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"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Liverpool any more."

March 26th 2006

Those were my thoughts when I first arrived in Taiwan. Like Dorothy being plucked out of Kansas by a tornado and ending up in the wonderful land of Oz. And like Oz, Taiwan is also wonderful, and so much more.

It's now a year since I returned home to Liverpool, and it will be a further nine months before I plan to return. Do I miss it? Partly, yes. I miss the adventure of living in a foreign country. I miss the food. I miss the colour, sounds, smells - the assault on the senses that you don't get in quite the same way outside south-east Asia.

I don't, however, miss the politics which headline every newspaper and TV news show every single day. I kid you not. You think the UK papers went overboard with the Tessa Jowell mortgage scandal-that-wasn't. That was just an average, run-of-the-mill, political news story compared with Taiwan. I don't miss the bureaucracy either. The Taiwanese get bogged down in bureaucracy, even more than the Brits! Maybe it's a hangover from the one-party state system. Maybe it's a Chinese/Taiwanese cultural thing. Who knows?

I think I would probably miss Taiwan a whole lot more if it wasn't for the fact that the special person I went to Taiwan to be with in the first place is now happily settled here in the UK with me. Maybe if I were footloose and fancy free I would have spent a few more years out there. There is so much more about Taiwan I have yet to discover, foods I've yet to try, places I've yet to visit, and people I've yet to meet. And if that isn't a good enough reason for me to keep going back to visit, I don't know what is!

Graham

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Copyright Graham Holland © 2006

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