The place is eerily like an abandoned frontier town, or perhaps the setting of some low-budget remake of a classical Western. But today there are no guns, no gangs, no dusty horizons – nothing but our humble search for a surf shop. We’re in Taiwan, and, on this bright grey afternoon, we’re going to surf. Yes, surf. Balance on a moving board above an unpredictable current of water. Already I’m playing the mind-footage of my surfing self, gliding through a gigantic turquoise tunnel of wave-curl.

We are in the seaside town of Daxi, which is not exactly home to deck chairs flopped in the sun and Bob Marley on a loop, as you might expect of a true surfers’ hangout. Daxi is sun-brightened concrete divided into apartment blocks, all clinging to the sides of the road. The place feels empty because everyone’s indoors or in the sea, the only two places that are bearable in this heat.

The surf shop is easy to find. Boards are balancing by the door, inviting the novice into the world of immediate surfer-cool. Unfortunately, without the mandarin for ‘surf board’, we are already floundering in this new environment. All pretences are soon given up under the humouring gaze of a tanned Taiwanese guy at the till. He smiles, and the gesturing begins. Long, short, straight, bendy, foam, carbon fibres…what?

After the novelty of the shop, the slow walk along the sea-defence wall towards the beach is almost too unremarkable. A little as if the shop were a colourful façade, hiding from view the grey cardboard-cut-out world of the Taiwanese seaside, layered with manmade sea-defences. This world we are now bound to by a yellow paper receipt for four boards, to be collected at the shop’s beach site. We can see from some distance away that there’s no shade on the beach, no beach huts or cafes, none of the essential accessories needed to make the beach experience more than just functional. The Daxi experience: pay for board, collect board, surf on board, give it back and go home.

At the site, we have a little lesson from the experts. One of them lies belly down on a board and enthusiastically paddles the sand, and then, turning his head, he sees an imaginary oncoming wave. Paddling faster, under the great pressure of the imaginary wave (which is massive) he first raises his upper body and then jumps to standing position. Afterwards, one by one, we all do the same. We each have our little mime performance, flicking up the dirty sand as we paddle. I learn that the grey area between seeing the wave and standing up on the board to catch it - between lying down and standing up - can be muffled over if you move quickly enough. The two Taiwanese guys look genuinely impressed, but oh how they have been fooled!

As with anywhere in Taiwan, I’m reminded that every great idea has hundreds of minds thinking it at the same time – the water is full of wannabe surfers. It’s horrifying. When a wave comes sluggishly towards us, it doesn’t take much to turn the gossipy-close mass of first time surfers into a disordered mess of limbs, and dangerously hurtling surf boards. There are hardly any serious surfers at Daxi, for most people this is just play, an afternoon off, or an extended lunch break. On the one glorious occasion that I do stand up on my board, the wave I thought I’d caught carries on without me, leaving me and my board motionless, there in the sea like a glorified bird-perch. But I would have carried on trying without shame until the last train back to Taipei, had it not been for Mr. Li, the egotistical jellyfish.

I’m paddling back out after yet another failed attempt when I feel something brush against my arm, something stringy, I think. Then the pain blocks out any care for what the thing looks or feels like. I see several translucent tentacles, now detached from the main body, sizzling into my forearm. I’m scratching them away, thinking that’s some serious hatred of humans that turns self-mutilation into routine behaviour for jellyfish.

My arm is marked with jagged purple scribbles: the most enduring souvenir of my time in Taiwan. The marks are angular, forming a clear ‘L I’, most certainly the family name of that particular jellyfish clan. I notice that marks like mine are tattooed on lots of people, in different patterns - each from rival clans I’m sure. Some people are covered with them, flaunting the purple scrawls like war wounds. So in solidarity, I decide to be proud of mine too.

Even if I can’t surf, I am a brave woman warrior with the intimate autograph of a jellyfish on my arm. I’d probably rather be able to surf, but there it is.