Surf, Food, Drink (My Weekend in Jialeshuei)

This past weekend I stuck around Jialesheui and enjoyed a fun-filled couple of days with no work.  Of course, I only work about eighteen hours a week so I don't mind the weekdays too much but it's nice to not have to go to work at all on the weekends. 
    On Friday, the wind switched direction and the wind howled offshore all weekend.  Suddenly our little surf break that we started to call home turned into a completely different beach.  Usually there are lots of chop and when you look at the beach it doesn't look very inviting for a swim but suddenly all the chop was gone and the sets that were rolling through were beautifully shaped offshore waves.  The only problem was they were about waist high and packed with longboarders.  It was still a blast and I surfed my heart out.  I regret not taking any pictures but as a surfer, it's tough to want to bring out your camera when you can be surfing instead.  My apologies. 

    About a half hour scooter ride away, there's a place called Houbihu marina.  It's a nice spot to go snorkeling and they also have a fish market where you can buy different kinds of seafood and have a delicious seafood lunch.  After one of our long morning surf sessions, we went with some friends to have a sashimi lunch.

This whole sashimi meal cost me 3 bucks!

An type of eel decorated with huge fish eyeballs.  I couldn't stare at this for too long. 

These food stalls offer the biggest pieces of the most delicious calamari. 

A HUGE lobster

    After lunch we hit the waves again and surfed.  When the sun started to set, suddenly everyone else left and Chris, our friend Adam and I had the whole beach to ourselves.  We surfed 'til it was dark and it was a memorable, small, offshore surf session.  (sorry, no pictures again, too busy surfing)


    Last night, we had some guests staying at the hostel and they asked us to join them for a drink.  What was supposed to be a brief drink turned into a loud and raucous drinking game that lasted a few hours.  They convinced us to shoot kaoliang (a harsh, cheap Taiwanese liquor I mentioned before that happens to taste like poison). Chris and I bought it once at a supermarket.  We stood in front of the liquor aisle completely confused and not sure about what any of the clear bottles in front of us were.  This old man walked in and made a beeline for a big bottle of something so we decided that it must be a good, local drink.  The price tag, $3 for about a size of a liter bottle should have warned us but we just excitedly hoped that it was a good, cheap drink.  We took it home and after taking a few sips of it we started to wonder if we had accidentally bought a cleaning product.  That bottle lasted us a very long time.
    Anyway, so here we were back in the living room with shot glasses of kaoliang being offered to us.  So we drank and gagged. We drank some more and we played a few rounds of American drinking games that we had to offer them and luckily they thought were fun.  I know alcohol's not the greatest thing in the world but it's such a wonderful lubricant for language barriers.  I think I learned more Chinese last night than I have in one month.  Too bad they're mostly words pertaining to drinking...
   I don't really drink very much anymore and I was reminded of why when I woke up today with a massive headache.  That kaoliang is so bad for you.  It seemed Chris and I were the only ones hungover though because everyone else woke up early and seemed fine.  Maybe kaoliang is just bad for foreigners...

We taught them a simple version of "Kings Cup"