Kenting, plus a little bonus trip

So Fulbright Taiwan had its midyear conference this past Wednesday-Friday, for which we all took a trip to Kenting. Kenting is on the southern tip of Taiwan, and is known for being a beautiful vacation spot. Local friends often ask if I have been to Kenting yet, and if you wander around by the train/bus station looking like a tourist, it's likely that you will quickly be approached by people asking you, "Kenting? Kenting? Kenting?" Kenting is hard to avoid. Yet somehow I had managed to do it until Wednesday.

After a long trip that involved an unusual amount of sitting in the bus but not going anywhere, we arrived at an aquarium. I did not take any pictures on this trip, but believe me when I tell you that a mental snapshot of beluga whales getting frisky is more than enough. Other aquarium features: lots of pretty fish, loud tour groups of Taiwanese high schoolers who said "hello" to us incessantly, and a completely gratuitous un-fish-related pirate-themed section (presumably for the kids), complete with a computer game where you play rock-paper-scissors with another virtual pirate and the loser has to do a round of Russian roulette. Totally appropriate for children!

Post-aquarium, we went off to our hotel. Fulbright being a classy bunch, they put us up in a nice hotel, complete with a buffet and Western food. If that doesn't spell food coma, I don't know what does. After recovering from dinner a little bit, Gered and I went to try to find the hotel hot tub, or as we say in Chinese, "jacuzzi." It turned out to be what I would classify as more of a merely-warm tub. Oh well. Post-warm-tub: a wild night of Fulbright bonding! But not too wild, because we all had to be up early to go to...

Kenting National Park! The highlight of this trip was actually the video they played for us to introduce the park, in which they may or may not have described Kenting as resembling a contented whale frolicking in the waves. There was also a botanical garden, featuring several kinds of plants that the tour guide tried to get us to taste, plus a "man-biting-dog tree," which if you touch it with a porous part of your skin, your skin will hurt for several days! Fabulous. The botanical garden also featured large tour groups of "hello"-ing Taiwanese high schoolers, to my great chagrin.

Lunch was normalish, except for the first dish they served us that day involved a pile of something that, if it was not actually fish, was at least fish-flavored, covered with a very generous amount of mayonnaise and topped with...you guessed it...rainbow sprinkles. But of course!

In the afternoon, we went to a bird-watching place and other people watched egrets. I opted to take a short nap instead, but I don't egret it. (don't groan; you love it!) We also went to the beach, but nobody had a swimsuit with them, so only a handful of people went swimming.

That night we had a large Chinese-style dinner with a zillion courses. Afterwards, we were sent into another room to socialize, where they gave us even more snacks. I was like a contented whale. Unfortunately, the next morning my stomach was decidedly discontented, and I ended up missing almost the entire day of actual conferencing on Friday in favor of a mix of throwing up and trying not to move so I wouldn't throw up again.

I wasn't the only one who was sick, so we were faced with a dilemma. We didn't feel like we could make the trip home that evening on a big jouncy bus full of people who probably didn't want to be barfed on, but Fulbright didn't like the idea of us staying another night with nobody to take care of us. The compromise was to hire cars to take us back to Kaohsiung, where, at the insistence of the program director, we would go to the hospital. Shana, who wasn't sick, kindly volunteered to come along and keep us company, cheering us up on our queasy journey.

After talking to Dani briefly, the doctor said it was probably food poisoning, and although he knew what the treatment should be, for some reason he couldn't treat us until he found out all the proper protocol for reporting food poisoning. AUGHHH. We spent a lot of time waiting around in the hospital while the doctors did who-knows-what, wishing we were recovering at home in bed instead of waiting in hard plastic hospital chairs. Amanda and Shana hustled around figuring out insurance things and talking to doctors and generally saving our lives, and finally, slowly, things got worked out. After some rather undignified examinations and a lot of debating between doctors, it was shots all around! By the time I actually got the medicine, I was feeling significantly better just because so much time had passed. I only needed one shot, but Dan's sickness earned him 3 IV bags. Dan is a champ.

It was more than 5 hours since the time we left the hotel, but finally I arrived home and retreated into my own nice warm bed to recuperate. With a solid 11 hours of sleep, I actually felt good enough to go to school the next day, although I had to settle for watching my kids play dodgeball instead of playing with them like I had said I would. I wish they had just let me go home and sleep my way to recovery in the first place, but I guess as a Fulbright I am supposed to be engaging in cultural exchange, and what is a better cultural experience than having to go to the hospital in another country? Yeah.