep, 13 km. I thought I was going mad. How is a tunnel that long even possible? As Jan so eloquently put it, it is the watermelon juice big gulp of tunnels. Evan's English was pretty good, so we flip flopped between using Chinese and English. I felt bad for using English with him, but my accent is probably so bad that it is easier to understand me with English. Who knows. Maybe he wanted to practice his English.
As it turns out, there were many tunnels we had to go through, and they got progressively longer the farther we got from Taipei. First they were short tunnels, and then we hit one that was 5 km. I thought that one was the long one, but Evan just laughed and said nope, not yet! And then we finally hit the long tunnel. This tunnel was actually pretty wide and spacious, so I wasn't too claustrophobic, but damn, by the end of it, it sure is nice to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It just went on and on and on, right through a mountain. Apparently there used to be a road that wound up the side of the mountain (it would take 3 hours to drive along that, and this was only going to take us 1 hour) but it was so dangerous and so many people died that the government spent 15 years building this tunnel under the mountains.
And then we were on the other side, and it was like walking out into Hawaii, or Jurassic Park. I know I make the reference to Jurassic Park a lot, but it's true. It really does look like that. But this time, with the obvious little surfing town near the water, and the mountains in the background, it really did look like Hawaii. And then we saw the Quiksilver add, and knew we had made it.
We parked the car, and then had to walk about ten minutes to get to the ocean. I'm not going to lie, all of the skinny Chinese girls with legs the size of my forearms were really creeping me out. Bodies are not supposed to be that skinny. As soon as we got to the beach, there were so many people that it was impossible to see just one person, and the surfing frenzy began. Evan took us over to a place where we could all rent boards, and we dropped our stuff on some chairs and took off. The boss grabbed a foreigner who gave us a quick lesson on the beach (he was high as a kite, so the lesson was rather useless) and we grabbed our boards like the cool experienced surfers that we were, and took off towards the water.
In classic Chinese form, there were about a million and half people in the water, so we just kept paddling out until there were only half a million people around us (I am, of course, exaggerating just a little bit). And then we waited. Well, I waited. Jan immediately started trying to catch some waves, and Evan caught one on his first go. And I just sat there. I missed a couple of good waves, for sure, but I was so paralyzed by the thought of ACTUALLY surfing that I just sat on my board and pretended to look cool. It took me about half an hour to actually gather the courage to try to catch a wave (with Evan egging me on, of course. Jan was off doing his own thing, going after every wave that came up).
A good wave came up behind me, and I paddled really hard, caught it, and then stood up. I was so surprised and excited by the fact that I had stood up that I promptly panicked, screamed, and fell off my board. Then jumped back on it, and paddled furiously back out, eager to try again. And try again I did. This time, Jan had come out to join us, realizing that all the good waves were further out, and we were all talking when another good one came up. So without even looking, I caught it, stood up, and then looked down. And there was Jan about ten meters directly infront of me, looking up at me with terror in his eyes that I was about to run over him, and then he promptly abandoned ship and disappeared under the water. I didn't have to move (nor the skill, if truth be told) so I just ran the board over, and hoped I didn't hit him. When I heard the boards smash together, I just jumped off. And started laughing my ass off. As soon as I made sure he wasn't hurt, of course.
There were a couple more of these stories. I caught another good wave, and almost took out some old man who was fast asleep on his board. And I also almost took out some young kid who saw me coming and immediately rolled over underneath his board. I'll have you know I didn't run over either of them, thank you very much. By the end of the day, I was standing up, and even steering a little bit. Take that! I am a fast learner.
I also met this really sweet girl, who was surfing in my vicinity, who also goes to the same university. Her and I kept talking, and I found out that she is going to Princeton in the fall for grad school. Potential road trip, anyone? It could be fun. We exchanged numbers at the end of the day, and she told us about a four day beach party that is going to be happening in a couple weeks. I am so down. Surfing all day and partying all night? Yes please! What else is summer for?
We called it a day around 5:30, and after taking the obligatory Californian surfer pictures, we went off in search of showers.
The showers were right next to the really smelly bathrooms, and they were cold. There was also a very sketchy pool of water at one end, and it was a free for all for who got the shower. There was a huge fat Chinese man next to me for a while (clothed, thank GOD). Evan brought shampoo that smelled amazing, and my hair has never been so smooth. It was Pert shampoo, and I do believe that may be my new favorite shampoo.
I, like the genius that I am, did not think to bring either a change of clothes, or even underwear with me to the beach, so I had to just try to dry my suit off as much as possible before getting in the car. It was right around this point that Even dropped the bombshell that we were going to be going to a really nice hotel/bar/lounge for dinner and drinks. Jan and I managed to convince him that we needed to change clothes. After showering, you couldn't even tell he had been surfing for the past five hours. Some people have all the luck.
Before we headed back to Taipei, we stopped in at a famous ice cream bar for some taro, red bean and pineapple ice cream. That may not sound very appetizing to you, but let me tell you, it was the most amazing ice cream I have ever had. It was sweet, but it didn't weigh you down. And it had such a good after taste. Definitely worth the stop. We also went to a shop where they sell this type of super thin cookie that you can only buy in Yilan (where we were. Technically, the place we were in is called WuShi Harbor), and those too were amazing. I am definitely going to have to go back there for the food. I have decided that I am going to spend most of my money on food, and not on shopping. I think that is a wise decision.
It took us two and a half hours to get back to Taipei, the traffic was so bad. Thankfully, it was only bad traffic to get into the tunnel, but still. I had the whole backseat to myself, and it gave me a lot of time to think about things that had been weighing on me, and do some check ins with myself. We were all so tired and loopy, it was good that it was dark and quiet.
Because we were in traffic so long, we missed the nice dinner at the fancy restaurant, so we decided to go a famous tofu night market instead, called Shenkeng Old Street. We bought the first thing we saw, which was barbequed tofu with peanut powder and Korean veggies. It was actually pretty good, and that is saying something, because I really don't trust Chinese tofu. Way too many bad experiences for my taste.
After buying the street food, we ended up in a famous restaurant that had been there for 60 years. Looking at it, you wouldn't have known it was famous, it looked like every other hole in the wall restaurant in the city, but Evan insisted it was good food. We got there right before the place was closing, so we were the last ones there. I almost regret to say that I have finally tried stinky tofu. I ate it, and then Evan told us what it was. It tastes exactly how it smells, which, in a word, is not good. I was a little underwhelmed, to be honest. I think Evan and Jan were too, although we may have all just been so tired that actual proclamations of good or bad might have been too much for us to handle at the moment.
Just as we were leaving, all of the waiters started bringing in hundreds of bags of what looked like turkey giblets. Expecting the mother of all water balloon fights, we got out of there as quickly as possible. The stinky tofu places were still alive, so it was quite the game of who can hold their breath for the longest.
As soon as we got our car out of the parking garage (you leave it on the bottom floor in an elevator, and then this machine parks it for you, in the garage. It's like that arcade game where you put money in and the claw grabs something for you, but more sophisticated. Apparently it gets damaged a lot in earthquakes) we headed home, and I got back to my dorm room at about 9:30, and crashed at 10. And that, my friends, is my story of how I went surfing for the first time.
No comments:
Post a Comment