To smell Taiwan is to smell dinosaurs and spice. Petroleum and food, exhaust and soy. Like the pickled and soy-ified eggs you see simmering in a cauldron in a Taiwanese 7-11, one’s nose swims in the sweltering air.
Walking down the street is an detective story, with many suspects and no evident murder weapon—or victim. The story is simple, the beginning being the smell and the end being the smell. The middle is the finding.
Smelling smoke may lead you to a brazier (where fake paper money is placed to pray) or a food vendor. Smelling food may or may not lead to the item itself; more often than not it dances away from you, laughing, daring you to find it—knowing that there is more just around the corner.
Fried tentacles vie with hungry dogs for my tourist eyes, and the aroma of moped competes with the fetid stink of an dank alleyway for the attention of my tourist nose. To smell is to be there, and nothing accentuates this point more than walking through the perfume-laced department store attached to our hotel.
And just like the street, just under the surface of that L’Oreal and Estee Lauder—literally, the floor below—dried fish and durians can be had for a song, and if you were to feast on the two you would be returned to the streets again and the assault on the nose would begin anew.
jealous!! post more!