futtrup

Taipei 101. The highest building in the world – almost. It has been surpassed by the Burj Khalifa (by 300 meters) recently. Designed to resemble a bamboo stalk. And it is huge. In the basement is a giant food court. All kinds and prices; a great place to eat. Birgitte and I had a huge Indian dinner for 250NT$. We spent 1½-2 hours until closing time at the top level (floor 90 or something like that). The rain had stopped and the views were of the whole city. Half a kilometer down. The outdoor level was unfortunately closed, but there was the views, the café, an exhibition of pictures from the last 50 years and the giant balancing ‘pendulum’ spanning several floors to counterbalance earthquakes and high winds. Before being thrown out at 22:00, we had ... read more

Yong-gi Cho’s congregation is by far the largest in the world – supposedly 850.000 members, and when planning this trip, I had thought about a visit here. We started out with late breakfast at one of the millions coffee shops around our hotel. It is a Paris pastry shop and we all agree that it is better than the baker at Kvickly at home. The subway of Seoul is a bliss – easy and quick. Youido island in the middle of the river – a small Manhattan. The church has a block of buildings and when we were 4 blocks from the church, entering from the park, suddenly all roads were full of busses and cars. 4 policemen in every crossing and loads of people crossing. It was changing time from the 11 o’clock service to ... read more

The place of some of the fieriest battles of WWII pacific theatre – from Sept.-Nov.1944. The 10.000 Japanese defenders dug into the ridges and applied heavy casualties to the Americans. Episode 5-7 of the Pacific (Stephen Spielberg) is about the landing on Orange Beach, the fight for the airstrip and the long struggle to dig out the Japanese from the Bloody Nose Ridge. We had not really booked anything from Koror, thinking that since Peleliu was just across the channel, it would be easy to arrange from Carp. Writing with Amy, the organizer in Koror before coming, had said so. So I talked to Diana the night before, and she arranged a boatman to make the transfer, and she would do the land tour. The price was 2x30$ for the boat and 2x40$ for the tour. ... read more

Thursday 3.3 – Saipan, Northern Marianas We arrived to Saipan the previous evening, welcomed by our friends Randy and Cheryl, who escorted us to our hotel. A pleasant evening, though there had been some airholes coming with the short flight from Guam (the children enjoyed it, Birgitte did not…). Randy and Cheryl met us for breakfast and took us for a trip – we went to Obyan Beach where there were a few people snorkeling and diving. It was on the south coast with good views to Tinian. There used to be a hydrofoil boat from Garapan to Tinian, but it is long gone and you can only go there now by plane. I had thought it would be interesting to go there for a day trip to see the Atomic bomb pits, where the bombs ... read more

Saturday 26.2 – Kosrae Japanese tunnels from WWII and island views and jungle hike. Today I was picked up by Hamilton, the owner of Ohma peak. His windshield was broken – he was cursing the government for not making landowner trim their coconut trees – one had fallen lately direct on his car. We went to Malem, a village on the east coast and started out from his house. The trek was regular jungle rain forest with green in green. It didn’t rain but I was sweating buckets. Hamilton first with his machete cutting new growth on the path. After one hour we reached a clearing where I saw the first Japanese tunnel. There were a couple of artifacts like a broken sake bottle with ‘nippon’ written on it. Not much animal life – surprised that ... read more