A journey to Taiwan

We were in Taiwan for a holiday during the third week of December. It was something we planned for quite some time. We thought of Japan and South Korea but eventually decided on Taiwan because my son is afraid of the volcanoes in Japan. Needless to say, we did not say anything about the fact that there are volcanoes in Taiwan too.

He can be a very frustrating person to travel with. Once he has settled down in a hotel room, it is really difficult to extract him from the hotel bed and go sight seeing again. This usually happens at night and in the morning when we want leave the hotel room to have a meal. We usually try to persuade and reason with him, though it escalates to a stern tone and threats on some days. 

But despite all the complaining, he does perk up when we reach each location. When we were in Sun Moon Lake. We wanted to visit the Formosa Aborigine Cultural Village (九镞文化村), but he kept complaining that there was nothing for him to do and that it was going to be very boring. We finally persuaded him to go. He kept on emphasising that it was boring and there would be nothing for him. 



Well, he enjoyed the cable car ride and he enjoyed looking at the traditional culture of the aborigines- their lifestyle, their houses and artefacts. He even took a video of a writeup and narrated it. It was surprising because even I was not really that keen to look at artefacts (and I was a history teacher). Note: the inscription was full of difficult words and he tried to pronounce it phonetically.

Same thing happened the next day when we wanted to go to the night market at Chungli (also known as Zhongli or Jhongli - the ever-changing name drove me crazy when I tried to do research on the internet). He kept telling us he was not hungry. But as we walked, and saw and smelt delicious snacks, he could not stop asking us to buy them. You can see the joy in his eyes when he was eating all the food. 


Lucas and his street food
I believe there are two reasons why he complains. The major reason is that he is tired. We did a lot of walking on this trip. And I think he was quite tired from all the walking. He needs to improve on his endurance. I think the other reason (and I think it is a minor one) is his reluctance to try new things. This has been something I hope he can improve on. Once he has achieved a comfort level - in a comfortable hotel bed, he does not want to try anything new. Hopefully he is able to overcome this - sometimes breaking out of your comfort zone brings great rewards. Just look at his smile when he was eating his food from the night market!

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