Taiwan

And we’re off! I abandoned my family and friends to fling myself to the other side of the globe once again. This time, in the presence of my good friends the Yaus, who graciously invited me to spend the Lunar New Year with them in Taiwan. Little did I know that it was secretly an indoctrination program designed to chip away at my mental fortitude, gradually replacing my identity with that of the “Third Yau Brother”. It would have been more sinister if I hadn’t thrown myself wholeheartedly into my new role, devouring every delicacy placed before me, graciously losing to Paul and Calvin every time we played Smash together (every. time.) and laughing along with the inside jokes as they downloaded them into my brain through a condensed auditory viral load during the long car rides.

Our roadtrip around the Taiwanese countryside revealed to me that Taiwan is an honest-to-god tropical paradise; something I hadn’t fully appreciated before seeing it with my own eyes. The amount of agriculture also really surprised me, surpassing my wildest dreams with the amount and variety of delicious fruits and vegetables. I was particularly enamored of the fruit, but to be honest that isn’t unusual or even confined to Taiwan. While I have been told many times that the food in Taiwan is delicious, I was not prepared for this to be true of the simplest of fares. Everything from wax apples, to rice, to cabbage tasted incredibly fresh and rich. I have never waxed poetical over cabbage before, but Taiwanese cabbage has burrowed inside my heart and taken up residence. Long live the cabbage king.