Lost in Translation

The flight over was OK but long. We crossed the date line and lost all of Saturday in the blink of an eye– arriving in Taipei on Sunday morning. We got off the plane in Taiwan expecting that it was just a layover – only to find that all references to us moving on had been red herrings – and we are staying here for 2 days. Yeah – I have never been here before…

By the time we go to the hotel, showered and ate, it was 9 AM before Bill opened the first Taipei day. Part of his new rules is that we are given daily scavenges (instead of one book of all the scavenges for the entire region) and you cannot do scavenges (at least on some legs) from 10PM to 6AM (to force people to sleep and to not allow people who do not need sleep to get an advantage). There are 4 returning teams from past events: Bart & Steve, the BeachBoys, are back to defend their championship title from last year. One member of a 2005 competition team is also back - but with a different team member. And Andi from Dallas who competed with Shannon last year is back as well. Apparently Andi and Shannon conceived a Great Escapes baby in the Kingdom of Bahrain last year and Shannon gave birth a few months ago. So he’s here with a guy friend this time. Because of this, Bill has changed up the rules a bunch so that having been in the competition before is less of an advantage. And he has also made the rules about proving exactly what you did each day even harder. You have to provide 100% iron-clad proof for every challenge and every piece of proof will be checked – every time. You can also only scavenge with another team for part of each day and for a maximum of 5 challenges in a day. PLUS - the hardest new rule of all… you cannot even talk to the concierge or hotel staff at ANY hotel. Not even to ask a single question or to get directions. You have to use ONLY strangers on the streets, buses, taxis etc – no professionals – to help you. Does not sound that hard until you realize that NO-ONE SPEAKS ENGLISH (and by that I mean that every 1 in 18,367 people that you talk to actually has a rudimentary understanding of the English language – all the rest, smile politely and nod a lot to every question).

We hit the ground running as soon as we got the Scavenge books. Rainey and I and Nanny and Ben had decided to scavenge together at the beginning of the day and to split apart after we reached 5 events. We quickly learned that having the four of us together is pretty much chaos – everyone yelling at the taxi driver at once (to where he understands nothing), each of us thinking we should be walking in a different direction and raw nerves as people constantly wander off to ask strangers questions and then it takes time to get us back together. We figured out the metro system (not easy since did I mention that NO-ONE SPEAKS ENGLISH) and started moving across the city in an organized way.

Things were going smoother by the time we split up about midday. Rainey and I went as hard as we could all day and collapsed back into the hotel about 8:45 PM for a 10 PM check-in. Nanny and Ben showed up right before 10 and had whipped our butts. They out-scavenged us, they out-strategized us and they just flat out beat us (I guess apples do not really fall far from the tree). And they are beating us by quite a bit (in this competition EVERY point is hard earned). So the gauntlet has been thrown down now. The war has started. We are upping our game and taking no prisoners.

Four best scavenges from yesterday:

Longshan Temple – We had to find the temple, buy incense, burn the incense to a specific goddess (not as easy as it seems as the temple has dozens of goddesses) and then get our fortune told.

It was Sunday so fortune tellers were in scarce supply and the word “fortune teller” is not easily translated or acted out. It took us over an hour to find one and Ben and Rainey got their fortunes told.

Beitou – The scavenge was to: “Take your bathing suit to Yangmingshan Park in the town of Beitou. Take a dip in the hot springs”. So Rainey and I took the train out to Beitou and set off in a taxi for the park. After driving for 45 minutes straight into a beautiful rainforest mountain, we found the park but no hot springs. Somebody there told us to go back down the mountain and that the public hot spring baths were on the outer edge of the park there. So down we go to find that the word “public hot springs” means 2 buildings (one for men and one for women) with spring fed pools that are filled to the brim with NAKED people. So forget the bathing suit red herring, you have to strip down, put your hair in a special bath cap (I have inspected for lice and other creatures but none so far), kneel before one pool and splash water over your head in a special way with a specific bucket (I messed that one up to the full out laughter of more than 100 naked Chinese women) and then move on to another pool where you wash your hands and feet and then the last pool where you get in totally. The last pool is so full that to submerge yourself you have to wiggle in between hundreds of naked women – touching them all as you do. And across the yard, Rainey was having the identical experience…. Only on Great Escape 2009 would you even consider doing some of this stuff

Eat at a taxi driver’s favorite restaurant: Another scavenge was to ask your cabbie to take you to his favorite restaurant where only locals eat. We ended up above a shady looking food store in a restaurant where no-one has ever heard English far less speaks it. We both ordered soup as it seemed safe enough to then find out that it is a “make your own soup” place. They plunk a bowl of water on a hot plate in front of you and a big bowl of vegetables and meat that you are supposed to put into the bowl to make the soup. The vegetables were (and here I am not even exaggerating): cow hoof patties, jelly fish intestines wrapped in pea pods, lumps of gelatinous goo, slices of mouldy mushrooms with tumors growing on them…. Need I go on. Then Rainey made the whole restaurant explode into laughter when he dumped all of the sauces that they bought us into his soup pot (as they are supposedly just for dipping – not for cooking).

Shilin night market: We had to go to the night market and see gross and horrific food and then put some of the most nasty stuff ever into our mouth, chew and swallow. The people at the market were eating bugs on skewers, cow eyeballs, intestines soaked in sewage…. And loving it… Standing in line to wait to be served it. These people need some fast food in their lives. The smell alone was enough to make you run. Since Rainey will do not the food scavenges I had to put into my mouth - and swallow - some truly awful stuff. Plus, to hide how bad it all is – they add some amazing spicy stuff to the top. Blows the roof off your mouth.

Sunset on a ferry in Danshuei