Table of Contents
Prologue
The Talk
Part One : Arrival and Around the Island
Taipei - A full first day
Taipei - Art, luxury, and massage
Tamshui - Fish Bite Foot
The Northern Coast - A Fairy Cave, UFOs, and oyster omelets
Yilan - A welcome breath of wholesomeness
Yilan - More mature pursuits
Hualien - Hostel stay and an ill-advised exploration
Taitung - But fi rst, an offshore adventure
Taitung - Our whirlwind tour kicks into high gear
Taitung - Up, up, and away
Taitung - Rocking Grandpa and Granny
Taitung - A change in accommodations
Taitung - The moon represents my heart
Pingtung - Passing through
Tainan - The Portland of Taiwan
Tainan - Not the fortune cookie we’d expected
Tainan - Puppets and astrological errors
Part Two : Settling In and Further Excursions
New Garden City - BARK! YIP! YIP! BARK!
Smangus - The winding road to autonomy
Taipei - Keeping up appearances
Taipei - Yo Meltykiss ma?
Taipei - That’s what grad school is for
Taipei - A strange invitation
New Garden City - Late-night scavenger hunt
Yunlin - Lanterns in a puppet town
Gukeng - Coffee-fl avored sausage from a happy pig
Nantou - Dark night of the soul
Sun Moon Lake - A peculiar mingling of love and death
Sun Moon Lake - We fi nd ourselves managing a hotel
Sun Moon Lake - Everything is transitory
Taichung - Weird enough at last
New Garden City - A Sense of community
New Garden City - Exercising with the old folks
Taipei - Retail therapy
New Garden City - We are not gardeners
Taipei - Mr. Ogay’s Table Manners
New Garden City - Now we have a chicken
Tainan - Pirates, prostitutes, and puppets (Oh my!)
Kaohsiung - Failure and success in the L.A. of Taiwan
Houtong - This is cat country
Jinshan - The perfect antidote
Japan - Semi-coda in Kyoto
Taipei - Putting down roots
Acknowledgments, Further Reading about Taiwan, Notes
