Have you ever had a local come up and ask directions?

Taiwan Living in Taiwan
21

I helped a woman use the MRT card value adding machine. She was giggling with embarrassment as I had to walk her through each step. It was fun. :slight_smile:

22

[quote=“Chris”][quote=“Feiren”][begin: off-topic rant]

Is is really necessary to refer to the Taiwanese as ‘locals’? I find this ‘us-and-themish.’ Call me sensitive, but I don’t think I would like being referred to as a local by say an English-speaking Indian in my home country.
This thread for example, could have been called ‘Do other drivers ever ask you for directions?’ without any significant loss of information but with a gain in niceness.

[end: off-topic rant][/quote]
I find the word “local” a respectful term, much preferable to, say, “native”. And I would not feel offense at being referred to as a local by someone who is visiting my home country.[/quote]

It’s certainly a lot better than ‘monkeys’, which I’ve seen used here on Forumosa. :noway:

23

I know this will sound like I’m making it up, but the only time I was asked for directions was from a blind man. I was at the bus stop one day when a blind guy came up and ambled over to me and started talking to me in Taiwanese. I told him in Chinese that I can’t speak Taiwanese but he must’ve realized my Chinese wasn’t that good as he asked again in English except his English wasn’t up to it so we went back to Chinese again. Anyways, he wanted someone to tell him when his bus arrived so he wouldn’t have to go ask each bus driver if it was the right bus. After asking where he was going I also told him another bus line that went the same place.

EDIT: I see ironlady already had the blind man story. Oops. I also forgot that my family always asks me for directions now. Yesterday I even had to tell them how to get to my father-in-law’s grave.

And I dunno about the confusion being from maps being banned, but it might also be from bad maps. I have to say that Taiwan has some of the worst maps in the world. You’ll get map books where the orientation is north-up on one page and east-up on the next page, different scales on each page, roads being drawn straight when they are curved and vice versa, and roads being drawn in the completely wrong place, not to mention that they don’t have any overlap in the maps across pages. If a road name gets cut in half at the page boundary, that’s just tough.

Oh what I wouldn’t give for a nice Thomas Brothers style map book of Taiwan or even just Greater Taipei. I once spent an hour at a bookstore going through all their map books and none of them was without some significant flaw.

24

The Sun River people produce some great maps of Taiwan.

25

[quote=“Sam Vimes”]
Actually, thinking back on it, the fact that it made me happy maybe was kind of pathetic. Anyway, has it ever happened to you? Were you pathetically happy about it like I was?[/quote]

Guy in a car asked me once while I was on scooter. I understood he searched a street so I just sai d ‘deng xiaaa’ and gave him my downtown map (a free tourist one) that I used to carry with me. Maps in Taiwan suck (by the way).

26

The Sunriver maps are great (though they are also let down from a lack of overlap). But even the regular 1000NT or so one-volume road maps are OK. I haven’t seen the problems with orientation etc. that jlick mentioned. The problems the one-volume map I own does have are minor: sometimes it’s not clear where a major road turns into a minor one; stuff like that. The only major potential problem I can think of is where the map’s out of date. I remember getting temporarily lost somewhere south of Kaohsiung where there was some new road construction.

27

We may have been lost in the same place. My husband and I took a drive one day, 4 or 5 years ago, and decided to follow the signs of a newly constructed road. Thought it would be a nice drive. It was until we got stuck in the middle of no where.

It was very beautiful country, however.

When we got out of there, we bought a map and there the road was on the map, just as the posted signs said it was. But there were only about 10 miles of constructed road and no signs whatever stating that anything was dangerous or in-complete.

28

[quote=“Feiren”]Yes. Many times. I also get asked for direction a lot by friends and people at work.

[begin: off-topic rant]

Is is really necessary to refer to the Taiwanese as ‘locals’? I find this ‘[color=blue]us-and-themish[/color].’ Call me sensitive, but I don’t think I would like being referred to as a local by say an [color=blue]English-speaking Indian in my home country.[/color]
This thread for example, could have been called ‘Do other drivers ever ask you for directions?’ without any significant loss of information but with a gain in niceness.

[end: off-topic rant][/quote]

Couple of things here.

  1. The English speaking Indian is most likely not being stared at all the time and is probably going to be considered to be a local as much as anybody else is. Even if he has a sing song accent and wobbles his head if he was in Australia I’d not be leaping to the conclusion that he was indeed a foreigner.

  2. When we could be considered to be a “local” by the “locals” then I’ll concede your off topic rant is on track.

29

Twice.

One time I was walking and a guy and girl stopped their scooter next to me. I wasn’t wearing a hat or anything - my blonde hair was totally visible. They just casually asked me how to get somewhere. I told them how to get there. They said thanks, and rode off.

My life was complete.

Then one time I was with my Japanese friend, and a Taiwanese woman asked us which bus to catch. When we started explaining the routes to her she suddenly got embarrassed when she realised we were foreigners. We stood at the bus stop with her for about 10 minutes, and every time our eyes met she would start laughing hysterically in embarrassment.

I asked her why she was so embarrassed. She just kept mumbling shit about how we were foreigners. I told her she didn’t have to be embarrassed.

I wanted to slap her upside the head. Stupid woman.

30

I did exactly the same thing with an older TW obasan lady, but she didn’t ask me–I butted in and showed her how to use the dang thing because I was waiting in line behind her.

No idea how she felt about that.