The very sweet Japanese Jetstar employee came running onto the plane frantically searching me out and calling my name. 

She pushed past the other passengers and flight attendants in the aisle like it was a matter of life and death. I sat there, appreciating the effort. 

She threw off the last few rows of travellers and finally accomplished her mission just minutes before the plane pushed back. I now had the ticket for my onward flight in my hands. 

I wouldn’t have booked an onward flight. I had no idea how long I would be in Taiwan but at check-in the two Jetstar employees were adamant that an onward ticket was needed if I wanted to get through Taiwan immigration and they were being real annoying. 

I decided about a month would be enough time in Taiwan, booked the ticket, completed the check-in process and walked away from the counter, bemused by the fuss. 

I looked at the ticket. 

TAOYUAN – SINGAPORE – 25th DECEMBER 2013 

‘I guess I’m going to Singapore in a month then.’ I thought, not entirely convinced. 

I wasn’t sure what was waiting for me in Taiwan or if I would take that onward flight but it would be almost a month before I would be confronted with the decision of the ticket staring back at me. Whatever Taiwan had to offer, I was going to let it. 

_

Entering the large hall before immigration at Taoyuan International Airport I felt the excitement again, always unique to entering a country for the first time. 

I placed my passport and forms on the counter, the immigration agent scanned them over and noticed the blank space for the line titled address. 

“Where will you be staying?” he asked. 

“I’ll just find a hotel on the street.” I said confidently. 

“Wow, so free!” he said with a smile before emphatically stamping my passport. 

I felt light and fluffy, a balloon set free to float through a wide open sky. I had just had a friendly immigration experience, a rarity. 

Outside the arrival hall I approached an ATM and gritted my teeth. 

’Come on!’ 

Since Korea standing in front of ATMs was always angst inducing. 

I was forming plan B, C and D in my mind when the blue notes shot out at me as if to say, “What? I’m an ATM, this is what I do, calm down.” 

Was Taiwan some fairytale land? Some realm beyond our own that was free of annoying shit? 

No, but in those first hours I felt like it was on my side, as if the island were a living spirit making sure that everything went smoothly for me. 

I liked Taiwan already. 

I got a ticket from the bus counter without knowing how much I had paid for it in a currency I could understand and then went to the bay to wait for my bus to Taipei. 

The old looking bus rolled in with curtains and other cute tidbits hanging all over it. I gave it a quizzical, jaded look then showed my ticket to the driver and jumped aboard. 

I walked the almost empty bus looking for a seat and was shot……….. 

|”%^00****? 

My heart constricted and the blood rushed to my cock. 

She was pretty, beautiful in fact and she was staring me down, a stare that only meant one thing, no subtlety about it. A long knowing glare of lust. 

‘Not now.’ I thought as I threw my bag down, rearranged my throbbing cock and collapsed into a seat behind her. 

As we headed towards Taipei, the traditional Chinese characters lighting the buildings outside the bus entered and exited my field of vision, little reminders of the new soil I was on. 

Asian nations have by far the most beautiful writing systems. 

Korea’s beautiful artistic shapes

Japan’s scribbled flow 

and now Taiwan’s traditional Chinese lines  

These differences were pleasant culture shocks I enjoyed. 

The bus arrived outside Taipei Main Station, the streets were dark and I began to feel a sense of unease. I wanted the simplicity to keep going, I wanted to keep the chaos away. 

The imposing red and white building of the station loomed over my shoulder as I lit a cigarette and looked around for a ride. 

I smoked a few more cigarettes before jumping in a bright orangey yellow taxi. I showed the driver the directions to Taipei Hostel and we sped off. 

Despite my freedom bragging at immigration, I had booked a room in a hostel, I just wasn’t too keen on staying there. I booked it in haste as I walked out of my hotel room in Tokyo but remembering the pictures online, I thought it would be a mistake. 

As the taxi made a turn into another sidestreet I was becoming paranoid the old man taxi driver was trying to rip me off. He seemed to be just circling around narrow alleyways for the fun of it, doing anything he could think of to ensure the counter kept ticking up. 

I had no real idea how much 70 NTD was, I was a little embarrassed when I found out later. He was probably just trying to push the three minute ride up to the minimum. 

I entered Taipei Hostel, checked in and went to my room for some much needed rest.

The hostel turned out better than what I had expected from the photos. It was a bare basics kind of place but the private rooms had access to a shared, large open balcony with an incredible view of the urban mess of 21st century Taipei and the room itself was cheap, comfortable enough and offered privacy. It ticked all the boxes for a first station in a new country. 

I smoked a couple of cigarettes, took a long powerful piss and then went to my room and blacked out on the bed. 

The next morning I opened my eye, that isn’t a typo. I opened my eye, as one of them was no longer working. 

I jumped out of my skin, my heart racing away from me as I ran to the mirror… 

“WHAT THE FUCK!” 

My left eyelids were locked together and protruded an inch away from my head. 

I quickly came to a diagnosis, a mosquito bite, the dumb flying prick had taken my eye out of service while I slept. I could accept the nuisance of a mosquito bite but out of all the skin available, it had decided to stick its needle there, leaving me half blind and fully fucked. 

The days came and went with the eye showing no signs of healing. It was an awful two weeks of sneaking out before the sun came up to get as much 7-Eleven food as I could carry and staying holed up in my room until the fluid cleared out and gave me my eye back. 

As the reaction to the bite subsided and my sight went back to normal, I started thinking about Taiwan. While I was nursing my eye back to health the island outside had gone on without me. I was done missing out on it. I wanted to know what this mysterious and shunned place was like. 

I checked out and bounced around from hostel to hostel and street to street with no real moments of expansion. I was meeting people, I was eating plate after plate of delicious Taiwanese dumplings and the unsurprisingly delicious 7-Eleven food but something was missing. 

I was only getting sips of magic, I wanted the whole damn jug of magic juice. 

I was beginning to think Taiwan could become a waste and I hated that thought. 

I decided the best chance I had was to find a party hostel and do what I’m usually bad at, being open and extroverted. 

I found one online that fit the bill, it was near Taipei 101, had a nice lounge and was cheap. It also looked to be a perfect melting pot of backpackers looking to get drunk together with ample opportunity for casual sex. 

Little did I know it would vastly affect the rest of the journey. 

The hostel’s owner checked me in. After explaining the hostel’s story and running through the usual check-in routine she placed her hand on my thigh. She was much older than me – in her forties, possibly fifties – but still hadn’t lost her charms. 

I relaxed, if the hostel’s owner was flirting with me then it looked pretty certain this place was exactly what I was looking for. 

I could find that something about Taiwan I had been missing. 

My search wasn’t based solely on primal urges, I was looking for people, people to investigate Taiwan with. The insane ratio of beautiful women around didn’t hurt, but it’s not that easy for me to fall in love with a place, Korea and Japan had a similar ratio and it wasn’t their women that had made me fall for them. 

Taiwan had the same potential though and I was disappointed that such a promising start had eroded after several weeks of low energy. I needed to investigate deeper and give it the chance to woo me but I was sick of searching alone. 

The hostel, oddly named JV’s, was exactly what I was looking for, and within a few days I felt completely renewed. 

I now had a revolving door of fellow searchers and a couple of solid gangs. 

My solid gangs were… what should I call them… 

Erm. Erm. Erm. 

I’ll call these gangs CanSpaPan and Chingium… 

CanSpaPan consisted of three girls, one each from Canada, Spain and Japan. 

Chingium consisted of a Chinese girl and Belgium guy. 

I would jump from one ship to another, a wild pirate thieving fun and hilarity and when bored snatch up some other guest and take them on an extraordinary journey of wonderful boooooze and dazzling bitchessss. 

Christmas was approaching and I had found what I wanted, I had found people and I had found Taiwan. 

It was magic, a madhouse, a free-for-all asylum of shambolic, alcoholic? Celebration. A romping, riot of nonsense. 

_  

It was now Christmas Eve and I felt like celebrating it. 

My new friend had a shiny bald head, a polished egg of a shiny bald head. There was a certain novelty to a young guy with a completely hairless head. 

His English accent wasn’t too different from my own. He had a relaxed, happy-go-lucky  disposition and he was the only one interested in going out that night. 

We went out to a bar, the infamous Carnegie’s, an Irish bar and well known local hookup spot. I’d been there a few weeks before in one of my temporary hostel arrangements with a black guy from the US.

It was dead that night. I got the number of a Chinese Australian girl who was lost looking for another bar and had taken a wrong turn into the sleaze. It was the only victory of the night. 

Me and Young Bald Head found it much more alive on Christmas Eve. 

Sat at the bar we were approached by a woman who time had not been kind to. She was a prostitute and well past her prime for the profession. 

She would clumsily cling to our arms, be politely rejected, do a circle of the other potential customers in the bar and then come back in for another try. 

“Are you okay? Do you need some help?” the bartender asked me. 

“No, we’re fine.” I replied sipping on my drink, we weren’t fine but there was no use ruining my chances with the attractive bartender for some crazed hag. 

She eventually settled her efforts on Bald, the more they talked, the more I worried he was being swayed into a night of horror. 

I pulled my friend from her grasp and sent her in the direction of some older looking foreigners, one man’s trash is another’s gold. 

Away from the crazed hag we got talking to a couple of younger guys at a table. As we spoke about something or something else, my pint glass slipped, dropped to the floor and smashed everywhere. 

It wasn’t a purposeful strategic move but I took advantage of it. It was enough of an excuse to move tables to the two attractive girls who had been giving me glances. 

They were young college girls, Charlie and No Need For A Proper Name, they looked out of place among the foreign men and older prostitutes. We started talking and I was confident I could pull it off with the more attractive of the two, Charlie. 

As we all took a smoke break, Crazed Hag came back for one more attack. 

“Help me!” I whispered to Charlie as Hag pounced. 

She shielded me and Crazed Hag got so upset she left. This was all much more interesting than my first night at Carnegie’s, it was now living up to its reputation. 

I invited Charlie and her friend back to the hostel, we stopped on the way for more drink. 

I was hoping the hostel lounge would be empty when we got there but people, terrible, terrible, terrible, awful, horrible people love to show up when you don’t want them to. 

I dug in my heels until the other guests had cleared off to bed leaving just the four of us. 

I laid Charlie down on the sofa and began to kiss her. 

“I’m a prostitute.” she said. 

“I didn’t know that,” I shot back at her, giving her a cold look, “I don’t pay.” I said with a laugh. 

“Okay, fine.” she replied, laying her body back on the coach. 

I put her surrender all down to my irresistible charms. 

“Let’s go to the bathroom.” 

I took her hand and led her downstairs. 

Her performance in the bathroom proved her to be a very capable sex worker. I’d never slept with a prostitute before and even working pro bono this one was certainly dedicated to her craft. 

She was riding me ferociously on the toilet when the toilet seat exploded underneath me, snapped in half and flew across the room. 

_•••|°°°^°^°^°\\\[|]|[]|•`~`~`~:::•_

“Are you okay?” she said, sounding concerned about the state of my naked arse.

The great fuck had come to an explosive end. 

I picked my jeans up and like a piggy bank hit with a baseball bat coins went flying out in all directions across the tiled floor. 

“Could you help me?” I asked her. 

It was a perfect irony, the prostitute who I refused to pay, who had sex with me anyway was now helping me collect up my mess of pennies. She handed a pile back to me and I stuffed them away. 

We smoked a cigarette out in the now rainy street and then went to my dorm bed and slept. 

Sometime around midday she left, she even kissed me goodbye and said thank you. That was a first, a thank you for sex. . . 

. . .or maybe she had forgotten that we agreed this wasn’t a gig for her. 

The scenes of the night came back to me bit by bit as I woke. My head hurt, my body hurt. 

‘What a Christmas Eve!’ I thought. I was still falling over myself when I heard a knock at the door. 

“Hi, would you like to come celebrate Christmas with us?” 

He was an Asian American decked out with an impressive camera, it took a moment to process it. I didn’t know him but here he was at my door inviting me to celebrate Christmas, it was too sweet of an invitation to refuse and I needed a strong meal after the night before. 

“Yeah.” I finally said. 

This Christmas was becoming the most memorable I’d ever had. The first Christmas since I was a kid that the magic, albeit a very different kind, was back in the holiday. 

Sharing a Christmas dinner with strangers, a Christmas Eve night of sex with a well mannered prostitute doing pro bono work. If only all days could blend into each other so well, if only all Christmases could offer up the same positive insanity. 

                                          _

It was now Christmas Day. 

Me and the Chinese girl from Chingium were heading to the night market by the hostel for some late night snacks. 

“Natalie is coming with us,” the Chinese girl said, “one of the hostel workers.” emphasising the words to try and jog my memory. 

“Oh is she, okay, cool.” I said, running through the faces of the workers at the hostel until realising which name fit. 

I landed on the face, an elusive one. I didn’t know her well. So far our interactions had been limited to an awkward moment of her waking me up while making the beds in my dorm room. 

As we headed for the night market together, Natalie looked at her watch, she was doing something, waiting for the hands to strike, as it ticked over to midnight she celebrated, “It’s now my birthday!” she proclaimed in a sweet almost shy voice. 

I gave a natural,                      “Aww…” and then a,

                                   “Happy Birthday!”

There was something about her. I had a weird feeling. It wasn’t attraction yet, she was definitely attractive and attraction was in the mix but it wasn’t the heart pounding, dopamine and norepinephrine soup of liking someone yet. 

There was something about her though. 

If I believed in fate and destiny it could have been a message from the future, but I didn’t and don’t, so it was probably a mixture of hunger, thinking she was a bit weird and wanting to fuck her. 

We got some chicken and the kind of food from night markets I always tried to avoid and took it back to the hostel. As the guests in the lounge went to bed I was left alone with the hostel’s large projector screen watching a Taiwanese talk show that I didn’t understand. 

“What are you doing?” Natalie asked as she was closing up shop for the night. 

“Just relaxing, watching TV.” I said, wondering why she was asking. 

“You’re not going out tonight?” she asked me. 

“Nah, I’m too tired, I had a girl in my bed last night.” as the words came out I realised how cold I sounded. 

“Okay, goodnight.” 

“Night!” I replied. 

As she turned to leave, a lightbulb went off in my head, ‘Maybe she’s into me, I should have asked her what she was doing tonight.’ 

Natalie was gone after that. As she was away volunteering in Cambodia I enjoyed another period of intense debauchery and started sleeping with girl after girl hanging around the hostel and the princesses of the neon strobed caves of Taipei. Most nights were spent out in clubs with people I didn’t know. 

I had become a drunk fuck again. 

And my cock was really pleased. 

I had a very happy cock. 

‘My body will be fine.’ I reassured myself as I headed out night after night in search of mindless lust. 

There was no end in sight until one visit to a club called Myst would take things in a completely new direction. It was just another night out in a club in Taipei, but it would change everything. It was a night of before and after. 

         _

I wasn’t interested in going out at first. My hair was a mess, thin spikes of beard were climbing up my cheeks. I wasn’t in the mood. Two groups were gathered in the lounge, dressed for clubbing and I had nothing else to do, so when one of them invited me I thought, ‘Why not? I’ll just go for a bit.’ 

I would have been happy enough to grab a MOS Burger set or 7-Eleven food and fall asleep early. 

I washed my hair in the sink and shaved the excess whisps on each side of my goatee. At any minute I could have decided to stay home and sleep and I wasn’t overly confident looking at my unprepared self in the mirror.  

I was operating at around 65% capacity. I would put my chances of building up the energy needed to seduce in a club much lower. 

In the lounge Natalie was back and sitting next to a German. Another lightbulb went off, somewhere in my primitive brain, the monkey man was now shouting loud and clear, ‘Ey, Ey, steal her, steal her from that German.’ 

As the group talked, I landed a funny line and Natalie smiled at me and the monkey sounds made their way to the front…

‘I want her!’ 

She looked nothing like the hostel worker I had seen around the building, sweeping the floors and making the beds. She looked very different. She seemed different too. No longer shy and avoidant but confident, she even had a bit of sexy arrogance. 

Natalie was about five foot, three inches, but the heeled boots she was wearing added a couple more inches to that, she wore a black blouse and tight blue jeans, her long black hair was straight, curling at the bottom where it turned a dark shade of brown, the hair reached her waist and added to her allure. 

Her face was an amalgam, viciously cute and sweet sexy. Her body was slim but not without womanly curves. 

… 

I was no stranger to nightclubs of course, but I always hated them. I hated their music, I disdained their ice smoke and bright lights, the worry of someone stealing out of my back pocket, I hated them. Myst was no different from any other, a big loud bright cloud full of people trying to get laid. 

I found the club an extra level of dull as the filler conversations and smoke breaks stacked up. 

I pushed through the crowd searching through the mist to find the hostel group to tell them I was done for the night when I felt a tug on my shirt. 

The mystery tugger was Natalie. 

“Why don’t you ever talk to me?” she whisper shouted above the loud music. 

“I know you!” taking my hands and placing them on her waist. Without hesitation I slid them down the back of her jeans and our tongues collided. 

“Let’s go.” I said, minutes later we were in a taxi on our way to her place. 

Not bad for 65% capacity. 

      °° Our bodies stuck to each other like balls of sticky mochi. 

“You have beautiful eyes, like a FOX!” she said. 

We fell asleep. Two balls of jiggly sticky mochi. 

We spent most nights together after that. 

I quickly decided that she was indeed very, very, very hot and funny too, I’d never met someone as unintentionally stomach hurting funny as her. 

A week or so after I had stolen her from the club, German returned. 

Before the night at the club they had planned a day of sightseeing together. Natalie invited me so I wouldn’t have any doubts about her intentions with the German. 

‘Great!’ I thought, 

‘One final battle with the German.’ 

Seduction and love really are war. 

The three of us visited a hot spring on the outskirts of Taipei. 

He bored me, incredibly. He was nice and I could appreciate what girls could see in him but still the bore was painful. 

It was possible the boredom was a strategy. Victory through boredom. 

I wasn’t giving this German a victory even if he implored the dark arts of dead eyes and stunted conversation. 

The day was done and the German threat was cleared, battle over. War won. 

There was something about this girl I wanted to explore more. It was time to move on from the drinking and happy hedonism. 

’Maybe this could go somewhere.’ I thought. 

Me and Natalie spent the rest of January up until Chinese New Year together before she headed home for the traditional festivities. 

While she was gone I planned a trip down the east coast for when she got back. 

I was glad I stayed in Taiwan that little bit longer to experience everything that was happening. 

I had been a drunken slut, explored Taipei and its surroundings, met some cool people and a girl who I liked and who liked me back and now we were about to spend the next two weeks travelling together off the beaten path.