Sunday17thJune07

Last night we ended up staying at the spa all night (they have everything there – restaurant, beds, movie screen, karaoke bar, tv rooms, and all the rest of the health and relaxation related stuff) since you pay around four pounds for everything for up to twelve hours we wanted to take full advantage.

After I got back I slept till late afternoon and headed into Taipei with my roommate. On the way back I had to take a taxi from Taoyuan city to the dorms. Usually when I get into a taxi I tell them where I want to go in Mandarin, then when they start the usual banter I quickly cut them off telling them that my Chinese is not good, they say okay and that's it for the rest of the journey.

Today, however, was a little different. As soon as I got in he started chatting away, despite my protests of being bad at Chinese. I had no option but to try and figure out what he was saying (something I do a lot less than I should.) Turned out I picked up enough to roughly understand most of what he was saying, and answer a few questions (very badly) along the way. (Although part of me wished I didn't know what he saying.) To my embarrassment I realised he was telling me how beautiful I was, potentially one of the last things you want to hear from your taxi driver. He then went on to ask if I was from America, (adding that Taiwan was a lot better than Scotland so I should stay here,) did i have friends here, why I was going to the university so late. It was hard work given that I could only pick up the odd word here or there, but he was persistent.

I thought I'd done not too badly until we got near our destination and he asked a question that I could not understand at all. It was multiple choice, he said the answer was either one, two, three or four. I tried to show I didn't understand but he kept asking; 'one, two, three or four?' What was the worst that could happen? I had a 25% chance of getting it right so picked the first one that came to me; one.

Evidently this was not the right answer.

He broke into uproarious laughter.

I still have no clue what he was asking, but I'm not too sure I want to. What you don't know can't hurt you, right?