trip to taipei - overall

it was a trip born out of the need to kill my boredom. and as in all trips where i travelled alone, i focused my attention on the gay-side of things. checking out gaymen, and exploring gay places, and i think i have blogged about them in my previous entries. on top of that, there were also things in general that made the place so different from the norms that i am used to... here're some of them:

• the place is superbly energetic. lotsa people, and lotsa spontaneity. you get baskers, painters, street performers, etc. in singapore, things tend to be a lot more organized. people are not as spontaneous. to the point of being boring, if i may add. and i opined this is becos there is just no critical mass to sustain bottom up spontaneity.

• there are so many people, and so many nationalities. and the locals are so nice to everyone, regardless of nationalities. this is so different from singapore where people are increasingly xenophobic, and it's killing and strangling the place. i often suspect singapore's xenophobia is born out of insecurities as a small state, coupled with greed and self-centredness of its citizens.

• the place is superbly clean it's almost surreal. people bothered to take the responsibility to keep the place clean and are very conscious of their own personal habits. i can hardly find a rubbish bin around and often, i end up holding my rubbish until i can find a bin, which may be a long distance away. and it wasn't just me, in general, everyone did that. in contrast, singapore's cleanliness is becos there is an army of cleaners that sweep the place regularly. it's not born out of habits but staged. 

• people are considerate and polite. as an example, people actually queue up at the mtr and allow passengers to leave the trains before boarding, and they do not push. so unlike what i've experienced here. enough said.

• people are accepting of each other and coexist well. ok, at least that is what i experienced during my short few days there. i supposed the general homogeneity of the societal make-up helped. in contrast, it's quite normal to keep getting reminders of the need to steer clear of sensitive topics relating to, say, race and religion, and people don't feel comfortable with glbts. but well, we are progressing.

• and it's a huge place, relative to singapore, that is. i supposed the size mattered a lot. and this, perhaps was one major factor (apart from demography) that defined the differences between taipei/ taiwan and singapore. just look at my sentence, i had compared singapore with taipei and with taiwan... cos singapore's stark reality is that it is a city and a state.

it's a generally disorganized organized city, if you know what i mean. and that made taipei, and taiwan in general, a very interesting place to visit.