Solo Surf Mission to Kenting National Park, Taiwan

First Kenting, 14-16 November, 2003

4:17 on Friday afternoon and Iggy looks with exasperation over the heads of his students.  He is standing in the front of his classroom, facing a sea of Asian pre-teens on the cusp of puberty.  He is (trying to) teach them conversational English.  He bangs on desks, pleads for attention, flips the light switch on and off.  But this Friday afternoon, nothing seems to work.  Iggy is defeated.  He trudges over to his desk, chooses a stack of “Harry Potter” crosswords, and passes them out to the students.  

Above the din, Iggy shouts, “It’s a RACE!  Whoever finishes first gets CANDY!”.

Iggy writes the words RACE and CANDY on the board to ensure perfect communication.  Immediately, the chaos collapses into order, as the tiny Taiwenese students huddle silently and excitedly around the crosswords.

Ahhh, Iggy thinks.  This should keep the little buggers busy for twenty minutes.

Click, click, click.  The clock ticks 4:45, and the soothing school bell marks the end of the last class of the week.  It’s the weekend!

And time to move and move and escape.  Escape the City of Taichung, the third largest City in Taiwan, home to some 800,000 souls and at least 10 million motorbikes.  The city has its enticing attractions, but this afternoon Iggy feels an irresistible pull from the Pacific Ocean.  Iggy was born on the other side (the American Side) of the sea, and he spent the first two decades of his life constantly immersed in the (cool, powerful, welcoming, crisp) crisp ocean currents of San Diego.  He has never forgotten his happy young days when the see was his most reliable friend.  Indeed, he thinks about them every day.

So, after a full week of teaching English to the future doctors, lawyers, and businessman of one of the tiger economies of East Asia, Iggy (a.k.a. Mr. O) flees to the great Pacific to find peace.

Iggy retrieves his tent, backpack, and surfboard from his shabby dormitory, and begins his long evening journey.  This journey will take him across the Tropic of Cancer, through the cram-jammed streets of Taiwan’s biggest port (Kaohsiung), and down to the very tip of the island, the exact spot where the Taiwanese mountains fall dramatically and conclusively into the sea.  The journey will take seven hours.

Iggy takes the city busy to the regional bus station, purchases his ticket for 250 New Taiwan dollars, and scours the bus café to find his dinner.  Sushi with fresh ginger and dried fish.  Mmm.  Two dollars.  And one Taiwan beer.  Perfect.

Iggy meanders around the bus terminal.  Everyone is Asian but him, but the Taiwanese do not gawk.  They look with curiosity and a smile, but it is almost never rude.  Iggy feels comfortable.

Iggy asks everyone the same question: Ni qu nali?  That is: Where are you going?  He is met either with incomprehension, as Iggy’s pronunciation is atrocious, or with a charitable response, like: Wo qu Taipei, ni ne? (I go to Taipei, and you?).  Unfortunately, the conversation ends right there, as Iggy’s repertoire of Mandarin is limited to this one question.

Kaohsiung!  Zheli!  That’s Iggy’s number!  He rushes forward, tosses his surfboard and backpack in the belly of the bus, and proceeds aboard with the Economist and “The God of Small Things” in hand.  He finds a seat.  It is soft and plush like a lazy boy, and the bus is equipped with video game consoles for each seat, so he can play every Nintendo game that was new in 1988!  Also, he can watch sleazy, violent, American movies from the same year on his private television.  And this is just Taiwan economy class.  Perhaps Taiwan is a little inundated with electronics. . .

The wheels grind to a start.  The sun has already sunk behind the Taiwan Strait.  The bus merges onto Taiwan Freeway #1, and the urban lights began to flash constantly onto Iggy’s skin.  On his wrist, his cheeks, his knees.  He looks happily out from his bus window, and pulls out his literary companion, Arundhati Roy, for the three hour journey to Kaohsiung.

He arrives at 10 PM in the city center and moves quickly out into the streets to find the next bus, the Kenting express.  This he does, and settles in for the next three hours that will carry him to the edge, the southernmost tip of Taiwan.