Blogs from Taiwan, Asia - page 10

Remember that I mentioned that we had been asked to appear in a Rap Video whilst we were walking around a market in Taipei... Here is the video!! https://www.facebook.com/17yourvideo/videos/588642771472367/ We even get a thank you at the end. Over 120,000views!... read more

Taipei-Taichung-Tainan-Taitung-Taipei!.Its starting to get confusing where we have been. Basically we have now completed a anti clockwise tour of the island and now back in Taipei. After the earthquake in Hualien we decided that unfortunately we would have to give this area miss and so we took the train straight up to Taipei. The route took us up the eastern rift valley which was probably the prettiest countryside we have seen all trip. The train did stop at Hualien and of course we did try to see the fallen down hotel but we didn't see anything. Actually we did see s lot of buildings that are still standing! According to the news the builder,architect and owners have all been arrested... So a few days spent exploring in and a round Taipei which is actually about 15C ... read more

Hey everyone, Happy belated Lunar New Year! While most people in the US forgets that it even exists half the time, the Lunar New Year is a pretty major holiday over here in East Asia. As a result, Tanya and I had a long weekend, which we used as an opportunity to jump over to Taiwan. Our planning process started a bit late; and our breaks at work during the end of January were spent frantically searching for flights and hostels in almost every country in East and Southeast Asia. Taiwan was definitely our first pick, as a way to celebrate Chinese New Year where it’s taken most seriously while not actually having to face the terror that is mainland China during the holiday. Seriously, if you’ve never seen the pictures before, take two seconds to ... read more

Kaohsiung is Taiwan's largest port and second largest city. It feels very different and more sophisticated than any of the other cities we have visited. Modern urban landscape ,wide streets, parks and more grid like streets. I had thought in my wisdom..that it would be a good idea to book us into a bigish shiny type hotel that would have a dining room. All the information said that everywhere would be closed over CNY. So we are booked in for 3 days......Ok a few shops are closed and some businesses but we will not starve !! Every inch of dozens of streets have a stall selling something edible and hundreds of thousands of people walking along them.... read more

Gosh I'm getting behind with my homework! I think it was Tues.. We had a slightly cleared drive down all the bends that we couldn't really see on the way up and as usual it was much quicker coming down. I couldn't manage to count the bends and the number of buses on the way up but was probably around the same..(54!) Next stop was about 1 1/2 hrs further south and slightly inland to Mainong and its getting warmer!! Mainong is known for having around 95% of the Hakka population. They speak their own language and value hard work and education and still maintain traditional customs and living style. It is quite rural and our bnb was surrounded by rice paddies and fields of amazing flowers, cosmos, marigolds, grown for fertilizer on barron grown. Great ... read more