May 14, 2011 - 't Eylant Formosa and the Red Haired Barbarians

By now it is becoming a pattern. I book a hotel close to the station one or two nights before (The Royal Biz Taipei was very good but with a 20 minutes walk a little bit too far from the metro [being close to the MRT is really a must in Taipei; it is the backbone of public transport, extensive, fast and easy to use] and the Business Hotel in Taichung was straight out of the rear exit but just a shade too seedy for my taste [but I won't hold the machine making a racket breaking up the pavement just under my window against them]) and my first...

Feb 5, 2011 - Hello~~

February 5, 2011 Hello everyone. Well, I said that I would try and update this blog every few months so here we go. Since I last wrote it has really been all about school. In Korea they really don't believe in summer or winter vacation. They call it that but most of the Korean students attend extra classes, primarily for English, Math and Korean, during their vacation times. If it is not at their normal school it is at a specialized academy. There are some that take actual vacations but that is truly not the norm. They get the impression (I...

Nov 10, 2009 - Templed out?

Today has been slightly unsatisfying in a hard to say why sort of way. Either I'm still a bit worn out, I'm getting jaded, or - my theory - I actually want to get into the countryside, as I fortunately will be doing for the next few days at least. I took the HSR bullet train down here this morning, even though the Tainan HSR station is so far from Tainan town that by the time the connecting bus got me to the normal train station I may have well as gone on a normal train, but it was nice, and may be the last one I go on for some time. I'll...

Jan 25, 2008 - Tainan, Taiwan

Finally,the weekend! We finally got to spend some time with Randy and decided to take a weekend trip to Tainan. Sonnie was our tour guide again and we took to the streets to see the old temples and the night market. We didn't have a plan, but ended up having a great time just stumbling around town. The outdoor night market was amazing! This is the town gathering spot for everyone, young and old. There is unbelievable food and a million different smells as you walk up and down the aisles...the worst one being "stinky tofu", which to me...

Feb 27, 2005 - Road Trip

Well, it is nearly time to leave Taipei and afeter a crazy night out in a local club we hit the road in a hire car. My goodness it was not easy to orientate ourselves out of the city. The road signs are in Chinese and it took us over 1 hour alone to get out of Taipei We opted to go down the west coast hit the southern beaches of Kenting and then cone up the more beautiful east coast before heading inland to the awesome Toroko gorge and then back to Taipei ready for our flight on to Singapore. It rained the whole way down to Taichung and all...