I have been fortunate to travel multiple times to the country of Taiwan. On the first trip into any country, your senses are on high alert. Unique smells, sights, sounds, tastes and textures. The market is always a fun place to go and take it all in. Stinky tofu smells fill the air with enough potency to kill a gag muscle. To give you an idea, it is reminiscent of one of your buddies dropping a stink bomb in junior high band class. Only with stinky tofu, the locals eat what smells bad and that's not right.

Shifting from foreign smells to sights, we noticed the air force jets flying overhead. After a surf on our second day, we were returning to town and noticed a lot of them flying low in formation. The sight and sound of these airplanes put Matt, Dan and me in what felt like “Maverick mode.” We threw around a few Top Gun lines as we got closer to the base, where they were landing, and then immediately punching it again to take off. “Pilot training, for sure”, commented Matt.
From the road, we noticed we could move closer and get even better photos. So, we parked the car at the end of the rice patties bordering the high-security fence and began taking photos of these Taiwanese Top Gun recruits. It was impressive. The piercing noise and power you could almost feel of these jets sent a shot of adrenalin through the body. I felt like I could hear Kenny Loggins's “Danger Zone” tune in the distance. Dan and I ventured right up to the fence, while Matt stayed with the car by the side of the road, only a stone's throw away. Dan and I watched as an innocent bystander passing by on a scooter stopped to talk to Matt. Or, so we thought. We continued taking photos and standing right in line with the planes that flew no more than forty feet overhead. We were close enough to make eye contact with the pilots. After taking a few more photos, we made our way to the car, where it was now apparent the bystander was someone from the military base. He had a phone tucked up in his helmet and was making calls to both the police and military security personnel. The next thing we knew, multiple police and security were coming from both directions. An unnerving adrenalin began in each of us. I tried to calm these guys down by smiling and offering a friendly handshake. They weren’t having it. One officer began blurting out a bunch of Taiwanese words, which made each of us nod and smile. I thought about pulling out the lonely planet to try and cobble together a sentence, but this was only our second day amidst the foreign language. Each time we tried to say anything, no one understood us anyway. Realizing they didn’t know a lick of English, I called my friend Paul who speaks Taiwanese, and handed the policeman the phone. He gave me a look that said; "This ought to be good. How does this chump think he's getting out of this?" After a short conversation, the policeman handed the phone back to me. Paul voiced over the phone to stay put and not sign anything or pay the cops any money. This is a Taiwanese security protocol and their ploy to get people in trouble without them even knowing it. Paul arrived within five minutes. In Taiwanese, He started explaining we were innocent surfers visiting Taiwan and spending a lot of tourism dollars in their country. While they talked back and forth, Matt, Dan, and I kept Paul’s kids preoccupied and laughing loudly by picking them up and swinging them around. The cops were playing tough guys and trying to make something out of nothing. All the security and policeman wanted was to have a look at the photos I had taken, because they thought we were spies. "Spies?" The laughter continued all around. Come to think of it, surfers would make good spies. Anyone who has seen the movie Point Break might have similar sentiments. Much to the demise of my friends, I continued taking photos through the debacle. I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to nail the shot. We still laugh about it all, yet without Paul, we may have been forced to sit in a room of stinky tofu for many days and maybe even eat it.