MY TOP 3 Most EMBARRASSING Stories in TAIWAN (STORY TIME Ep. 1)

Hello everybody and welcome back to the channel. My name is Alan. This is my life in Taiwan and today I want to start a new series of videos that I'm going to be calling Story Time with a new CC. Here I plan to share some of the hilarious, interesting, embarrassing stories that I have been a part of during my 12 years here in Taiwan. But first, before we get into the couple of stories I want to share with you, first I want to welcome Lingoda back to the channel again and thank them for partnering up with me. Because if I told you that with their help you can speak a language confidently in just three months and get a cash reward, then I'm sure you'd be pretty thankful too. And not only do you have the chance to get 100% of your money back, but you will also be given free access to the Cambridge Online Language Test. You just need to take a class every day for three months with the Lingoda Language Sprint. Over 25,000 people have already taken part in previous Lingoda Challenges and a lot of them have shared their positive feedback either here on YouTube or over on Instagram. So yes, learning the language of Chinese well and fluidly would definitely have helped me and the Taiwanese people I'm going to mention in these most embarrassing situations. All of which have arisen because of misunderstandings or poor use of language. So let's get into the first story which is going to take us all the way back to the summer of 2008, my first year in Taiwan, when me and Amor, my girlfriend, wife, baby mama, best friend, well, we were doing the first year in Taiwan thing and going to all of the beautiful locations around the island. Now, on this particular weekend, we found ourselves at the stunningly picturesque Sun Moon Lake where we wanted to enjoy the scenery from the serenity of the lake itself. So we tried to rent a rowing boat and when we got to the booth to pay whatever it cost, can't remember now, I used my best sign language to ask for one boat, two people in the water and everything seemed to be going swimmingly until the girl behind the desk pointed at the lake, pointed to us and said, here, no women, no women. Now, if I tell you something about my baby mama, well, she isn't the kind of quiet wallflower that takes unadulterated sexism lightly, but she just bit her tongue and accepted for some strange reason, women were just not allowed in this lake. Well, she did bite her tongue until as we were walking away and she saw a couple of Taiwanese girls getting into a boat and about to sail off from the jetty. Well, what followed was a sight to behold as Amor returned to the girl in the booth and let off a volley of the most beautiful Afrikaans anger about what she thought of this racist policy of not letting foreign women into their boats when the girl then decided to add some body language to her somewhat broken English and showed us one more time, here, no women, no women. To which me and Amor looked at each other pretty embarrassingly, Amor swallowed her pride, apologized profusely, we paid our money, got in the boat and enjoyed a nice relaxing afternoon in their own boat while the poor woman at the booth was somewhat confused about why South African women get so angry when they get told they can't swim in the lake. So there you go, that's my first story and it's an example of how a slightly poor pronunciation of English can end up in an embarrassing situation. But the next one, this is all down to me and how context and double meanings of words, especially in Chinese, can lead to very awkward situations. And this one goes back to about 2012 when I was working in Fongyan, I was talking to a parent about their son's English and I was worried that the boy's English performance was suffering because he was playing too many cell phone games, watching too much TV. So yeah, I was worried his English was suffering. Now also at this time, I was introduced to a song called Jian Ao in Chinese. To be fair, I was pretty obsessed with the singer, Li Jiahui, still am if I'm honest, but I googled the lyrics of this song and it quite clearly translates as Love becomes suffering. And being the smart, intellectual, bilingual being I believe myself to be, I told this parent, to which the parent looked at me like, WTF are you talking about? Because basically in Chinese, I just told them I believed their son's English was heartbroken. So again, huge misunderstanding and embarrassment because of my poor language skills. Now, before we get to the final story, let me just give you some details on the sponsor of today's video and how you can use Lingoda's Language Sprint to perfect your English and avoid making these kind of embarrassing mistakes in whatever language you choose to learn with them. Lingoda is a company that have sponsored my channel several times before and I really only want to let companies sponsor this channel if I truly believe they are beneficial to the viewers and there are many reasons why I feel that Lingoda's Language Sprint and Super Sprint are suitable. Firstly, they only employ qualified native-speaking English teachers. Their system allows you to learn at any time, day or night, weekends or even in your lunch break if that's suitable for you. And typically, their average class size is just three students which allows more time for you to actually speak and perfect the parts of the language you want to specifically focus on. As well as all of these reasons, if you complete the Super Sprint option and attend one online class every day for the duration of the three-month event, you're going to earn yourself a 100% refund of any monies paid and of course you will have spent three months intensively improving your English. Alternatively, if you want a less intense but equally high quality studying experience, the Sprint option offers all the same teachers and course options but only requires attending half the number of classes but will still earn you a 50% refund of all the money. Winner winner, chicken dinner. I think it's a cracking deal and I've put all the details in the description of how to register and also the code, my special secret code to claim €10 off of your deposit. Register for the Sprint or Super Sprint event before March 24th which both begin on April the 8th and get in as soon as you can as places are limited. But now back to the third and final story which even if it wasn't super embarrassing, it definitely is a funny one. As once upon a time, I went to Taipei to buy a used motorcycle and I used the TRA, the railway service, to send it from Taipei to Fengyan. I wasn't too confident it would make the journey. This took a couple of days after which they told me to call Fengyan station and ask if it had arrived. So using my best Chinese, I called the number on my receipt and the conversation went something like this. So at this point, I guessed my pronunciation or tones of the numbers must be wrong so I tried again with different tones. Nothing seemed to be working but luckily this was after a couple of years of being here and I realized that it may not have been my Chinese that was the problem. So I tried something different. So there you have it. Another example of how life in Taiwan can be quite frustrating yet pretty fun and interesting if you don't speak the language well enough or if the locals here don't speak or understand too much English. If you have any fun examples or stories similar to mine, then share them down below. I'd love to hear some of them. And if you have any more questions about the Lingoda promotion I was talking about, either ask down below or maybe go check them out on Instagram along with myself of course where you can see some more info on their super sprint events and see some of their success stories. Thanks as always for taking a few minutes out of your day to be here with me. It's been fun sharing some of my previous experience with you and I'm sure there'll be more in the future. But as for now and as always, I'll see you next time in my life in Taiwan. Peace!