Rules of the Road in Taiwan

You've heard the stories of Indian cabbies who cover their dashboards with gods and gurus. After driving a scooter in Taiwan, I understand the impulse completely. I myself have resorted to using a superhero name—the Coral Wonder—in honor of my Goretex jacket of the same color that puffs up with wind as I drive. And I do feel somewhat superhuman, surmounting my biggest fear about this place (the traffic!) by getting on a scooter. I did it not because I'm so brave or so tough, you understand, but simply because I realized that I couldn't see the beauty of this island without a raincoat and a motorbike.

Here are a few tips for anyone hoping to follow my lead.

1. You can disconnect your signal lights to save energy. You will not use them here. Not ever. How to know what another driver might suddenly do? Good luck.

2. One inch of clearance is good driving—not a close call. Saving space is a virtue in such a crowded place.

3. Traffic lights, signs and other signals are good suggestions. Sure, posted rules such as these are generally good advice. “Eat your vegetables” is also good advice. It carries just about as much weight as the street signs.

4. Taxi drivers are king. That's true everywhere. But here, know that here, there's not a long legal precedent of enacting laws to limit the powers of a king.

5. A four lane road is actually a two lane road. The outside lane, which looks like it was created for moving traffic, is actually reserved for parked trucks and cars, buzzing scooters and clumps of pedestrians. If you are driving in the inner lane, expect any car, truck or swarm of scooters driving in that outer lane to swerve into your lane without warning. All sidewalks are taken up with large plants, tables, food stands and additional parked scooters or cars.

6. A two lane road is actually a three lane road. Double yellow lines at the center of the road mark the third lane, designated for weaving. This is necessary to avoid the pedestrians, scooters and large packs of stray dogs that fill the edges of the seemingly two lane road. This weaving lane exists as much to help hurried drivers as they pass motorscooters on winding mountain highways full of blind curves as it does to help them in crowded city streets during rush hour, when all lanes on the other side of the street are also completely full. Mind the three-legged dogs, as they need extra time when choosing to run out in front of your vehicle.

7. It gets easier. No, really, it does. But thank god I took out the motorcycle rider on my traveler's insurance policy.

A jazz club in Oakland. It's five years ago plus a little more, and I'm at a little table in the back, transported. I've wandered off into corridors and alleys that I've been away from for far too long now, pen in hand as I search for the secret password. The music is something like pinballs knocking on and off the insides of me. Things light up. Sirens signal something coming to life, a win. I think of white, a white heron, and of red, blood red.

Maybe it seems off topic, that jazz club years behind me now. But this morning I realized that I'm there again, in that dusky club, where nothing is scripted out. Travel is jazz. And I'm made of both, always aching for some new riff to help me come alive.

Case in point: this Chinese man. What if I went my whole life without seeing something like that? I bless the luck that brought me here, the other side of the world and drenched in song.

Arrival

Where you are, it's 5 a.m.--or 4 or 6, maybe 7. Where I am, it's 9 p.m., and I can see taxis and buses flowing past in a steady, patient stream just down the alley. Today hasn't really been a day, rather, two or three, smeared and streaked together in a jumble of airport terminals, reading lamps and rounds of dozing off in movies or audiobooks. Barring all the technology, I feel a bit like a shaman of old, crossing through a secret gateway from one world and into another with entirely different rules. The fact that Hong Kong prints all its signs in English? My one saving grace.

When I got on the bus at the airport, I quickly realized that the bus driver had neither the language nor the patience to help me navigate the city. Luckily, a young girl on vacation from her studies in Vancouver took pity on me. She and her family passed the address of my hostel back and forth between them, each making comments together until they decided that I would get off the bus with them, where they would find me a taxi. Once inside the car, I felt a calm settle over me I couldn't explain. The streets were dingy and dismally foreign, but none of that stopped me from feeling at home.

My hostel is in perfect Engrish. Signs are all missing 'a' and 'the' and 's', as charming as the man who meets me at the front desk. Older, Chinese, he nearly breaks my heart with his bent-over, crooked-walk hospitality. “You are my guest,” he tells me, flashing a grin so bright I think of a grey old fish with stripes of wild neon down its back. There's barely room for my suitcases in the elevator, and my room is decorated in period IKEA with chartreuse accents.

It's adorable. I could definitely live here.