Update (2)

Just another update about my travels so far.

I'm behind on my blog posts again and am trying to catch up. I'm in Japan now and my blog has me leaving Taiwan and making it to the Philippines. I've actually been to the Philippines and South Korea now, which means I have several posts to make.

I'm sure I'll catch up soon. I'm planning on taking a day or two to type my blog up to at least me making it to Japan and then I'll be good about posting a post about 1.5 times a week until caught up.

My own hard coded map of where I've been with some pathways shown, which start from Seattle:

Below are a few maps I made with Google to document what I've been doing. The first map are places I've been. I've only placed markers for cities I've spent some time exploring and not just passing through.



View Where I've Been So Far in a larger map

This second map is places I still hope to travel to.


View Places to go in a larger map

Out of Taichung and into the Taipei

Notice, this is a fairly short post because the next post will be a large undertaking of mine for “Taiwan, A Brief and Rough Guide”. The guide won't be meant as a replacement for the guide book you might buy at a store. My guide will be more of a supplement with some overlap to your normal guide books.

The night before leaving Taichung, I witnessed the system for people disposing of their trash and recyclables to the garbage and recycling trucks. It was an interesting process. Take a look at the short video below:

                                          

After seeing this it made sense to me why I didn't see very many dumpsters or personal garbage bins. Some nicer or larger apartments will have dumpsters, although even then most still won't have dumpsters.

A very large bunny outside a store just chilling as someone's pet. The pictures don't completely show it but the rabbit was larger than many cats I've seen.

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We ate Hot Pot on the last day with Jonny and set off for Taipei. We made it early for the bus to Taipei and went off on an Operation MC (Meg's Coffee). What we found instead was a great historical site that was in the process of becoming a restaurant, cafe, ice-cream shop, and part museum. Since we were foreigners in Taiwan, we were given an all access tour, complimentary cookies, tea, and ice-cream tasters. The ice-cream tasters were normally 10 NT each, and we had about 24 between us. The woman that gave us the tour told us that Taiwanese people weren't allowed to go to the areas that were still under construction and we were since we were foreigners. They had some of the best ice-cream I'd ever had, and we got some to go. We took so long on the tour that we had to run to make it to the bus. We had our prize of great ice-cream in hand.

            

            

            

            

            

We made it to Taipei. After getting to Taipei and being settled, we went to a near by 7-Eleven for some soda and found it over flowing with foreigners drinking outside of it...it was crazy!

See the video:

We thought our flight was for the next afternoon, but double checked and it was actually a red-eye for 1 AM and not 1 PM. The confusion was that some foreign airlines use a 24 hour clock and some don't when you're on their site in English. We made it to the airport early to be on the safe side, and as it turned out we needed the extra time. We didn't know it when booking but you need a departing ticket from the Philippines before you enter. The flight out of the Philippines can be after the 21 day visa that you're given at the airport but you have to have it before boarding. I found myself on the hunt for Internet. I eventually found a open network that had Internet access outside of a closed Bank of China! I booked a ticket and we made it to our plane. The only bummer for all of the hassle was I left the hat I bought in Tainan at the security check point :(

The flight to the Philippines with Cebu Air was a little bumpy. We made it to the Philippines in one piece.

Tip for the Day: Check out what the locals like to do on their time off...should be a good time!

PS: I'm behind on my blog as, I'm no longer in the Philippines and actually I am in South Korea now. I'll try to get things caught up.

Taichung!!!

First thing we did once we met up with our friends—Greg & Jonny—was eat! I took some savory shots of the food we ate, and for your delight a self portrait...

(Me and Food Photographs)

        

              



The restaurant we went to also had a great item on the menu...you'll know it when you read it:

The next morning Meg made breakfast because she is amazing like that:

Actually most of the what we did while in Taichung was try to plan out our Philippines trip and eat :D

Jonny also showed us to Bozz,which is a cafe that makes great milk tea. After the glasses were empty, Jonny left for the post office. We walked back and stopped for some food at A-bao and filled up with some delectable treats.

            

            

On our last day, Jonny took us to a near by Hot Pot place. I had not had Hot Pot until this encounter. It was well priced and came with unlimited rice, a mix-it-yourself sauce bar, ice-cream (so-so), and soda.

                  

                  

Additionally, the below is a photo of where they cook the food. If you don't notice for yourself, you can see the cooking apparatuses are on the sidewalk. In Taiwan this is very common. It saves space for customers to be inside and helps things stay cooler for the customer and the cook(s).

All we had to do after food was get out of Taichung for Taipei and ride a bus like the one we took to Taichung.

More Tainan!!!

Last time I ended things on a hungry note. We had found our way to Ung Chicken. Up until getting to Ung Chicken, I hadn't had too many issues ordering food from any establishments in Taiwan and that includes those without English Menus. At Ung Chicken no one spoke English, well in truth a few did but their vocabulary was so narrow that if you just rounded it you'd say zero. I went to leave a few times, because I thought it would be too much hassle to get food on a hungry stomach. Meg didn't see or notice my motion to leave. I think she was occupied with trying to work with over six waiters trying to help us. The only saving grace for the predicament was Google Translator that one of the waiters was able to pull up on his phone. Once we got out food it was great!

On the way to Ung Chicken, we saw the Flower Rabbit Garden and thought it looked so cute we'd get food there. Sadly, the Flower Rabbit Garden was more of a cafe than a full restaurant that didn't have more than snacks and pastries.

We rode the bikes back to the hostel with some left overs in tow. We watch one of the worst romantic comedies I've ever seen—I Hate Valentines Day—and went to bed disappointed. Even the next day it was so bad, we continued to make jokes about the movie. We checked out smoothly enough with the hostel and were still allowed to rent bikes, while we kept our luggage at the hostel and went out to explored more. We were going to one of Taiwan's oldest Confucianism Temples but became sidetracked with a mission for Meg's Coffee (Operation MC), which tended to be a common occurrence. We found a StarBucks that had a massive line and we just went diagonally across the street to found a great cafe with satisfying food to email home about. Not sure what the name of the Cafe was because it was only in Chinese. I did manage some pictures of the outside, as well as their web address. We people-watched for a while and remembered we had limited time. Got back on our unlocked bikes and set off again.

            

After the Operation MC, we easily found our way to the Confucianism Temple. I made the decision that I had plenty of battery on my camera and that I wouldn't have much purpose in saving it for later. I went camera happy at the Temple. If you want to feel like you've been there then you're in luck; look no further than below for your Confucianism Temple needs :) I will say that some of the photographs are hard to make out because of the reflection of the sunlight on the glass cases and this is because it is also difficult in person to see into the cases to look at the artifacts. The only advantage in person, is you can move your head around to find better angles. I also got some more stamps while at the Temple...

                                              

         

            

                    

                    

                    

            

            

            

            

            

            

            

            

            

            

            

            

                                               

                                               

                                               

                    

            

            

            

            

            

            

            

            

                                     

            

            

We made our way back to the Hostel to return our bikes and walked to the bus station without our Ung Chicken leftovers for the bus to make our way to Taichung, which is where Greg & Jonny live! On the bus, I watch some of Transformers Two, which I don't recommend but found the Chinese subtitles entertaining. I also used the below cabin toilet. On most of the charter buses that have to go longer distances in Taiwan they will have restrooms. The buses that look like double-decker buses will have the top level for passengers and the below is either for luggage or luggage and a restroom. We were on the highway when I used the facilities. The toilet doesn't flush your discharge until the senor knows you've left the immediate area, which left me nervous we'd hit a bump that would cause a rapid and strong upward force on more than just me ;) My bathroom experience on the bus went smoothly. I got some blog writing done on the bus and we made it to Taichung without a mishap. We met up with Greg and Jonny after some confusion with the cab driver that left Meg talking to multiple people on his cellphone to get them to understand where we were going.

In the next exciting installment...I get a strange urge to make these things end like an old television episode of Batman or the Lone Ranger or something like that...sorry...

I'll fill everyone in on what we did, or I should correct with how little we did in Taichung.