Title says it all. Been back in the states for almost a year and a half now. Although it is my country, after living in Taiwan for six years the U S of A seems quite lackluster. There is literally nothing to do here except buy stuff, go to bars, or go walking in a park. At night, everything is closed except Denny’s and bars. Not like Taiwan, where I could hop on a scooter, go see something crazy, go to a night market, 85 degrees which are open 24/7, a doujiang dian, whatever. Hang out in the city, or go cruising through the jungle.
Unless you live smack dab in NYC or downtown SF, life is just dull here (and the latter place is full of heroin needles and human excrement). My wife ended up joining me here too…and she agrees, its just boring. There’s nothing to do. We mainly just watch Roku every night. Maybe because we are both night owls it makes it worse, since American nightlife is pretty lame, with bars being the only late night option, and even they close at 2am.
Maybe we’ll go back to TW when my contract is up, though we went ahead and bought a car, furniture, all that crap one has to get (tried doing it just with a motorcycle, didn’t cut it, way too cold and everything is way too far to not have a car). So feel like we have invested a lot in this, but that’s life. We’ll see.
Anyone have any similar sentiments after going back to the states? Canada is probably even worse, except yall got NHI too.
You know, it really is kinda dull in America. One night when we were at KTV, my local friends here asked me, what do you do in America in the evenings? and I could only tell them that there really ain’t that much to do unless, like you said, you can afford to live in an exciting metropolitan area.
Nature is great, but after a while, not so much my thing. Canada is absolutely gorgeous, and I think Vancouver is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever been to. Wasn’t so impressed with Toronto though.
I think a lot of it, for me, is unless you ARE in nature, you don’t spend very much time outside in the states. In Taiwan you are always going somewhere, doing something, zipping from place to place with ease. In the states, you get into the car, make your way through traffic, look for some place to park, etc etc.
Question though: except for food, drinking, music, coffee, and shopping (except for nature), what else IS there to do…anywhere? Besides DIY projects or hobbies. Serious question, I need ideas!
Throw a house party. Can’t do that quite as easily in Taiwan. That’s one of the things I miss about America when I’m here, the relative ease of hosting a big drunk get-together at your place without some amah calling the cops at 9PM.
Akschualleee, I used to throw major house parties in Taiwan, usually would just decide that afternoon to throw a party and like 30 people would show up. I did live next to 2 other laowai, and one was a dj and the other in a band, so nobody every called anyone on us.
I gave up the drug use long ago, well, since I came back here. Legalized weed is way more potent than the shwag I got used to in TW.
