Yes.
WTF!
Those things freak me out.
One was trapped in a 711. Saw it the second I walked in. I immediately did an about face and left.
The g** damn army of scooters. I did not know about “scooter culture” before I came here and I haven’t warmed up to it in the years since.
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Had insomnia after a few weeks living here and went out during He night to walk it off. Then… cockroaches everywhere on the sidewalk at midnight, and all in front what during the day are restaurants
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This. My first earthquake here, on the 7th floor or so of the Mandarin Training Center of ShiDa, and I’m expecting us to all do the “drop, cover, hold” or something. Nobody moves. When the shaking stops, I ask the instructor about evacuating (as you do during earthquake drills…) and she laughs. Class resumes. Uhhh…
I think my biggest wtf moment was food sanitation. Seeing veggies washed with water from hoses, in tubs or basins beside the road, getting covered in exhaust. Gross.
Fast forward several years, I’ve learned to pretend I don’t see it…
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Someone trying to sell me pills of turtle oil, snake oil, shark oil and whatever. I didn’t even want to eat Chinese food as I hadn’t gotten used to the differences yet and this person was pushing me to buy this expensive bs. I ater found it was some pyramid sales stuff. She was so pushy to the point of unbearable. She even wanted to give me some bottles for free and took the oils in front of me. And tried to feed me the pills hahhahah. I told her I am not taking not because of money but because I don’t see the point in consuming those. She was very upset.
The funny thing is that she was not Taiwanese but a foreigner who had been living here almost as long as I existed.
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Betel nut stains, which I initially thought were bloodstains. I wondered what kind of mad gangster warfare had been going on outside my apartment building. Once I’d been told it was betel nut, that was a supplemental WTF moment, because I’d come to associate that drug with elderly women in Southeast Asian tribal areas. It was almost like seeing all the tough guys here having knitting as their main hobby.
Betel nut girls were also confusing. I thought they were prostitutes, but the sizes of the stalls, and apparent lack of a separate bedroom, didn’t make sense to me.
And my first earthquake was a giant WTF moment, but, well, that was after all the 9-21 quake, so I think I’m excused for being terrified of that one.
I’d already lived in Korea for a while, and travelled in Asia a lot, so much of the “East Asian” stuff (crowds, markets, eating styles) was no longer new for me.
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The other thing is the burning of the ghost money AKA the great monthly polluting.
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Isn’t this basically just another wack things in Taiwan thread?
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Wait…someone literally tried to sell you snake oil?
I thought that was just a figure of speech!
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There is something wrong with this?
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I intend it to be about the first WTF moment Someone experienced coming here and not everything strange to them.
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Lol. That’s messed up.
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First day I arrived here, I walked to the ‘tourist spot’ closest to my hotel which happened to be Longshan Temple. It was all fine and dandy until a staggering homeless person threw up on the ground three feet away from me.
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Hmm, sounds just like back home in California. 
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Surprised no one mentioned about the driving here, everyday I see scooter drivers gambling with their life, Im still not used to it.
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people eating and talking at the same time, burp, putting the rest of the food on the table and scarving the teeth in front of everyone.
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Yeah, so it’s a “Wack Things When You Arrived in Taiwan” thread.
Completely different!
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Realizing that convenient stores is a bank and a post office.
Later realizing that it is also a box office to buy event/concert tickets too.
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This shocks everyone, it still gets to me and I’ve been here a long time. I really don’t get why something is so important as to require having to talk when the mouth is full of food. It is hard to hear what is being said and really disgusting. Croaking on phlegm while eating and as you say picking the teeth over dinner can never become “Normalized” to those not of that persuasion.
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