South, and Alone

My first time back in Taiwan in 32 years — I lived here for half a year as a small child while my father worked on a project, so this was less a new country than a rumour of one.

After Japan the difference is immediate: scooters everywhere, noise, neon — including, oddly, several Catholic churches lit up like bars.

Night markets for dinner, a menu entirely in Chinese and Google Translate doing the heavy lifting, Taiwan Beer, chicken feet on display. We fell in with Sebastian, another German, and Victor, South American by way of the United States, and the four of us stayed together the whole time.

A footnote from two and a half years later: a stranger in Japan walked up to me and asked "are you Julian?" — he had been in that club in Taipei, remembered the beard, and still had the photograph.

Sebastian from Taipei lives here now, so the group reassembled.

A drink at Ozone, at the time the highest bar in the world, and the harbour from both sides — Tsim Sha Tsui at night and the Peak by day. Lan Kwai Fong and Wan Chai after dark. Out to Lantau for the Big Buddha and Po Lin Monastery, which is the quietest place on this whole list.

And the end of the trip as a pair. Philipp was going on to his girlfriend's family in the Philippines; I was going to keep moving. Two months on trains together and it finished in an airport, which they mostly do.

After ten weeks of hostels and cheap Airbnbs I booked the Makati Shangri-La — the suite, on the 21st floor, for under two hundred euros, which felt like getting away with something.

The evening around it was not comfortable, twice over, and I spent it back inside the hotel. The breakfast buffet the next morning took me an hour and repaired most of it.

A small propeller aircraft down to Palawan, bumpy the whole way, over islands that make up for it.

El Nido's airport is the smallest I have landed at. The rickshaws had all gone by the time I was out, the terminal had locked behind me, and I stood on a dirt road working out what to do until roaming charges and a patient Airbnb host solved it half an hour later.

Not the town and the parties — a place out in the trees, and a scooter.

This is where this journey ends. What came after — Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar — was a different trip, taken alone, and belongs in a different tour.