Blogs from Danshui, Taipei, Taiwan, Asia

Nǐ hǎo! Hello from Taiwan I still love Thailand and visiting my friends there and I have been very fortunate to have made some more good friends in Taiwan and feel very comfortable there. The national parks are magnificent and there is much to see and do every day. If only I could speak Mandarin :) The photos tell the story of this holiday - new friends and new places to see - I climbed a mountain, saw some great waterfalls and soaked my feet in the hot water river and springs. This is the good life :) There are 70 photos. Click on each photo for a larger view.... read more

The historic seaside town of Tamsui, located northwest of Taipei, has been on my list of places to visit ever since I came to Taiwan. Technically a district of the mega-city of New Taipei, Tamsui (also known as Danshui) is easily reached by metro, being the northern terminal station on the red line. Its long and storied history saw several European nations fight for hegemony in the Taiwan Strait and as a result, Tamsui was occupied various times. First the Spanish arrived in 1628, establishing the town and mission of Santo Domingo to secure their interests in the Philippines against the Dutch, the British and the Portuguese. Fort San Domingo was built by the Spanish in the same year as a military, political, trade and missionary base. In 1642, the Dutch expelled the Spanish, took over ... read more

Queue the Who! (CSI Miami reference) Alright, so in my attempt to play catch up with my blogs, I’m going to cover my three trips to the beach I made so far (not counting my time at GaoXiong, which will be a totally separate blog). So pitch the super umbrellas and lay out the towels, it’s time to catch some rays of light (see what I did there? That can mean the sun and enlightening knowledge! Awww yeah). Sept 10th: So being new to Taiwan and the coast, Ben, next door neighbor Cuauhtémoc Reale (I’m not going to lie, I still can’t pronounce his name, so I’m calling him by his last name from here on out. And if you’re curious, he’s half Mexican and half Canadian – which if you average the two makes him ... read more

I headed out for Spring Festival vacation on January 7th. My Chinese New Year vacation was 45 days long and I planned to go to Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Thailand. The first stop was Taiwan. I met an interesting Canadian from Vancouver in the Nanjing Airport before we took off to Taipei. He sells racquet sports equipment, but mostly badminton equipment, all over the world. A good portion of his market happens to be Asian consumers and a lot of his factories are just outside of Nanjing. When our plane touched down in Taipei, he and his friend gave me a lift into town. He was a really nice guy. We talked about Badminton, the outdoors, Chinese economics and development, and the Cascades. After wandering around some alleyways trying to find the Chocolate Box ... read more

Ok so a lot has happened since I last wrote anything on this site. Melissa has finally arrived and we've moved to a bigger apartment. We've also eaten some fantastic food and explored some really cool parts of the city. First, the apartment. Basically I had initially agreed to rent the studio from Martin for a month. A couple of days before I arrived however he emailed me to let me know that his sister-in-law had in fact just let it out so I could only have it for ten days. Not wanting to leave me in the lurch he has let us take a 3 bedroom apartment for the remainder of the month contract for the same price. So after two more nights in the studio we drag our ridiculously heavy bags around the ... read more