Da shack

Chinshuei Boardriders Clubhouse it was.

I built it from 100% recycled materials. This is the polite way of saying I nicked most of the stuff from the side of the road. It's an African thing, or maybe I am just a thief but if someone leaves stuff on the side of the road for weeks they obviously don't want it.
Taiwanese do this. Dump perfectly good stuff.I have picked up a guitar, a hammer dulcimer (look it up), bookshelves, Bose speakers (I shit you not, good ones too), an aquarium with all the fittings, Mike stand, the list goes on. All thrown away.

Da shack was actually built for my daughter, Kieran as a sun shade when we went to the beach. The surfers may wish to think I had altruistic social motives but it was actually me being a selfish bastard. There was NO shade at all, so the obvious solution was to build a shaded area, big enough for her to play in and big enough for a wee party should the desire strike. Certainly big enough for me to veg out and sink a few coldies watching the surf from my chair.

The inspiration for Da shack came from Thailand where they have these cool beach shelters. I started collecting the bamboo from wherever I could find it. There is no shortage of it in Taiwan. Good straight pieces were harder to find but eventually I gathered enough to build for sod all. I think it cost me all of 50NT dollars to build becuase I splurged on cable ties (wondeful invention by the way).

Funnily, everyone who lived there (well, weiguoren surfers) all agreed it is a great idea.A surf shack? Yeh! None lifted a finger on the materials collection. I knew it had to be done so I did it. It took about two months of scrounging. Would have taken a week if other folks had bothered to gather up stuff but it didn't faze me. I surf and I know how vlam surfers are.

'Pit's missioning on it, when has all the stuff together I'll help out. Where's the cone?'.

Getting them all together to help with the building was easy. I was well surprised at how they all pitched in. Took us a day as I had planned.

A man a plan a shack. Read it backwards.. Kcahs a nalp amana..OK it isn't a whatchamacallit but it worked. Sort of.

We all had a lot of good times there, beach bbq's, lazy arvo's in the shade watching the waves, going for a paddle and running over the hot sand. It brought together a lot of people into a bit of a community which I grooved on. I knew it would.

The downside was, not unexpectedly, that lowlife scumbags would come along and just trash the place, have a party and leave their crap behind (literally, as it happened, one day I found a big freshish turd parked right inside the possie). It was sad, but expected. I put up signs in Chinese explaining it was for 'all to use but none to abuse'. Sadly, some folks did not heed. Most folks did. I certainly don't regard Taiwanese as skom, just some of them. Same as anywhere really, each country has its own unique signature brand of complete arsehole. Taiwan's is the blue truck/Black Virago, betel nut chewing brigade of arrogant, macho posturing arseholes. They are the reason we left Taiwan. And I know they were the rubbishes who trashed the place and probably continue to do so to the resurrected shack (this one got wiped in a typhoon). They are just a sub group. Like Westies in Oz and Dutchmen from Despatch in SA. The people we like to complain about.


Hell, if I'd built the shack in Oz I'd have been arrested for an illegal structure without planning permission.

In South Africa it would have been gone the next day. Sand probably nicked too.

Whatever, it was a fun thing to have done, it cemented a few friendships amongst people, caused minimal environmental impact and gave all the beach lovers at Chin shuei a place to chill. Now what could be wrong with that?

And Kieran loved it. The other ladies in the pic's are Shivani and Karen 'Doola'. Karen is an honorary shack member.

Karen loved it too. So did I. Everyone did, even the bovine, betel nut chewing arseholes in their own betel nut chewing, bovine, arsehole way. A very cool thing to have done.