day 26! nantou, road to tainan

So where did we leave off. Oh yes, an epic feast of hot pot, shower, and then sleep.

So the room we were in had a big AC unit. Of course, when we got there, it was very muggy and hot so we blasted that baby on high for a good couple hours before going to sleep. But while we were happily dozing away, the temperature doggedly rose back to its former glory....

I'm pretty ok with sleeping in a warm room, but as I have found over the last few days, Michael is not. We waged a silent and deadly (not but deadly) war that night over the AC remote, Michael flipping it on when he woke up from the mugginess, and me flipping it off when I woke up to AC blowing on my face. I read somewhere that it's not good for you, and I'd had an Incident in Japan where I accidentally fell asleep with it on, and I woke up sick the next morning.

So here's where the story gets a bit mysterious. Part way through the night I woke up with an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach. :( Somewhat reminiscent of..........food poisoning. *cue gasps* I'm not 100% sure but it felt very similar to the night of the Chipotcident. >< Just some amount of nausea, uncomfortableness, and wanting to throw up but my body being too stubborn too. Somehow I managed to fitfully sleep through the night.

When I woke up in the morning, though, there was no puke in sight, but still an angry stomach and....aches and chills. :( Congratulations! Food Poisoning has evolved into Fever! The mystery is sort of a chicken and egg thing, I'm not sure if I actually had food poisoning and if that led to the fever, or if the fever caused the food poisoning, or if the AC blowing caused the fever, or how the fuck this slow descent into hell started, BUT, the ball is now rolling.

Ladies and gentleman, fasten your seatbelts. :)

The room we stayed in. Michael stayed on that white foam mattress, but on the floor (which is why the AC didn't blow on him). And before you say it's karma for me stealing the bed, believe me, the bed was way more uncomfortable than the mat. I mean look at it, it's basically a bamboo cutting board.

So I woke up feeling horrible in all ways, and Doh let my aunt know that I wasn't feeling great. At this point I figured it was food poisoning, but I really don't know from what cuz I barely had any non-vegetables for hot pot. O_o And ice cream would never hurt anyone, NEVER! :o

It was just aches and pains so I pooh poohed it off, and anyway, what choice did I have? Live in that room by myself for the next two days?? No thank you D: They keep crazy guard dogs on the property and I am not ready to experience life as a mincemeat.

So we boarded the bus, along with about a billion aunties, and got ready for our trip. :) A bit of background, the trip was organized by my aunt's brother, Simon shushu (uncle), as a company retreat. He's not my uncle cuz technically my aunt is my aunt-in-law? So we're not related by blood. But yah. Company retreat. And they were very kind to let me and Michael tag along. :) All the other people on the trip work for Simon shushu. Michael and I had thought it would be a short bus ride to some mountain, then a hike, and then we're done, but turns out it was a two day trip. The first day, we drive down to southern Taiwan, the second morning, we hike, and then drive back up. Total miscommunication on my part. Oops.

The bus was pretty sweet, it's a charter bus with all the seating on the "upper floor" of the bus. I hopped in first and chose the "best" but also most uncomfortable (?) seat. Right in the very front of the bus, so I could see out the window. It's right over the driver's head though, so the floor slants upward a lot and you don't get any legroom. Fortunately I have short stubby  legs (wait, fortunately...?) so I don't need it. Michael is behind me, aunt to the back and right side.

To my right is the stairway up to the seats. So I had a pretty cool little isolated setup. :)

Aaaaand that's basically all the photographs I took for the rest of the day. Because as the day went on, the sickness got gradually worse. :( We loaded the bus, started driving. The first 2 hours, I spent curled up in a ball, willing myself not to throw up. As much as I wanted to to get it done and over with, I absolutely did not want to be THAT person that pukes at the beginning of a long trip on a bus. :( In front of a bunch of strangers no less. NO WAY JOSE. The mind is greater than the body, cuz as I clutched my plastic bag and ached and shivered and flickered in and out of consciousness, I didn't puke :D YAYYYY.

To add insult to injury, about 1 hour through the drive, the ladies on the bus started to....karaoke. Yerp. Surround sound system. It was like they had previously decided that no one was gonna make it off the bus alive. Ohhh the auditory carnage............

And did I mention that as you get away from Taipei, you get more and more Taiwanese language speakers? I know literally 0 Taiwanese. So the singing, though I'm sure was well done, basically sounded like caterwauling amplified 10x by a mic.

Well we finally got to our first stop, some huge famous Buddhist temple. Actually at this point, my gag reflex was starting to fade, and I was just feeling the aches and pains. My aunt felt my forehead and said I was burning up. So I dunno, not sure if food poisoning or fever or both. Needless to say I didn't get off at the temple, and just lay there on the seat til they all got back.

And that's pretty much how the day went. I lay there, they got on and off the bus to pee and see various things. Everyone was so kind to me though. Simon shushu tried to find some medicine for me, and asked our bus driver if he had some. He actually asked some random bus driver whom he THOUGHT was our bus driver, and even though this dude had no idea who we were he said he did have some medicine and kindly gave it to us.

It was a bottle of...I'm guessing old rain water mixed with dragon bones. Typical Chinese-y looking medicine. They urged me to drink half the bottle. I sipped it politely and BOOM foodpoisoningvomitness is back in business. :D

Still it was a very sweet thought.

At another stop my aunt got some pills from someone else and like the start of a bad date rape story I unquestioningly took them. :D Michael joked that they were just using me as a lab rat. Funny thing is I never take meds when I'm sick but with all these aunties filtering in and out, and all making a fuss, I kind of wanted to end the pain anyway. Plus, it was really nice for everyone go to out of their way. ><

For lunch we stopped at a kejia (Hokkien) city/village. They are a...tribe? group? of indigenous people. Errr that's misleading. They're not aboriginals, they're just a group of people that have lived on the island for a long time. It's an ethnicity I spose. My dad's family is from there. :) Anyway we stopped there for lunch and I came off with them cuz I was feeling better from the white pills. XD They kept like...trying to get me to eat and drink a little. I know it's what you do for sick people but good god I did NOT want to eat food. I think I choked down 2 noodles and a leaf of cabbage and felt sick again.

More fitful sleeping, driving, stopping. That night we stopped by a seafood restaurant for dinner. It's kind of cool, it's a tiny little restaurant, and they have no menu. They just cook whatever they caught that day and that's what you eat. I was dragged in again and this time I felt well enough to take some pics.

Of course the first thing they bring out and put right in front of me is sea snails. I blanched.

Boiled shrimp.

Crab. Like, it actually looks really nice, looking at it now. They cooked it all super fast too.

This dish was fish skins. :o interesting. My dad would've liked it.

I choked down/was force fed a mouthful of rice, that and the smell and sight of so much seafood had me running for the bus again.

After that, though, just a straight shot drive to the inn we were staying at for the night. We got in around maybe 8 or so, and the first thing I did was just fall onto the bed and sleeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

The place was pretty cute/quaint, it was a little inn up in the mountains. Surprisingly the rooms were pretty spacey, Michael and I each got a bed. It was totally damp there though, and no AC so there was a definite smell of mildew. I didn't care at that point, just passed the fuck out.

At around midnight my aunt came to wake us up and see if we wanted to sit outside for a while, cuz the air had cooled and was more fresh than inside the rooms. I felt a bit better so we did. There was an outdoor seating area where everyone had been chatting/drinking tea before (but most had gone to sleep already). The air was really refreshing, and me, Doh and my aunt got to chat for a while in the cool air. Vicky ahyee joined us too. There were huge bugs and moths flying around the lights at the top of the seating area, and it was both disgusting and cool at the same time. I mean they were HUGE! and all looked so different.

Despite the fever or what have you, that night was really pretty nice. We talked about real stuff,  enveloped in mountain darkness, with sounds of nature all around us. :)