Fulong Beach- 福隆海水浴場

Woke up feeling well-rested the next day and made some coffee so I wouldn't have to resort to the shit they serve at 7-11.  I run over to the train station just as Brian is getting in to Xizhi and notice a new face standing next to him.  Another English teacher from his branch?  Nope, turns out to be a random guy he ran into on the train, John.  John's a Canadian who just flew in to Taiwan a couple days ago, so he decides to tag along since we're all going to the same place.

The train is even more packed than yesterday, and there's no illusion of this being a comfortable ride.  John tells us he taught for a while in Korean, and now he's travelling around for a couple of months before he finds a job in Taiwan.  Listening to him makes me want to quit my job and also travel for a couple of months.  Then travel to some other random countries and do nothing with my life.  OR EVERYTHING.

Most of the passengers transfer off at Ruifang (that's the stop right before Cat Town), and we stretch out our big foreigner frames.  Pulling into Fulong at around noon, we pick up some lunch and beers and join the crawling mass of humanity to the beach.  Jesus, everybody and their cousins are getting ready for a little fun in the sun.  Far from the gate we see a line stretching on for quite a while.  I try to stroll through the gate nonchalantly.  Doesn't work.  Captain Vigilant and his trusty sidekick make sure I know about the unreasonable 100 NT fee to get in.  Ah, I guess this isn't one of those lines people stand in for really good food; it's the shittier mandatory entrance fee kind.  We don't have to wait for too long, because we're quickly ushered into an express line.  More expensive?  No.  So why are those poor schmucks standing in that line with their thumbs up their asses?  Obviously we're missing some vital clue here, but hey, the beach beckons...even for $3.  Who pays to go to the beach?!  Well, at least there's a sand sculpture festival going on right now.

I make my way across the bridge, stopping at times to take in the view.  Mountains roll along towards the coast, the hazy outline of their peaks bleeding into the white canvass behind.  Our destination, a strip of sand, sits between two expanses of water.  We eventually alight in the sand and our shoes come off.  I swear loudly.  The sand is scorching and every step brings fresh torment to the soles of my feet.  Like a true idiot I've brought my nice leather Clarks sandals and not a cheaper pair, so I'm loathe to let the sand grind them into shit.  We rush through the sculptures, since they're not the reason we came, and standing in one place to take a picture is agonizing.  They are truly amazing though.

We find a likely spot by the water, set our stuff down, and jump right in.  Right away we notice that we're the only ones in the water.  Most people are stretched out on the sand, with only a daring few even getting their toes wet.  Many are fully-clothed, with no intention of going swimming at all.  Yeah, going to the beach to go swimming's prty nice, but I wouldn't take it.

Well, fuck that.  We're out swimming around, splashing against the waves.  I immediately start trying to body surf them back to shore.  A few people see us enjoying ourselves and decide that sitting on shore sucks.  Good for them.  That's when the bodyguard comes over on his jetski.  He explains to us, apologetically, that we're only allowed to swim in the designated swimming area, a roped off square stuffed with a writhing mass of people, the water barely waist-level.  Suddenly, the source for everyone's timidity becomes clear.  Disgruntled, we pack up our stuff and move over to the 'designated swim area', wondering what rule or hidden fee they're going to spring on us next.

Swimming with all the other people, you guessed it, sucks balls.  We see the bodyguard hanging out just beyond the boundary and Brian urges me to ask him why we can't swim anywhere we want.  With Brian I'm usually subjected to all sorts of fucking requests to talk to random people on the street, his iron-clad defense being that he doesn't speak Chinese:

Brian: "Ask that guy if he wants to have sex."
Me: "Wha-no!  What the fuck is wrong with you?!"
Brian: "Stop being a pussy, he'll probably think it's funny."
Me: "He's working right now, jesus."
Brian: "You suck."
Me: "Hurry up and learn Chinese so you can ask all this stupid shit yourself."

This idea, though, actually has some merit.  We go over to the guy and I start talking.  My skills are unnecessary, this guy speaks decent English.  Apparently this is a private beach and with the purchase of our tickets we've locked ourselves into this area.  They've only got the manpower to effectively patrol this area of the beach, but if someone drowns somewhere else, they're still liable.  Ok, reasonable.  Then the guy gives us a conspiratorial look:

Lifeguard: "But if next time you want to go over there," he points down shore, "no one will stop you."
Us: "Really?"
Lifeguard: "We never had this conversation though.  I'm a good lifeguard.  Don't tell anyone!"

Sweet.  We pack up our stuff and head over to the free and better beach.  From the strip beach the water is just deep enough that we can't ford it while carrying our stuff, or even caulk the wagon, so we leave it for the time being.  Finally, what we came for.  The Taiwanese people here have no problem swimming around and enjoying the beach the way it was intended to be njoyed, and a few people even manage to surf on the feeble waves that roll in.  Not much else to say from here on out.  We enjoy the hell out of ourselves playing frisbee and drinking beer in the ocean.  Oh yeah, and swimming, lots of swimming.  John proves to be an enjoyable companion (also far better at frisbee) and regales us with tales of life in Korea.  I strike up a conversation with a South African girl who asks me to take a picture of her friends.  She has an exotic-sounding name, like all South Africans do, until your realize that Afrikaans is just a variant of Dutch.  Brian and I photobomb a group of Taiwanese teenagers and I get thrown into the water for my trouble.  They decide not to fuck with Brian after I try to wrestle him into submission and fail miserably.  At one point I stand out one shallow strip in the ocean and look out towards sea, thinking of my friends and the fun times we had backpacking, amongst other moments.  Back home I might not have spent every waking hour with them, but it was good to know they were in the same area, or landmass even.  Now we're separated by the Pacific.

We tried to cross the water between the two beaches.  Too deep.  So we fucked around in the water for a bit before picking up our stuff and walking the long way around.

Selfy-Sundays!  I'm also going to start blogging about food now too!  This is me with some random queer.

The day stretches on blissfully, but when you teach on Monday, the evening always looms, even in the early hours of the day.  Loudly bitching about having to work tomorrow, we board the train and settle in for the long ride home, this our one last reprieve before sleep takes us, and we face our crazy little shits in the afternoon.