Tag: Expat stories

At midnight as the fireworks lit up the sky, I reveled at the fact I was celebrating an Aboriginal New Year in Taiwan just in time for the new year.

Have you ever walked into a public bathroom, only to realize that you’re in the wrong one? That man at the sink is looking at you like you have three heads (or that you’re definitely missing a required part to be in this particular room). You are immediately embarrassed, and suddenly, you’ve forgotten how words work. The best you can do is back out slowly and hope that he doesn’t tell his friends (whom you’ve never met anyway, but still would rather them not find out). Well, living abroad in a very foreign country can feel a bit like that sometimes.

I used to live in Bali. I haven’t met many people on my travels that can say that they used to live there, many pass through and stay a little while but living there is different, it’s natures beauty blended with tourism’s destruction, it’s an island of contrast.