Boating to Bali - a (very honest) Day in the Life

My brother asked what a day in the life looks like for us right now. It's a very good question because we have really struggled to establish any regularity in our lives. We are AIMING to wake-up, have a morning devotional with a song, spiritual thought and prayer, eat before hunger melt-downs strike, study Chinese for a half hour, provide Kai time to stretch and do ballet exercises, provide EV time to practice the piano, and make sure our place is cleaned up before we head out anywhere. (The cleaning I am much stricter about here because there are cockroaches, but also because we can't cook in the kitchen if any space is taken up by mess, we can't eat more than one meal without dirtying every dish we have here, and if anything is out of place, I begin to feel very claustrophobic.)

Laying out the wish-list like that, it is easy to tell why this ideal feels like a daily impossibility. Q is up to his eyeballs in new work requirements. He has been able, via ear-plugs or ear phones, to drown us out. But we are rich with resistance around here which probably stems from a lack of structure, so between lousy kid attitudes, no space for autonomy, and silence requirements which diminish our space, or our ability to battle it out, or both, AND parents with too many hopes for the day, what life actually looks like is a daily escape into whatever activity we can find or make. (Less the papa, who is making it happen, just at home on the computer.)

Boy was THAT therapeutic! But escape is what we are currently good at, and here is a taste of Friday's adventure!

We headed out first thing because I thought we were on a time constraint for a commitment that afternoon (only remembering later I got the day wrong). We stopped for "Chinese pizza" - a pastry-like burrito skin with green onions cooked into it and wrapped up with egg, which we took to a quieter, less cigarette-butt filled location: the nature reserve behind our local MRT station.

It's hard to imagine, enjoying views like this, that we could still find things to fight and gripe and complain about, but somehow we were successful. Eloise's face here is her being grumpy about something on the way to our adventure.

After we polished off our breakfast, we took the MRT to Tamsui where we bought Arthur the "sunglassers" he'd seen on an earlier outing so he could quit whining it was "too bright!"

Then we hiked down to the ferry dock to take a boat ride to Bali, a town across the river. Or at least that is what I hoped we were doing. As we approached, we could tell the boat was loading and I didn't know how long we would have to wait for the next one, so I hurriedly reported our ages to the ticket lady, payed, and boarded, putting us at the mercy of whatever the ferry's destination was.

So though I didn't confirm anything, we did in fact wind up in Bali. I wasn't sure what we would find there - in fact going was the plan for the novelty of the boat ride - but the boat ride was pleasant and brief and we found ourselves on a pleasant strip of river front and a small town feeling a bit like Catalina. First thing we noticed there were the many bikers, including smaller kids who looked like they were on rented bikes.

This peeked my curiosity because I had actually inquired about bike rental at a bike shop in Tamsui, but it didn't have the seats or size of bikes to accommodate my two non-riders and shorter legged people. So as we got off the boat, a lady asked in Chinese if we were interested in riding bikes, I told her I was, so we wound up following her to a bike shop with kids bikes, baby bike seats, bikes for 2, and even bikes for 4. As we walked there, however, and old, toothless gentleman followed us on a motorized scooter and told me in English that the next bike shop down the way would be cheaper.

We kept on with the woman so I could get a price comparison point, and it was easy to walk away because I was in a skirt and without Q our only option was the 4 person bikes which I didn't want to do without Q's muscle.

However, at the next shop, when after hearing prices, I told the old toothless gentleman (who turned out to be the front man for the shop and not a friendly passerby with helpful tips for the unsuspecting tourist) my same excuse, he pointed out a motorized four-seater. Now THIS we could do! Still, I figured it might be best to pass on it for the day and come back when Q could play with us. But I just told the man I'd look at it first. After he showed us the bike and explained how to work it, he gave us the price of $500/hr, or about $18/hr.

I was ready to walk away because I hadn't brought very much cash on me, thinking our adventure would be much shorter than it turned out being. But I told myself if we could get it for $300 we might be able to afford it. When I gave him the number I was thinking, he told me no way. I told him we'd come back a different day with the dad. His price came down again to what he said was the lowest - $400. I told him if he could do it for $350 we would. So we got the bike for 1 hour for just over $11.

And we were off! A bike full of foreigners, and kids at that, drew a lot of attention, and we got a lot of waves, pointing, friendly calls of "Hello!" and thumbs up from the people around us. The ride was a lot of fun and very beautiful. I first drove down in the direction of what we knew. It was fun to see our home bank of the river from such a distance. I didn't realize just how close the national park was to us. We are near the base of a hill here in Hongshulin, and from so close, all we can see is the hill. But just over the hill is the HUGE mountain/park, Yangminshan. Seeing it made me all the more excited to find out about exploring a bit more there.

The gold roof on the left is the Tamsui MRT station. The left cluster of buildings is Tamsui. The right cluster is Hongshulin, and the peak between is Yangmingshan, and a national park.

Eloise on work out equip near playground.

We headed in the opposite direction and on to the less-familiar about half-way through our time. We came across 2 playgrounds that Stew wanted to stop at, but I wanted to use our time to find out what we could see and possibly come back to, so we only stopped very briefly on the way to return the bike.

We almost didn't make it! As it turns out, the bike's battery was ALMOST out of power. At first, we thought it might be a little glitch the bike guy had warned us about and had proactively helped us to trouble-shoot if we had issues. But eventually it became evident it was just that the battery legitimately was spent.

Thank goodness for Kai! Not only did we need to get up a few gentle rises, but heading back, we were heading into a steady wind. Our last rise came right before the bike shop and the battery went completely out. If I had been in shorts, we might have been able to muscle through, but my motion was limited by my skirt and modesty, and we started slipping back. At that point, Kai hopped off and was able to push while I let off the brake and pedaled. We made it within the time given us.

The bike guy apologized, and I might have asked for our money back, or at least some, but there was no harm done, and in fact, was a bit more exciting with the little challenge to overcome. So I hope the bike guy remembers next time and gives us a better deal, or at least makes sure the battery is fully charged!

Walking back towards the boats from the bike shop, once again we realized the boat was leaving, so we hustled, hopped on and came back to Tamsui. After we polished off 4 bowls of beef noodles (niu rou mian), we headed home to rest before Kai's ballet class in Taipei that evening. But THAT adventure is for another post.