Also, here is a cat picture since I haven't taken any of her in a long time.

The camera is a Canon PowerShot A530, and the opera glasses are marked "Mayflower" but I believe lack other identifying information.

I've only used to to take photos from my apartment, with targets at ranges of a few kilometers, as well as one attempt to photograph the moon.

More photos in the album, but only a couple unless I take more.

Portland

To get to Portland (there is also a full photo set) I took the Amtrak train. I took the option of a bus to Seattle and then a train from there, but the train actually goes all the way of you pay a little more. It was a nice way to travel; the bus was a little cramped, but the train is roomy and has wifi. There are also intermittent nice views along the way.

I stayed at a hostel in northwest, which was very slightly out of the way but still not far from the central area and the downtown hotel the conference was at. One of the street car lines is free in the central area, so usually I would just take that for most of the distance from the hostel to the conference. The transportation seemed really good at least in that area, but I didn't actually try any other parts of it. The streets are mostly in a regular grid so that navigation is easy. In northwest, the streets are also conveniently named in alphabetical order going north. The city is divided into quadrants by the river and Burnside Street. I didn't see much of the part of the city east of the river, just northwest and southwest. The road infrastructure around the city also seemed impressive, especially with a lot of bridges and attached raised roads, but I don't know much about that that part works.

I spent most of my time at the conference, so I didn't have much time to look around. However, Portland's attraction seems to be mostly the social environment with all its restaurants and bars, rather than any major tourist destinations. Fortunately Ann from my lab has lived in Portland, so she could give the rest of us advice on where to go.

Portland has quite a bit of street food, which is from little mobile huts which set up in rows (I think this is roughly the same style as Vancouver is starting to get, except that as far as I know we don't have any large groups of them yet). It seemed quite reasonably priced, too.

Portland also has Powels, claimed to be the largest independent new and used bookstore in the world. It is quite impressive; the main location takes up an entire block, and there is another annex location nearby. It takes a bit of practice to navigate in since there are several colour coded rooms on different levels, all filled fairly densely with shelves.

I had one whole day free after the conference, so I went for a long walk. The main part of the walk was up to Washington Park and the Hoyt Arboreum behind it. I had originally been looking for views of the city, and even though I never really found them it was still a nice walk. I also went over to look at the cable car (aerial tramway) line to the Oregon Health & Science University campus. I believe this is something like one of two commuter cable cars in North America. I didn't actually go up, but it and the visible parts of the campus were somewhat dramatic.

Halifax

In Halifax (there is also a full photo set) I had a bit more time to look around between wedding and family things. I was staying with my family at the University of King's College dorms, on the corner of the Dalhousie campus. The wedding was at the King's chapel, and my sister and her husband live in the residential area next to campus.

Halifax feels tiny and relatively old (at least in the central areas). Downtown and the area out to Dalhousie are a nice size to walk around in, and there is a good variety of restaurants and shops. A lot of the more drinking oriented places have tables outside along the sidewalks, which made the streets more lively.

There are some older fortifications around the city. The largest (as far as I know) is Fort George on Citadel Hill, which is in the middle of the city and was in use from the eighteenth century through World War II. There are some smaller fortifications elsewhere around the harbour. Halifax seems to have a larger military presence than Vancouver, presumably because the Eastern Fleet headquarters is still there and also more or less in the middle of the city.

I took the ferry over to Dartmouth, mostly as a way to see more of the harbour. Dartmouth is less interesting to visit than Halifax, but seemed nice enough otherwise. There are a bunch of more touristy harbour trips which I didn't try. This includes an amphibious vehicle which does a tour that goes out into the harbour and then onto land to look around the city (or maybe in the other order). It is an interesting idea, but somewhat jarring for anyone not on the tour; sometimes I'd be walking along a nice old looking street and suddenly the giant amphibious truck would show up with megaphone commentary.

I'd been hoping to get a chance to go out to Peggy's Cove, which seems to be the main thing to see near the city, but my family never got around to organizing a vehicular expedition and I didn't want to pay for a tour (the public bus doesn't go that far out). We did go to Fisherman's Cove on the Dartmouth side, which is a smaller place trying to set up as a tourist destination. It wasn't too exciting (but might be more active at other times), but it was nice as a way to get out of the city and closer to the Atlantic.

In other walking around I went out Point Pleasant Park, which had some of the smaller fortifications and was also closer to the ocean. I also went around the Northwest Arm to see Dingle tower, which turned out to be under renovation and covered in tarps. The walks were a chance to see more of the local environment and also the great little squirrels.

Bangkok

I spent a couple nights in Bangkok after arriving in Thailand and one more night just before leaving. The first time I stayed at a hotel directly off Khao San road, which was ok but very noisy at night when the clubs were operating. Khao San road is Bangkok's tourist ghetto, and a strange little world of its own. It probably isn't actually a very good place to stay for seeing much besides the nearby Grand Palace and Wat Pho, but it is very convenient for getting buses to and from the airport and for having a lot of cheep hotels. It is potentially also convenient for other tourist services, except that the number of scammers makes it unclear how to use them safely; seemingly some agents sell tickets for very inflated prices to anyone who they think won't notice in time. The night before I left Thailand I found a place slightly off Khao San itself, which was a little nicer and definitely much quieter.

Bangkok is very spread out and transit is often confusing (although it does include some unusual forms like the boats up and down the river). I went downtown but otherwise didn't explore too far. Another issue with Khao San and perhaps Bangkok in general is the number of touts, mostly tuk tuk drivers wanting to take you places. They seem very good at identifying foreigners who don't know where they are going and starting a conversation. A lot of these are minor scammers and will tell you that whatever you were wanting to see is closed on the particular day (or apparently sometimes burned down) so that they can instead take you to some of the places they suggest. This is apparently so that they can end up by leaving you at a shop of some kind where they will get a commission. Some are probably fronts for more jewel scams or other more serious scamming.

As for the main tourist attractions near Khao San, the Grand Palace is impressive but I'm not sure it is really worth the inflated admission prices and crowds. Wat Pho nearby is a bit more relaxed and not a bad first temple to see.

The south

After Bangkok I took a sleeper train to Surat Thani in the south. Sleeper trains are good for saving on daylight time and accommodation costs, although it means not seeing much along the route. The sleeper trains I was on start out with pairs of large seats facing each other, and then at some point in the evening an attendant comes along to convert each pair into a bunk bed; the seats slide together to make the bottom bunk and the top bunk folds down from the ceiling. Surat Thani is a strange combination of touristy and non-touristy, as it is the main stop over for the islands in the area. There are extensive bus stations and many touts and tour offices, but otherwise the town seems pretty unaffected by tourism. I just wandered around for a little while and then found a bus and ferry to Ko Samui.

Koh Samui is also very touristy and I think also rather isolated from the non-tourist parts of Thailand (or at least the main towns are), but it is much more laid back and less ghettoy than Khao San. The main draw is just the beaches, although there are a few attractions set up in the forest as well. It is possible to find very cheep bungalows here if you don't mind being a little out of the towns. I stayed in one at one end of the beach in Lamai. Food prices on the island are a bit inflated relative to many other parts of Thailand (partly because there are more western options and fewer local places), but it is possible to find a few cheaper stalls. There are fewer touts here, although there are still some for motorcycle taxis and tailors (and bar girls at night).

After Ko Samui I spent one night in Nakon Si Tammarat (note that this name is a variation on "Nagara Sri Dhammaraja"). This was the first place I had been in Thailand that wasn't at all touristy, and was therefore very pleasant. I went to see some temples and also the small but interesting shadow puppet museum.

From there I went to Suan Mokkh for a ten-day meditation retreat, which I'll describe separately at the end. After the retreat and one day at the Suan Mokkh monastery I went to get a train at Chaiya, the closest town. Chaiya is tiny, and like Nakon Si Tammarat not very touristy. I only spent part of the afternoon there before getting on a train.

The North

Since the trip from Chaiya to Chiang Mai is two overnight train rides, I stopped to spend the afternoon in Ayutthaya. Ayutthaya is the old capital of a Thai kingdom in the area, which was destroyed by Burmese invaders (so that the modern capital and state was founded at Bangkok as a replacement). The island the old city was on now contains extensive ruins interleaved with modern city, and was pretty good to walk around in.

Chiang Mai

One more night train got me to Chiang Mai. This train unfortunately just had regular seating (because I got the ticket at the last minute). The seats actually were not too bad for sleeping, but the air conditioning at the front of the car was on so strongly that the cold was uncomfortable (this may have been a malfunction).

Chiang Mai was quite nice. It is more relaxed than Bangkok but not as insular as Koh Samui. There is a less ghettoy touristy area with cheep hotels and restaurants (which are less cheep but still ok) and used book stores. There aren't too many touts, apart from some tuk tuk drivers.

For some reason Chiang Mai has a lot of places doing cooking classes. I took the one at Baan Thai, which was pretty good. We got a tour of a market and were shown how to make a few dishes. I also went to Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep, a temple on adjacent mountain that is apparently very popular and has good views (which were unfortunately fairly cloudy when I was there). This temple is supposed to have been founded when a Buddha relic somehow split in two; one piece was placed Doi Suthep when a white elephant entrusted with finding a good site walked there and died on the spot.

A couple of temples in Chiang Mai have Monk Chat, which is basically what it sounds like; you go and chat with monks, which gives tourists a chance to talk to them and gives the monks a chance to practice English. I went to the Monk Chat at Wat Chedi Luang, where I met a very friendly young monk who spent quite a while talking to me over the next couple of days. This was great (especially since otherwise contact with locals is tricky because they are largely divided into those who don't speak much English and those who do and want to sell things to foreigners), and ended up being one of the best parts of the trip. He also took me to see Wat Umong, a little out of the city. It is forest monastery in a style closer to Suan Mokkh than the city temples, and for some reason also features tunnels built into a mound. I didn't see too much of the main monastery, but we visited the tunnels and ruins in the forest.

Leaving Chiang Mai I took a bus to the Thai Elephant Conservation Centre near Lampang. I missed the main show here, but still got to see some elephants and go on a brief elephant ride. As far as I could tell this was the best option for seeing elephants in Thailand, as the elephants in the cities are usually not kept in very good conditions. After that I went to Lampang and looked around for a few hours before getting on a bus to Bangkok. Lampang is pretty small, and was another good place to avoid full touristyness for a while. The night bus to Bangkok was again seats-only, which seemed ok. We got one rest stop break.

Various details

This is more details that didn't fit in above. I'm probably missing some since it has been a while. Buddhism in Thailand seems very different from what I was used to from Taiwan. It is much more institutionalized, with temples everywhere. Buddha images are very important, with temples containing hundreds of statues. Many or most people wear smaller Buddha images as amulets. These are often replicas of well-known statues, and are supposed to have various powers (I believe that there is some procedure for monks to bless or otherwise invest them). There are markets exclusively for amulet trade, and apparently magazines for collectors. Local tourism to famous temples is very popular. The monkhood is also very institutionalized, although it is quite open in that people are allowed to quit it as they choose up to some number of times (and in fact it was previously customary for all males to become monks for a while). Nuns do not have the full status of monks, and as far as I know there are many fewer nuns than monks.

On other traveling details, there are enough cheep hotels that hostels are not necessary. Public washrooms are usually for pay, but the fees are small (I have a note indicating usually 1-5 baht). Drinks from stalls often come packed with ice, which is good for cooling but means that the amount of actual beverage is limited, although it can be extended somewhat by allowing the ice to melt. However, basic drinks are about 20-25 baht vs 30-35 in Taiwan. Coffee is priced close to other drinks, whereas in Taiwan it costs a bit more than tea. Ice is usually hollow cylinders which are partially crushed, and is good for crunching on. Heavily crushed ice seems also to be used (at least sometimes) for deserts instead of shaved ice. Water is easily available at convenience stores, but sometimes can be bought much more cheaply at bottle refill machines on the street; these took me a while to notice and work out, but are very convenient when available.

Street crossing seems even worse than in Taiwan, with cars rarely stopping for pedestrians. It is especially bad in Bangkok where there are a lot of large streets. Chiang Mai is better in the area around the tourist district, although the surrounding ring road often has heavy traffic, and traffic can be confusing due to the number of one-way streets. Most motorcycles are similar to those in Malaysia, except that they don't have baskets on the inside of the handlebars. There are also a good proportion of the horizontal axis motorcycles I am more used to, and scooters including a surprising number of old-looking Vespas in some places.

Suan Mokkh Retreat

At the beginning of December I went for the monthly ten-day retreat at Suan Mokkh, the forest hermitage founded by Buddhadasa. This section is from an email I wrote shortly after the retreat, with some improvements.

The retreat went pretty well. The schedule for days 1-8 was up at 4:00, and then four sessions of about 30-60 minutes sitting, 30-45 minutes moving meditation, and another 30-60 minutes sitting (the times were fixed for each segment, I just don't remember the exact timing). The first ended at about 8:00 for breakfast and chores, the second at 12:30 for lunch, the third at something like 5:00 for tea and hotspring, and the fourth at 9:00 for bed. For the morning and afternoon sessions the first sitting was a reading or talk with any leftover time going to meditation, and the second sitting meditation apart from announcements and tutorials on the first couple days. The afternoon session also got an additional period for chanting in Pali and English, which could be skipped for additional sitting for people who didn't want to chant. The evening sittings were always meditation. The middle bit was a yoga class in the early morning session, personal walking meditation in the late morning and afternoon sessions, and group walking in the evening. For day 9 we had only one meal, at 8:30, and two teas. We also had fewer talks and were allowed to leave the group for most of the sitting meditation, so we could just go find a spot in the grounds. Day 10 we went back to two meals and could leave the group again for a while, and the evening was a chance for people to talk about their experiences.

Food was actually really good. Breakfast was a rice porridge type thing (not sure what the name is) with a few vegetables, and a couple of separate vegetable dishes that were usually leftovers from lunch. We usually also got bananas, and for the early days also those round crackers that are really good. Lunch was dry rice with a few vegetables, with a couple of separate dishes that were different pretty much every day. Often we got a curry with sweet potato or other large vegetables, and a dish with more green vegetables. Once we got macaroni and white cabbage (and onion and carrots and maybe other things), which was good. For lunch we also got a desert type thing consisting of beans, corn, tapioca balls, or some other things or mixtures, in milk or other liquids. Lunch and breakfast both came with some raw cabbage, cucumbers, and smaller leafy vegetables, and herbal tea. Tea was usually hot chocolate or soy milk, once something similar but kindof yellow. Apparently some chef from Bangkok was doing the food, possibly just for the one time because I heard the food hasn't always been as good in recent retreats there.

Beds were a thin woven mat on a thin layer of particle board on concrete, with wooden pillows and small blankets. We did get fairly large individual cells, though, and mosquito nets. There was a hotspring we could use at breaks, I guess just because there happened to be one on the site.

The training was breath meditation in the form of anapanasati, which apparently is what the Buddha actually taught as roughly what he used himself. The full anapanasati process is 16 steps, but as most of these are beyond what most people will ever reach, we mostly focused on the shorted version of steps 1-4 to develop mindfulness and concentration, and step 13 to develop insight (especially into impermanence). Steps 1-4 and the commentary we got are basically a more formulaic version of the Chan breath meditation I'm used to. It differs mostly in teaching how to control the breath for initial relaxation, how to observe in detail how the breath affects the body, and how to start watching the breath by following its path or alternately focusing on two or more points (before switching to watch at only one point). Trying it this way seemed very useful. We got less instruction on the insight part, but a few talks about the three characteristics of impermanence, dukkha, and no-self, and on how self is created from contact via dependent origination. We also got a brief tutorial on walking meditation. This focused on seeing how the feet move through the various parts of a step, whereas I am more used to focusing on the sensations.

For the first four days or so I felt that I was making a lot of progress in concentration, which meant that for the middle part of the retreat I was trying too hard and not actually maintaining very good mindfulness. I ended up in a state where my mind could concentrate on the breath or let my thoughts go off into various unimportant topics, but I couldn't control them very well. After that I relaxed and tried not to expect as much and that seemed better.

The weather was mixed, with some days clear and others raining heavily enough that walking outside even briefly meant getting pretty soaked. I believe the time was right at the beginning or end of the monsoon period for the area. Since we walked outside between buildings for each activity, sometimes it was pretty wet. However, it was warm enough that this wasn't much of a problem.

After the retreat I went with many of the others for a tour of the monastery itself, and a few of us stayed overnight. It is a proper forest monastery, where the monks get small huts scattered around in the forest. There are also a few larger buildings for various purposes. The monastery has a workshop which makes copies of early Buddhist art, and this is on display at various places, along with more modern art at the Spiritual Theater.

We also had a variety of animals at the retreat, which were relatively easy to notice since we were spending most of the time more or less outside. The ants were mostly a near-black variety that has about three distinct sizes (my father later established from this description that these are marauder ants). They build huge roads across the sandy paths at the retreat centre, which then wash away when it rains properly. The trail I followed seemed to be leading to a coconut mine at some range. Apparently they are low on food at this time of year. They like to bite (me at least) if I stand to close, but don't actually have any venom -- it is quite painful but only until they fall off. There were also red ants with long legs, which I assume were venomous (or whatever the right word for ants is). They would rear up if I got too close, but never actually bit me. In one place they seemed to be killing some of the black ants which got too close and carying the bodies off up a building.

We also got scorpions of two varieties. The larger apparently had quite a painful sting which would hurt for a couple of days but could be got down to ten minutes with a herb the centre grew. I never got stung, but found two in my room and one outside while we were moving sand for a new path. I don't know which sort they were since I never had two at once to compare.

There were also various frogs or toads ranging from some large ones that would make little nests in the sand down to what looked like tree frogs, and some lizards. Apparently there were also snakes. The only really dangerous kind was the cobras, and apparently the centre has never had any problems with them, which they explain as being a result of practicing loving-kindness (this technique also works on mosquitoes). I never saw any snakes, but one of the participants said afterwards that he had been meditating on his own outside and opened his eyes to find a snake looking at him. We were also told not to keep any food in our cells because it would attract ants and therefore toads and therefore snakes.

We also had a couple of cats, one which didn't want to associate with people and one which was more friendly after it got used to us, and which liked to hang out nearby and meow at mealtimes. The monastery itself had more cats including at least three very friendly kittens. It also had some dogs and wild chickens. The chickens are perhaps the best known since they were known to be friendly with Buddhadasa while he was still alive.

Kuala Lumpur (KL)

We stayed in KL for the first couple of nights and again at the end. We got a guest house in Chinatown, where there seems to be a lot of cheap accommodation. KL is more spread out than Taipei and tends to feel greener (in the sense of having more trees and things) than Taipei and other northern Taiwanese cities. It is also much more ethnically diverse. There is a small colonial area with older buildings, but otherwise the city is pretty modern.

KL features a variety of Mosques, Chinese temples, and Hindu temples.

The transit system is ok, with subways, skytrains, and a monorail in addition to buses. However, it is not nearly as convenient as the Taipei system; there are few signs and there is little integration between systems.

Bathrooms are usually pay to use, but the prices are almost always cheep.

Food courts are very common, and there you can sit where you like and order from any stall. Some are enclosed restaurants and some are open street markets. Regular single counter restaurants are also common, though. There don't seem to be night markets except in Chinatown (where it is more in the Hong Kong style than the Taiwanese style), but street market food courts are similar for the food part. Tea and other beverages often come in a bag when ordered to go, but I only tried this once.

The usual motorcycles in Malaysia are a different style than those in Taiwan or Vancouver. There is less of a horizontal axis and more space near the footrests, like with scooters. There are a few scooters too, in about the same style as Taiwan. Motorcycles and scooters are less common than in Taiwan, but much more common than in Vancouver.

KL has the Petronas Twin Towers, which were the highest buildings in the world before Taipei 101. In a way they actually show their height better than Taipei 101 because the individual stories are emphasized more, whereas 101 emphasizes the large segments. We didn't try going here for a viewpoint since apparently availability is limited, but went to Menara KL instead. It is a tower in a park not too far away. We happened to get there during a BASE jumping competition, which meant that people were jumping off the top every couple of minutes and parachuting down. This was especially interesting at the observation deck where one window featured people free falling rapidly past. The tower also had a small and somewhat sad mini-zoo at the bottom along with some other stuff, and more interestingly also wild monkeys.

We also went to the aquarium in KL. This was a little expensive but quite interesting, with extensive displays including a walk through tunnel in the largest tank, where there were sharks and a big ray.

Just before we left Malaysia we also went to Times Square, a fancyish mall. The bottom floors are a regular somewhat upscale mall, more in the North American style than what we see in Taiwan, and very spacious. The upper floors have an amusement park, including a roller coaster that loops out over the atrium. Another mall we visited earlier was less upscale and more of a street market moved inside, with small crowded halls.

Batu Caves

We went to Batu Caves near KL. It is a Hindu temple and the site of a major pilgrimage festival. Besides the world's tallest Murugan statue, a long flight of stairs, and various shrines inside the caves, it also features a lot of monkeys. The monkeys hang out on the railings besides the steps and occasionally run around on the steps especially if there is food. Beatrice gave one a granola bar and it took it out of her hand with the wrapper part way open, finished opening it itself, and ran off to eat it without sharing with the other monkeys. The adult monkeys we saw all seemed to be female. The temple itself was also impressive, but I don't know enough about Hindu temples to appreciate it properly.

Ipoh

Our first stop farther from KL was Ipoh, a largish but still much smaller city something like 200 kilometers north. To get here we took a train, which took about 3 hours and was quick other than a mysterious pause part way there. The train was very modern and comfortable. I think it was some sort of new electric train, and there were older trains going the same way. Getting the train was more confusing, as the long distance and local commuter trains share a station and the location of the ticket office we wanted was not at all obvious from where we entered.

Ipoh also has a colonial area around the train station including some old British building and a pub that was supposed to be something like the oldest in Malaysia and was started by Chinese owners in an largely non-drinking culture. Farther from the station the city seems to be largely Chinese and feels like it hasn't changed much in two or three decades. Buildings are mostly old-looking shop houses with simple signs. For dinner we went to a street market / large food court, featuring brusque Cantonese-speaking stall operators and karaoke at one end. Despite the overall Chinese feel, there were at least three mosques and signs for Eid.

Ipoh also had more five foot ways, the covered walkway in the front of the ground floor of buildings. In Taiwan they are common but don't have an English name as far as I know, but in KL there were very few. In Ipoh a couple of shops had bamboo blinds to coverer the five foot way, which I gather is traditional but rare now.

We also visited the Perak Tong Temple near Ipoh. This is one of the Chinese Buddhist cave temples in the area, located in a limestone outcropping. It features a large Buddha statue in the entrance cave and various statues and wall paintings in the caves behind. Stairs lead up through the back at to a series of viewpoints overlooking the area, along with a bit more art. From the viewpoint it is apparent the area has some large industry and also extensive suburban-looking residential areas.

Cameron Highlands

After Ipoh we hooked back to the Cameron Highlands by bus. It was a scenic trip, but the bus didn't make any bathroom stops in the three hour trip, although the driver did stop a few times to pick up mail. This is an old British hill station which supports tea growing and other agriculture that works better in the colder climate. It is also popular as a tourist destination for both Malaysians and foreigners, probably for the same reason. It actually got a little chilly here, especially at night.

In Cameron Highlands we decided to take a tour offered by our guest house since the distances were so large. This turned out to be a good idea, as our guides were very knowledgeable. The first stop was the Boh Tea Estate to see the tea plantations and (at least a demonstration) factory. The tea plants we saw were about 80 years old, which appearently isn't very old for tea plants. Tea is grown by extremely low paid workers from poorer nearby countries, processed in several steps, and sorted into a few grades for distribution.

After that we continued to one of the higher peaks to see the mossy forest. It gets its name because moss grows everywhere on the trees. It traps the moisture passing by the peak, which then keeps the forest wet. Eventually a layer of moss turns into the new forest floor and is replaced by a new moss layer. The area apparently has a large number of unique species. One of our guides specialized in orchids, but unfortunately I don't know enough about them to report his descriptions.

The peak also had views for quite a distance. I think on a clear day it is supposed to be possible to see to Indonesia, but when we were there it was only possible to see part of the highlands and a dim impression of the lowlands in the other direction. The expanse of mountains was very dramatic, though.

The tour also visited a butterfly farm (or maybe butterfly garden; I think there are supposed to be places with both names), which was a bit artificial but still interesting and very good for photos. It had a large meshed area for butterflies (and/or moths) and then another area for plants and a variety of animals in cages. I'm not sure which species were local, but apparently at least some of the butterflies were local but not seen as much in the wild any more.

The other main feature of Cameron Highlands is the pseudo-British atmosphere. We went to get English tea at what turned out to be genuine old English school building that had been turned into a guest house and restaurant.

Leaving the highlands we took a bus back to KL (it was actually going to Singapore but stopped in KL too). It took about four hours and made a stop in the middle for bathrooms at food. The rest stop had free bathrooms and a good food court.

Flight Home

We took Air Asia flights both ways between KL and Taipei. At KL Air Asia operates out of the Low Cost Carrier Terminal, which is a largely separate airport next to the main airport. It is basically a big shed with a place to park planes next to it, and seems to serve mainly Air Asia but also a couple of other airlines which I think do mostly local flights. Here getting on and off the plane is done by walking out and climbing steps to the door, which was a nice change from the usual fancy tunnels.

This was also the first time I've actually been able to see out the window much during a flight in recent travels, as it was light and only moderately cloudy for most of the way.

High Speed Rail

To get to Kaohsiung we look High Speed Rail from Taoyuan station (a bit of a bus ride away from Taoyuan city) to Zuoying station (a bit outside of central Kaohsiung). The HSR took about an hour and a half between the stations, versus four to six hours on the regular express trains. If I remember correctly, Taoyuan to Hsinchu (the first stop) was about five minutes.

Along the way we noticed a large number of old looking houses, with single story buildings in three sections surrounding a courtyard. We have seen a few of these in Taoyuan as well, but there seemed to be a lot more in the countryside along the HSR line. I'm not sure why I didn't see any last summer; possibly I just didn't know what to look for, or maybe it is hard to see them from the conventional train.

Kaohsiung and Pingdong

We only had two afternoons in Kaohsiung, so we didn't go too far. It was sunny and quite hot while we were there.

We explored a bit around Cijin island and the mouth of the Love River. We also went up Shoushan, on the west side of the city, to see the monkeys. There are apparently wild monkeys in the nature reserve who will come and steal your food if you walk there. There is also a zoo and at least one temple. We got sidetracked by the zoo and didn't get into the nature reserve. The zoo was interesting, but also kind of sad with all the caged animals, especially some who didn't seem up to the heat.

After we finished a circuit of the zoo we sat down to eat, and as I was finishing a monkey strolled up on the sidewalk outside and climbed into one of the cages. It turned out to be going around to eat the zoo animals' food. It spent a while in the cage of some civets, and had a standoff with them wherein it would hit branches dramatically and they would try to stare it down. A group of older people came to watch and clap (for the monkey, I think). A few girls from one of the many graduation groups at the zoo also showed up, and when the monkey left the cage and continued down the road Beatrice and two of them followed it closely with cameras. It picked up a larger crowd (mostly from the school groups) as it went, and paused to investigate a garbage can and then pose for photos on top of it. After that it left the zoo, presumably into the nature reserve.

After Kaohsiung we went to Pingdong for the night to visit a family friend of Beatrice's.

Kenting

After that we went on to Kenting, the major resortish area at the far southern end of the island. Kenting is mostly known for water sports, but unfortunately it started raining as we got there and we didn't feel much like being in the water.

We stayed the night at Kenting Youth Activity Center, which is built in the style of a traditional Min village. This was a nice place to stay apart from an incident where a giant wasp showed up in our room at night.

While in Kenting we rented electric bikes. These turned out not to be hugely useful due to the traffic in the villages, but were interesting to try. If the weather had been nicer we would have put them to more use in going farther in the park.

On a road going inland where we tried out our bikes, we noticed some crabs which were trying to cross the road and were frequently getting run over by cars. We also saw some tiny hermit crabs and some tiny frogs in the small garden outside our room at the Youth Activity Center.

At a pizza restaurant in Kenting Town we noticed an unusual offering table outside. Besides the usual fruit and other food, it included a cup of tea, a cup of gin, and possibly two flats of coke. Either the spirits really liked coke or the coke wasn't actually part of the offering. The table was also left in its place at the side of the door, whereas usually this is done on a special table in front of the door and closer to the street. The unusual placement may just have been due to rain.

We had planned to stay at least one more night, but with the rain we decided to move on the east coast where accommodation is cheaper.

Taitung and Jhihben National Forest Recreation Area

We stayed a total of four nights in Taitung, first in a hotel after arriving from Kenting, then twice between Lyudao and Lanyu (see below) and once more after Lanyu before starting home. The later three nights we stayed in La Pace hostel, which I had used last summer (when it was under a different name). It is cheap and interestingly decorated and has a friendly owner.

While in the city we tried out Kasa, a restaurant the hostel owner had told me about last summer but which I hadn't tried. It turned out to be really good, with easily the best western food we have had in Taiwan, albeit only snackish things like casadias and bagels and cake. They seemed to make everything as we waited, so it took a while but was very fresh. One of their specialities is bagel pizzas, for which they made the bagels while we watched. They also have a bar and friendly staff (who speak pretty good English). The restaurant is in the framework of an old house which has been extended with newer but similarly styled construction at the back, so that the whole thing is largely open air and also looks like it could fall down any time. We enquired as to how it survived typhoons, and apparently it does so mostly because the adjacent buildings shelter it, although they do have a tarp cover as well.

While in Taitung we also also noticed a line of breakfast store cup seals that feature zoo animals, including the Robbit.

While we were in Taitung between Lyudao and Lanyu we went to the Jhihben National Forest Recreation Area, not too far away. This was again mostly in hope of seeing monkeys. We did see a few monkeys, but these ones didn't seem too interested in looking for food to steal and therefore we didn't get to see them for very long. There was also an area where there were supposed to be barking deer. We didn't see any, but heard noises that could have been them. Along the trail there were quite a few trees with very large root systems, which I assume were banyans since the name of the trail had something to do with banyans.

On the way back from Jhihben, we were offered a ride by a fellow Malaysian Chinese person who Beatrice met on a steep part of the trail, where he was leading an aboriginal work crew in replacing the steps. Additionally, on our way back from Lyudao a helpful passenger with a fancy car gave us a ride from Fukang harbour (where the ferries to the islands dock) to Taitung after he saw us walking along looking for a bus stop.

Lyudao

We took the ferry to Lyudao from Fukang harbour just outside of Taitung. The ferry took about 50 minutes. Lyudao is a small island which these days seems to be primarily a tourist destination. There is one main village with a lot of food and souvenir shops, and a couple of smaller villages. Despite being obviously polished for tourism, the island still feels relatively peaceful, or at least did when we were there. The weather was not great, but it refrained from raining long enough that we could see things.

There is one major road, which is an eighteen kilometre loop around the outside of the island, with a couple side roads and one going up into the interior mountains. We rented a golf cart (actually a series of golf carts, because the rental place just switches carts instead of recharging them on the spot (since recharging is an overnight process)).

Lyudao has Jhaorih Hot Springs, apparently one of two natural salt water hot springs in the world.

Another attraction is Guanyin cave, which is said to have been discovered in the Qing dynasty when a fisherman was led safely back to shore by an unknown light from the cliffs in the area of the cave. A particular rock is said to resemble Guanyin, so now there is a little shrine (and a not so little gate, snack stand, and souvenir shop). At the snack stand there we tried a drink made from a fruit which grows in the Taitung area (including Lyudao). I don't know what it is called, but it is made up of squarish pod things that come off easily.

Lyudao has a lot crabs and frogs (or maybe toads). These need to cross the road to get inland, so they are often seen squished on the road. There are quite a few signs tying to get people to avoid them. Lyudao is also known for Sika deer. These used to be a big industry (for the horn, I think), but there don't seem to be so many now. We saw a few in pens and one on a leash by a store so visitors could see it and take pictures with it (I think most of the penned dear we saw are kept for that purpose, but most were not brought out because of the rain). One of our hosts also took us on a tour to see deer and other wildlife at night. There were quite a few wild deer in the fields alongside the road, which could be seen with a high-power flashlight. On the last day we went for a walk on the Across Mountain Ancient Trail in the interior of the island. The sunnier parts had a lot of lizards that would hang out on the trail and run off when we got too close. We also saw one larger snake, and there were some louder (in comparison to lizard noises) rustling noises ahead of us that suggested there were more around. At the entrance to the trail an ant highway was visible on either side, with an underpass to cross the trail. There were also some creatures in the coral tidal pools on the beach, including starfish, small fish, sea cucumbers, and what I assume were sea anemones.

Another thing Lyudao is known for is political prisons (I'm not sure if they were exclusively political, but they are known mostly for housing political prisoners under the KMT). One side of the island has a sequence of prison complexes and a more recent human rights memorial. The major old prison seems to be Oasis Villa, also known as Lyudao Lodge and less catchily as The Ministry of National Defence Green Island Reform and Reeducation Prison. The old prisons are all closed now, although there is a separate modern prison which as far as I know is less notorious. Now that the island is mostly for tourism, some stores use the prison theme to their advantage. There is a shaved ice store called Ice Jail, complete with heavy bars and assorted guns, and at least one souvenir shop with primarily prisoned themed merchandise.

Lanyu

To get to Lanyu we had to go back through Taitung and take another ferry from Fukang harbour; there are some direct ferries between Lyudao and Lanyu, but they didn't run very often. Lanyu is another island, farther out and a bit bigger than Lyudao. The ferry took about two and a half hours this time, and bounced around a lot on the way. Lanyu also has one loop road around the island and one cross-island road though the mountains, and has several villages. The weather while we were there was pretty rainy, a bit more than it was on Lyudao. We rented a car, which Beatrice drove around. Lanyu is not nearly as touristy as Lyudao, seeming rougher but more genuinely out of the way, but it has a number of nice (but slightly expensive) places to eat and a few souvenir shops. The population is primarily Tao, an ethnic group related to Batan islanders, and the feel is very different than mainland Taiwan.

Cats are relatively popular on Lanyu, whereas dogs seem to be the dominant pet at least in Taoyuan. Perhaps relatedly, one of the restaurants we went to was called Mermen and Cat, in Dongqing village. Mermen and Cat had a shelf of books including a comic about a cat called Ni Ni.

Goats are everywhere and wander around on their own including on the roads. There are a few pigs in the towns, which are also allowed to wander free. A couple of pigs liked to hang out in front of the door to the building we were staying in because their food was prepared on the bottom level, so we had to push them out of the way to get in.

One distinctive feature of Tao construction is sitting platforms. These are raised platforms with low roofs (peaked roofs with space under the peak, although I don't know if that is important), sized to sit at least a few people. We tried one of these in the middle of the day one afternoon when it was actually sunny and hot, and it was much cooler than outdoors. Unfortunately I didn't get a photograph of an intact sitting platform. Other traditional Tao buildings are partially underground. Apparently when the KMT took over they destroyed these and replaced them with concrete buildings which then themselves got destroyed by typhoons. There are now a few partially underground buildings visible, in a presumably updated building style which looks to include modern materials. Other than that most of the current buildings are pretty standard for Taiwan, perhaps with additional tendencies toward being set into hillsides and toward featuring raised platforms. Traditional clothing (which includes loincloths and giant silver helmets for men, at least on ceremonial occasions) seems to be mostly gone, but there are a number of very elderly (but often fairly active) people about whose dress doesn't quite fit in.

Another traditional Tao thing is their canoes. The really traditional ones apparently take several months to make, but some of the boats sitting around looked like they might be some sort of simplified version. We got to try a little fishing boat through a guide at the Mermen and Cat. Due to wave conditions we weren't able to go out far enough to see flying fish as we were hoping, but got instructed in how to row the boat.

Christianity seems to be much more popular on Lanyu than it is in mainland Taiwan, probably because of missionaries deciding the Tao were an easier target. I only saw one Chinese style temple. Wukong cave, a place that apparently used to have some significance to do with evil spirits, seems to have at least one church set up in it, with a largish cross and what I assume are stations of the cross.

Lanyu is known for flying fish. We were there at the end of the season for them and there weren't too many around, but we did see a few from the ferry on the way in. We also saw a new (for me) kind of crab and a kind of ant with long legs.

Luye

On the way home we took a bus from Taitung to Luye in the East Rift Valley to see the tea growing area. The East Rift Valley is very beautiful and one of the less populated parts of Taiwan. I hadn't seen it before since on my last trip I took the coastal route from Taitung to Hualien. We ended up at Luye Gaotai (Luye high terrace), with a view down to the river and town and fields.

Near the view point there was a large grassy hill and field, which is possibly sometimes used for paragliding landings (the area is also known for paragliding), but at the time was being used for grass sledding. The grass sleds used a track system which seemed to work efficiently, as the sleds could pick up some speed going down the hill.

The major crops in the area were tea, pineapples, bananas (of some special kind, I think), and at least one other plant which I have forgotten. There were several demonstration tea farms with small fields and stores for sampling and buying tea.

After Luye we got on the train to go back to Taoyuan, via the rest of the East Rift Valley and Hualien.

Leading up to the new year there were a lot of new yearsy decorations on display and for sale in stores, mostly red decorations and food. We got a little of both in an effort to actually celebrate. There were also a few regular items being sold with new year or tiger themes, like the bra pictured below. However, there wasn't hugely more excitement than the lead up to Christmas. (And a few stores left Christmas decorations up too, which made the whole period from Christmas to Chinese New Year something of a long holiday period.) Apparently this year may have been a bit quieter than average due to the economic climate.

On the other hand, people were definitely moving around a lot for the first days of the new year. We had looked into going to southern Taiwan for our break, but hostels were full or quite expensive. From what I heard trains were also really busy. It turns out that many people go south, so Taipei is actually less busy.

New year's eve

We walked around for a while on new year's eve, but there wasn't much to see. There were a fair number of explosions, but we only saw a few people letting off fireworks on streets and in parks. Possibly people were firing them off balconies, because some seemed to be getting pretty high. Everything was really quiet other than the explosions, and most stores were closed. The distribution of stores still open didn't make any obvious sense, as things like bag stores were still open. Possibly it was just dependant on which owners weren't visiting family anywhere else.

New year's day

On new year's morning we went to a department store for a raffle. We paid 1000 TWD for a ticket, which got us a bag of randomized items supposedly worth several thousand. These raffles are apparently popular on new year's morning, and there were some bigger ones in Taipei. Each department store only gives out a limited number of tickets, so the lineups are big. We went to Shin Kong Mitsukoshi in Taoyuan city and got a place near the end of the line, and then waited for a couple of hours to get our ticket and bag of items. Our items included a tie, scarf, bag, pillow, thermos, blanket, electric kettle, and a few certificates for money off other items.

After that we walked around a bit more, but there wasn't much to see. There were a lot of people at temples, and otherwise things were fairly quiet. Most stores were still closed, with the same unexpected distribution as before. The atmosphere was fairly similar to Christmas in Vancouver overall. The explosions continued, as they would at decreasing levels for the rest of the new year period.

Taipei area

A couple days into new year, we went into Taipei. The major item for the first day was visiting Beatrice's family friends. This was fun and really interesting because we got to stay for dinner and the evening and see what they do during new year. Besides dinner, we ended up playing a board game and playing Wii sports with the kids. There were a lot of people because they also had a number of friends from their church over.

The second day we went went up the river. We were intending to go to Bali, across from Danshui, but got sidetracked at Guandu temple and spent half the afternoon looking around there. It is quite large, with several shrines, two tunnels (one to an exit and one to a Guanyin shrine), a garden behind it, and a market outside. Interestingly, there is a path from the garden to a church not far behind. After that we went on and walked through Danshui (where we went at Gregorian new year) to Fisherman's Wharf. Fisherman's Wharf is supposed to be another touristy thing like Danshui. When we got there in late afternoon or early evening it was pretty much deserted, though.

After that we went back to Taoyuan. One of Beatrice's co-teachers had offered to show us around, and enlisted a friend of hers. He very generously drove us around for two days and also invited us to dinner with his parents.

The first day we went to Yingge, between Taoyuan and Taipei. The old street there is known for pottery making places, so we made bowl type things. We also got sushi, which we hadn't really tried before in Taiwan, at a store there. In the evening we went into Taipei to see Shilin night market, which I hadn't seen before; it is one of the major Taipei night markets and is hugely crowded. We mostly played carnival games, especially failing to hit things with arrows. The second day we went to a hot spring near Taipei in the morning. We got an outdoor hot spring with a view of the mountains. This was attached to an indoor swimming pool and saunas, and I believe the rest of the building was a more general activity centre. Between the new year and maybe also the rainy weather we had the hot spring almost to ourselves. Then we went to Sansia, next to Yingge, which also has an old street and market. This area is known for croissants, which were quite tasty although not exactly what I know as a croissant. Finally we went to the dinner with our new friend and his parents, which was also really interesting as a chance to see what people actually do here.

Taoyuan Lantern Festival

Towards the end of the new years period the lantern festivals started. The Taoyuan lantern festival was set up in a field near the Gloria school with the main Taoyuan dorm. It was centred around a large tiger lantern (with an attached smaller air plane and maybe other things), and included extensive displays of lanterns, a stage, a temporary temple, and a temporary night market. The lanterns were mostly but not entirely tiger themed. They varied from smaller lanterns from schools to big ones several feet tall. There were also vendors selling various light up devices, including things that could be thrown in the air; as far as I could tell these would pop out rotor wings as they started falling, so that they would come down slowly.

Taipei Lantern Festival

The Taipei Lantern Festival also ran for a bit over a week, but started a few days later than the Taoyuan one. I went for the first time on my own and then went back with Beatrice a few days later. This festival was located at Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall and Taipei City Hall (the grounds of which are adjacent to each other), with lights going down Ren-ai Road to the Ren-ai Circle.

The centrepiece here was a large lantern of the festival's tiger mascot, called Hoki, located in front of Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall. It was surrounded by the flower fairies and a butterfly and other things related to the upcoming Taipei International Flora Expo. This lantern could turn on its base, while the butterfly flapped its wings and a flower at the back (which also had a screen inside) rotated. This lantern had been up for some time before the festival, and according to a TV news piece we happened to see it was originally built with the middle finger up instead of the thumbs-up that was intended. As far as I can tell this had been corrected before the festival, as it looked like a thumb from most angles.

The main active display of the festival, which happened every half hour for most of the day, consisted of this lantern turning while music played. At the same time, the fountain in front of it did various things, while lights behind shone through the fountain and onto the front of Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall. There was also a more detailed light system that could project images and text into the fountain. At the end of the display flames would shoot out behind the fountain and then a strip of water would burn briefly. At times there were also fireworks from City Hall, but I don't think that happened every night. On the first day I was there some sort of foam or bubble shapes (hearts and stars and things) were continually being released to drift up into the sky, and these would catch the lights during the display.

Also on the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall grounds were several rows of lanterns. Three of these were general mostly tigery lanterns similar to those at the Taoyuan festival (I think the Taoyuan festival actually had more lanterns overall). The walkways around the Hall itself were hung with simpler and presumably more traditional lanterns.

Another big area was devoted to things for the Flora Expo, including some lit depictions of the festival's flower fairies and lanterns for many countries. The latter each consisted of a building and a plant associated with the country. For some reason Macau got a much larger lantern, although perhaps that was unrelated to the Flora Expo.

At the entrance to the grounds were two large lanterns of the Orchid Fairy and the Lily Boy, riding the Orchid Elephant and the Lily Lion respectively. According to the plaque on the pedestal, "The Orchid Elephant looks the world with its tender eyes." The Orchid Fairy holds a blue vase symbolizing the coming of peace and blessing, while the Lily Boy holds a lily symbolizing good luck.

There was also a small stage with performances and riddle contests.

Over at City Hall, there was the main stage with ongoing performances, seemingly mostly music and dancing children. On the first day I went I saw a band which I believe was Smells Good, and on the second day me and Beatrice watched Yang Pei An singing for a while (some of the songs he sang are available on youtube). Behind the stage and right in front of City Hall there was a large tiger statue with a screen showing a (apparently happy) human face inside the mouth. This seems to be a common tiger motif, but I'm not sure what it is supposed to represent, if anything. At times similar images with real faces were projected onto the front on City Hall; I assume there was somewhere people could go to get their picture taken for it.

City Hall also had light shows, projected onto the front of the building and consisting of moving images, mostly floral, set to music.

Another event on the main stage was a Tiger Reunion (once a day, I think), wherein people born in a tiger year could show up in groups to get a prize and seemingly also tiger hats.

In the plaza leading up to the stage there were two long lantern strips. One was Wizard of Oz themed, while the other apparently represented the Chinese traditional story Utopia by Tao-Qian. There were people dressed as something that might have been Wizard of Ozish going around to take photos with, and another group that was presumably for Utopia but didn't have any obvious connection to anything I saw on that side.

Next to all of that were two areas to either side for more lanterns; one side had what were apparently traditional lanterns representing traditional and popular stories, while on the other were assorted lanterns of various themes.

On the side with the traditional lanterns was also a temporary temple and a "praying lantern zone" with various places to pray for things. Most obvious was an area to hang wishes on trees and a heart shaped tunnel presumably for couples. The latter also had a large percentage display which would light up with a number if the people going though touched something.

Finally, running along Ren-ai Road to the Ren-ai Circle was a display of lights strung in trees. These were mostly like the country flora lanterns, with sections showing a flag, landmark, and some flowers or other plants.

There didn't seem to be any night market, so food was limited to a couple of cafes and the nearby stores and a few stalls which set up outside the grounds. There were a lot of vendors selling light up things, including the flying things, toy weapons, horns, and ears.

There are (even) more pictures of both lantern festivals on my site under the tag lantern festival.

Procession in Taoyuan

A couple days after I thought the main new year period ended, there was a large procession in Taoyuan city near our apartment. Presumably it was new year related, but I'm not quite sure. It was long enough to be simultaneously visible on both perpendicular streets at the ends of our block for the twenty minutes or so I watched, and probably a while longer. The parts I saw included quite a few small carts and drummers, some larger decorated trucks, a military-looking (and mixed-gender) marching band, a couple of lion dance looking figures, a dragon, and most visibly quite a few large figures presumably representing deities. The latter came in several groups, and were maybe two person heights (supported by one person underneath). Seemingly the deity figures had to stop in front of the large temple at Zhong Zheng and Zhong Shan, and dance or otherwise move around for a minute before moving around the temple and continuing. Unfortunately I didn't discover the procession until shortly before class, so I didn't have much time to watch. It was a little surreal because except at the temple pretty much everyone on the street was ignoring the whole thing, which made standing around taking pictures feel strange. Additionally, it was interesting to see the deity figures waiting with scooters to cross the street.

I will probably have to replace the current hackish collection of page generator scripts with something more flexible at some point, but it should do for now. Basically I have a makefile invoked by the Apache 404 handler to generate pages as needed, based on data from a git repository. The small dynamic part (for comments) just deletes files when they are outdated and need to be regenerated.

While looking around in a stationary shop in Taoyuan city more recently, I came across a small Three Kingdoms themed set from Sluban. This was interesting enough that I bought it to have a look, and now have acquired a small collection. There are several companies with Lego clones here, but Sluban seems to have the largest selection. It has some lines corresponding to Lego town, train, and pirate themes (but no space and no castle line in the same style as Lego, as far as I can tell), and also the Three Kingdoms line, various modern military lines, and some robot or mecha sets.

Quality is definitely much lower than Lego, with badly fitting parts and visible molding marks. However, I am reasonably impressed by some of their sets. This is partly because they are more similar to the 90s style of Lego that I am used to than many of the current Lego sets look to be, but also because of the variety in the less Lego-like lines. It is also significantly cheaper than Lego, at maybe one half to one third the price for similarly sized sets. I think the lower quality actually works well for some of the military sets, as it gives vehicles a suitably rough look.

Here in Taoyuan Lego clones seem to be sold mostly in stationary stores or small bookstores (often these are the same thing) and in dollar store type places, and generally these stores only stock a couple of sets at once. In Taiwan Lego clones don't seem to be a street market item like in Hong Kong. There is one store selling mostly Lego clones in the Wan Nian Commercial Building at Xining and Emei in Ximending in Taipei. It is on one of the upper floors near the end of an escalator. Some department stores and Toys R Us (about the only full toy store I've seen here) have real Lego, at about the same prices as in Vancouver, and no clones. When I bought the tank set described below, the owner of the store told Beatrice that Lego clones are less popular than they used to be because children are now wanting video games instead of that kind of toy.

There are some more pictures on my site under the tags sluban and lego.

Three Kingdoms Sets

I've got three small Three Kingdoms (the theme may actually be called Red Cliff in English, going by the Sluban website) sets and one larger one. Two of these were from a stationary store in Taoyuan and the other two (the largest and smallest) were from the store in the Wan Nian Commercial Building. These sets look similar in design to the 90s Lego castle sets to me, but I've never been much of a castle person. They seem to be designed more for fun than for appearance or realism. The most distinctive parts here are probably the minifigure equipment and the Chinese style roof pieces.

For some reason the fortress has a dragon-etched window set into what seems to be a rock piece on top of the wall (on the right in the picture), which lights up in flashing patterns. The other larger sets in the theme look to have the piece as well. It's possible that this somehow makes sense, and sometime I'll have to get the Chinese on the box translated to find out.

Minifigure Packs

The store in the Wan Nian Commercial Building also has bulk packs of minifigures, and I've got three of these now. These have no brand markings, but seem to correspond to Sluban lines. Each pack has twelve minifigures with associated equipment. A few of these are well coordinated, but most are more assorted with strangely matched equipment or multiple themes of minifigures. The packs shown here are mostly modern soldiers of various themes, but the store also has some that are primarily townish and some that look like vikings or pirates.

A flaw of the packs is that the minifigures often can't grip their equipment very solidly. This is sometimes a problem with minifigures from the sets too, but not as commonly. It could be that the minifigure packs are rejects from regular sets.

Tank Set

More recently I also got a tank set from a little dollar store type place which focuses on toys.

The tank is of somewhat different construction from the Three Kingdoms sets. It is built more solidly and gives the impression of having been optimized for solidity and appearance rather than for low piece count and playability. This is also in contrast to most of the Lego sets I am familiar with, although that may be partly because most of the Lego sets I bought when I was younger were at the very low end of the price range. In any case, the tank seems relatively model oriented. It has no interior, though.

As far as I can tell there is one place on the model where the parts simply can't fit together squarely. This occurs on the light mount on the left of the turret, where one of the transparent parts touches the stud in front of it and forces the support slightly out of position. If you look closely at the picture of the box you can see that the box model appears to be a little out of alignment here as well. The box model also has some pieces out of alignment at the front, which as far as I know is just from badly fitting parts rather than the design.

Another difference from Lego's sets is that the Sluban sets include a number of extra parts, whereas Lego tends to put in at most one or two. Possibly this is simply to make up for less quality control. The tank also came with what may be extra stickers. Some of the decorative stickers on the included sticker sheet are visible on the box model, but the control panels and some of the others are not.

I have been back in Taiwan since October 20, this time to try teaching English. Me and Beatrice are both here, with one year contracts to teach at Gloria English School, one of the many English cram schools in Taiwan.

I don't think I'm especially good at teaching English, at least at a school like Gloria with rather animated classes. I think things are mostly going ok, though, so hopefully I can do a reasonable job for the year. In any case, it's certainly been a good thing to try.

All regular classes at Gloria (the exceptions are story book and conversation classes and maybe some of the special high level classes) have both a local teacher and a foreign teacher. Each week the class has one session with the local teacher and one with both teachers together. The local teacher handles the homework and coordination things (talking to parents and so on), which makes the foreign teacher role relatively easy.

Each session is one and a half or two hours. Weekday classes are always in the late afternoon or evening, since students have regular school too. Saturday classes can be any time, although I think there is some sort of break for early afternoon. The only weekday off for Gloria teachers is Sunday, but from what I've heard it is usually easy to get time off on request.

Regular Gloria classes range from complete beginners level up to students who can actually converse a bit and read long passages, and from really little kids up to high school students. I've had most of the levels (I've been doing a lot of subbing, so I see different classes). The different levels all have advantages and disadvantages for teaching. The middle range is probably easiest to teach overall. The younger students have a lot of energy and can be fun, but get out of control easily and don't know enough English to talk much. The older students are more advanced but can be hugely busy with regular school and are often less motivated.

Location

We are living in downtown Taoyuan city, at an apartment-dormitory provided by the Gloria at one of their schools. There are currently only four people in the apartment, with quite a few more foreign teachers in a larger dormitory at another Gloria school in the city. Our location is pretty convenient, as we are a few blocks from the train station and stops for a number of local and long-distance bus lines.

Taoyuan county is the area west and south west of Taipei. It is probably most notable for containing the international airport, which is up north near the ocean. Taoyuan city is some distance south of the airport, fifteen or twenty kilometres from Taipei or a bit under an hour by train or bus. The other large city centre in Taoyuan county is Jhongli city, farther west and a little south along the train line. Gloria has a number of locations throughout Taoyuan county, with the major concentrations being the northern schools in and around Taoyuan city and the southern schools in and around Jhongli city. The head office and at least one more dormitory are also down south somewhere. I work mostly at the northern schools, but have been to a couple of the southern schools to sub classes.

Taoyuan city isn't the most interesting place to live, as it is mostly a featureless urban expanse. The Rough Guide to Taiwan notes that "it's now the fastest growing city in Taiwan and wholly unattractive". I assume from the location and growth that is largely an expansion of Taipei to hold excess population. On the other hand, it is certainly not bad. It has enough stores to easily cover common needs and wants, and is close enough to Taipei to make commuting there easy. The city is bordered in the east by a series of hills, which have some trails and are a lot quieter. Near the hills there is a creek running roughly north, and there is a largish park on the section near us and intermittent smaller parts farther along.

Life Here

Transportation has been quite convenient overall. I walk to the closest school and occasionally to some of the other nearby schools, but mostly take buses. I've also taken trains to get to the southern schools (and Taipei). Sometimes working out which bus to take is tricky without knowing more Chinese, but I can usually get instructions from the school. Bus fares seem reasonably cheep, although I'm not sure what the structure for them is. Usually when you get on the bus you pay and tell the driver where you are going, and they give you a ticket slip which you then return when you get off. The local buses also have a card system. You can buy a card and add money to it at one of the bus offices, and then just need to touch it to a sensor when getting on and off. Trains are also reasonable. An express train to Taipei is 69 TWD, or about 2.3 CAD. To get to the southern schools I've used local trains, which run on the main lines but feel more like the Taipei MRT inside. These are if anything cheaper than the buses. Most of the foreign teachers here seem to use scooters instead of taking the bus. I may look into that eventually, but so far the bus system seems to work fine. The traffic is pretty intimidating, although I suspect actually not any less safe than in Greater Vancouver.

Shopping is also reasonably convenient. Taoyuan doesn't have the huge shopping areas that Taipei does, but it's big enough to have a good variety of of stores. I haven't had problems finding anything, although I think my requirements have been fairly low. I gather Taoyuan may be cheaper than Taipei for some things (at least electronics). One difficulty is finding English books. I'm not aware of anything in Taoyuan, so the nearest good store seems to be Page One in the Taipei 101 mall. It's actually a pretty good book store, possibly preferable to Chapters for me.

Some of the stores here have what seems to me like strange combinations of goods. Down the street from the dormitory is a Kuang Nan store (I believe this is the same chain where I got my SDHC reader in Tainan back in the summer), which has CDs, DVDs, and small electronics on the first floor; household products, watches, and various other things on the second; and stationary on the third. Around the corner is another store which has cosmetics on the first floor; lingerie on the second; and household products, food, and stationary on the third. Both of these have been quite useful. There are also three large department stores in the downtown. These are mostly too upscale to be very useful, apart from the Wellcome (see below) in the basement of one.

For eating out, the cheaper food is mostly the same as what I noted on my trip, largely small noodle places, snack stalls, and bubble tea stores. Having Beatrice along has let me a try some things that I didn't know how to order on my trip before. Perhaps the major development is trying breakfast stores and stalls, which seem to usually serve sandwiches (and similar things like croissants), egg pancakes, noodles, and congee along with tea, soy milk, and rice milk. There are also more expensive restaurants, although most food is still cheaper than Vancouver prices. In the downtown a lot of the mid-range options are pasta places, with varying local interpretations of pasta. There are food courts in the department stores, but these are also a bit more expensive and for the most part I haven't found anything especially interesting there.

For eating in, vegetables can often be had from street markets and sometimes individual roadside sellers. Fruit is similar, with the addition of more fixed stores for it. Bread is easily available from bakeries and supermarkets, but is usually low quality sliced sandwich bread or in bun form. We've been buying other things (and sometimes produce too) mostly from Wellcome supermarket, although we are slowly finding better places for some things. There are some smaller supply stores which I largely haven't worked out yet, and there is a southeast Asian community south of the train station with some cheep and relatively varied stores. Unfortunately the best place for some groceries (like cheese) is Carrefour, the nearest location of which is near the other Taoyuan city Gloria dormitory; it's not inaccessible but also not very convenient. We are not entirely sure yet that our current cooking is any cheaper than eating out, so we need to work that out and adjust accordingly.

The weather hasn't been great overall, but certainly no worse than Vancouver at this time of year. When we got here it was hot, and then by some time in November it started getting relatively cold. Since then it's been mostly cold and often rainy, with occasional breaks of heat and sun. I don't think it actually gets all that cold, but enough that I wear a jacket and sweater outside most of the time.

However, earlier this year Uzbl appeared on the Arch Linux forums. It describes its goal as following the UNIX philosophy. The browser itself is a simple window with only a web page and an optional status and input bar, while everything else can be added externally through scripts attached to keyboard and event bindings. It uses WebKit as the rendering engine, so it should handle most web pages. While Uzbl is still alpha and is rapidly changing, it is the most promising web browser project I've seen.

Besides Uzbl there is now also Surf, also using WebKit. It appeared after Uzbl and was presumably inspired by it. I haven't seen anything describing its goals, but I gather it may be aiming for a dwm style with most configuration done in C.

Given that Uzbl and Surf use WebKit, they don't help with bloat in the sense of lowering code size, but rather in the sense of doing only one thing. The title of this post is based on the slides (which are in English) for a presentation by Markus Schnalke. The slides identify interface, size, and lack of software leverage as three problems with most web browsers, and argue that focusing on solving the last issue as Uzbl and Surf seem to makes sense because interface improvements are relatively easy and reducing size is hopeless since the modern web is itself insane and requires large software to render.

I got home on the evening of August 13th. This involved leaving Hong Kong at about 17:30, leaving Taipei at about 23:00 after a layover there, and arriving in Vancouver at about 19:30, all in local times on the same day.

Budget

The airplane tickets were about 1300 CAD. Expenses while away were about 1000 CAD in Taiwan and 370 CAD in Hong Kong and Macau (together), for an average of about 34.50 CAD a day in Taiwan and 46.25 CAD a day in Hong Kong and Macau. (I am excepting rough costs for the few gifts and personal items I bought.)

More details on costs are below. Note that 1 CAD is about 30 TWD and about 7 HKD.

Accommodation

I always stayed in hostels except when in Taichung, where I couldn't find a hostel in the city with a free bed. I didn't keep very good track of hostel costs, but I think a dorm bed in Taiwan averaged about 15 CAD for a night, with some at 12-13 CAD. Private rooms for one person (but equipped with double beds for two) were 600 or 700 TWD, or about 20 CAD, on the couple of occasions when I used them. The one hotel I stayed in, in Tainan, was just over 900 TWD. A quick look suggests that hotels in Taipei are much more expensive. The one hostel I stayed in in Hong Kong was about 16 CAD.

The hostels I used all seemed clean and safe enough to me. The staff all spoke enough English that I didn't have any problems. They usually seemed helpful without being particularly outgoing (possibly partly because of limited English), but in a few places (Puli Nansing Youth Hostel, Hostel Ibubunu in Taitung, and Amigos Hotel in Hualien) they went out of their way to help me work out what to do in the area.

At first there wasn't much social atmosphere in the hostels I stayed at; the first hostel in Taipei was fairly busy, but people mostly kept to themselves or in existing groups, and the hostels in Taichung and Puli were almost empty. However, in Kaohsiung, Taitung, Hualien, and at the hostels I stayed in when back in Taipei people seemed more sociable. Except for Taitung these hostels were quite busy, with travellers from a variety of places. This included a number of English speakers, so I found some people to talk to.

Eating

In Taiwan the most obvious, and probably the cheapest, places to eat were small open fronted restaurants and stalls. Most of these had regular menus (which were usually posted out front, which is basically what I mean by obvious above -- it was easy to work out prices), but some were buffets. The buffets charge either by weight or by some process used by the staff involving examining and poking at the food being taken, presumably based on the number and type of dishes.

Vegetarian restaurants are fairly common (at least in the cities I saw) and can be identified with 素食 or 卍 signs. However, they were infrequent enough that it can take a bit of searching to find one, and I sometimes found it impossible to find any open after the main hours for restaurants. There are often higher concentrations near temples. Some of the buffet places are entirely vegetarian. When I tried one of the non-vegetarian buffets it seemed easy enough to find some vegetarian options, but there was a little contamination from the meat dishes.

There are also convenience stores and bakeries for basic food. I found that buns and tea eggs from 7-Eleven were a good backup meal. At least in the larger cities (definitely Taipei) there are also some western style cafés, which I used for easily identifiable vegetarian options for the first couple of days. These seemed to have English menus (but not necessarily English speaking staff).

A meal at one of these small restaurants in Taiwan was usually 30-90 TWD. Drinks at bubble tea type stores were usually 30-60 TWD. Bottled drinks (in smallish bottles, maybe 600ml) were in the same range, but it was almost always easy to find options on the low end of that. Bottled water in 2l bottles was also in the 30-60 range (there was a standard price, but I don't recall what it was).

In Hong Kong the restaurants were more like those in Vancouver; they were less open and there were a lot more restaurants with western food. I didn't see as many explicitly vegetarian places as in Taiwan, possibly just because there were fewer Chinese style restaurants. However, there were some, again especially near temples, and I didn't have any problem finding vegetarian dishes at the other restaurants. Again there were convenience stores and bakeries for simple things. Food in Hong Kong seemed to be about the same price as in Vancouver. Bubble tea type places were a little cheaper than I believe they are in Vancouver, but more expensive than the average in Taiwan. I don't recall what bottled water cost, but I believe it was more expensive than in Taiwan. It usually was available only in sizes up to 1.5l, and there seemed to be only a couple (three, I think) brands in the city.

Food in Macau seemed roughly like in Hong Kong, but I was only there for one day and only bought food in a very touristy area.

Transport

Getting around locally was easy in Taipei and Kaohsiung because of the MRT systems. The rest of Taiwan was much harder because the only public transit was buses, and routes and schedules were posted only in Chinese. My guide book usually told me what to take, but finding out where to get off could be be trickier and once away from the city centres bus stops were sometimes hard to locate. There may be more English information about buses available somewhere, but it wasn't obvious. Local transit was always much cheaper than in Vancouver; for example, MRT fares in Taipei started at 20 or 25 TWD to get to an adjacent station, and from near the centre of the city the fares to the ends of lines were about 40 TWD.

Long distance transport in Taiwan was fairly easy on the train. Tickets could be bought from machines, and these always had English instructions. There were also a lot of long distance buses. These had the same disadvantages for me as the local buses, although routes between major cities were more obvious. For the long distance buses it was usually necessary to buy a ticket from an office by the appropriate bus company's station, but it also seemed to be possible to get on along the route; I never fully worked out the procedures.

Taxis were almost always plentiful in Taiwan, and there were always many around the main bus and train stops. In many places (especially outside of Taipei, for some reason) the taxi drivers were quick to approach me in hopes that I wanted a ride. This was sometimes useful even when I didn't want a taxi, because they seemed willing to point me in the right direction to get buses as long as they first got a minute to tell me how much faster their taxi would be.

I Taiwan I found it was useful to write down and carry the Chinese name and address of my hostel and current destination, to make it possible to get directions without having to find English speakers.

In Hong Kong local transport was good (see my post for Hong Kong), well marked in English, and also much cheaper than Vancouver.

Other Expenses

Attractions in Taiwan seemed cheep on the few occasions I payed for them. For example, visiting the National Palace Museum normally costs 160 TWD, and is only 80 TWD for students.

I priced some small electronics while in Taiwan, first because I needed an SDHC card to store photos and later to see how much cameras and music players were. As far as I could tell prices for brands I knew were about the same as Vancouver. However, I know nothing about how to shop there, and there were a number of smaller brands I didn't recognize.

Language

I didn't know nearly enough Mandarin to use it much, which limited communication a lot in Taiwan. Since all the hostel staff spoke some English the major place I needed to communicate was at restaurants. I got by just by pointing at reasonable-looking items on menus or by using buffets. As far as I could tell the smaller restaurants that I describe above tended not to have English menus, although the slightly more upscale ones (and also the bubble tea type drink stores) sometimes did.

Buses in Taiwan were very difficult since schedule and route information was in Chinese and not all buses had English stop announcers (some had displays inside to show the next stop, which did tend to include English). However, it was usually possible to get by by writing down the destination in Chinese and showing that to the ticket office staff (when necessary) and the bus driver.

In general people in Taiwan didn't seem to mind me not speaking Chinese, and were usually very friendly. The staff in convenience stores sometimes seemed a bit nervous about it, but I imagine that they may not have been too happy about their jobs in general. Store staff did seem to appreciate it if I at least thanked them in Chinese. A few people did want to talk to me even with very limited English or my extremely limited Chinese, especially to ask where I was from and that kind of thing.

It should be noted that there are actually a quite number of people in Taiwan who speak English in varying degrees. The problem for me was mostly in finding them. Additionally, the people running the small restaurants and driving buses seemed to usually not speak any. However, the few times I ran into serious difficulties communicating there were often people nearby who could help me.

In Hong Kong plenty of people speak English and I assume those who don't are used to English speakers. In the cases where I needed to communicate with people who didn't seem to speak any (especially in the smaller bakeries), I got by with the same techniques as in Taiwan.

Taiwan Youth Travel Program

There is a Taiwan youth travel program which offers several useful-sounding services for young foreign travellers. I didn't end up taking advantage of this except for getting the youth travel card and using it to get discounts in a couple of places.

Mostly I didn't take advantage of it just due to my own lack of planning, but I also found that instructions on the site and in brochures were not always very clear.

The main physical contact location they give is the Youth Hub in Taipei. When I went there the person I spoke to was helpful in giving me the youth travel card and other basic information but couldn't help me too much beyond that, mostly due to limited English. The building looks to be a general youth centre rather than being just for the travel program, so I imagine that helping foreign travellers wasn't her main job. For me having a contact who was either a better English speaker or who was just good at being welcoming (later I met some hostel staff and others who were good at this even without speaking much English) would have helped a lot.

Obviously helping inexperienced English-speaking travellers may or may not be a goal of the program (although their website gives me the impression that it probably is), and given that I didn't try very hard to work things out others in my situation might have more success.

Guide Books

In Taiwan I used "The Rough Guide to Taiwan". This is a pretty comprehensive book, and was extremely useful for getting around and deciding where to go. I chose it over the Lonely Planet book because it seemed to have more background on places and attractions. It also has good street maps for the areas it covers, which were often enough to find my way around. However, the maps don't give Chinese characters for street names, which made them much less useful in some smaller places (even the outskirts of the major cities) where there is no romanization on street signs. I didn't use the book too much for finding accommodation, because it didn't list very many options in each city (understandably, given that it covers the whole island) and the hostel booking sites were much more comprehensive, but it came in useful for that a couple of times. It wasn't too much use for finding food either, for similar reasons but with the added constraint that I needed vegetarian places.

In Hong Kong I used "Hong Kong Step by Step" (or possibly "Step by Step Hong Kong"), by Insight Guides. It is a much smaller book, and is structured as a series of tours in various locations (including a couple in Macau and one in Shenzhen). This seemed like a reasonable approach for the amount of time I was planning to spend in the region, and I ended up mostly following the tours. I imagine it would also be reasonable just as a list of highlights in each area. It includes small maps of each area covered by a tour and a larger pull-out map covering the centre part of the city in detail and the whole region in less detail. Again I didn't find the book useful for choosing accommodation, although I did sometimes follow its advice on restaurants.

Route in Taiwan

In Taiwan I chose to go down the west coast from Taipei first and then back up the east coast. It turned out that the east coast, and especially Hualien (towards the north) is well prepared for tourists, in some ways more than Taipei. The owners of the hostels in Hualien and Taitung (see above) both gave me advice on what to see and how to get there, and there was good bit of information available in English. Hualien has a relatively large number of hostels, and probably also some cheap hotels. The east coast is also a bit quieter than the busy cities in the west. Given this it seems like it might have been better for me, especially as an inexperienced traveller, to have gone down the east coast first to have an easier time at the beginning. On the other hand, the east coast made for a relaxing ending to the trip, and in a way I am glad I saw the west coast first since it seems more representative of the country.

Macau feels much like Hong Kong overall. However, the parts I saw were obviously well prepared for tourism, and were mostly well signposted and with good sidewalks. On the other hand, I gathered that this changed rapidly once out of the tourist areas. Signposts are usually in Chinese, Portuguese, and English. Unlike Hong Kong, scooters are common, although I think not as common as in Taiwan.

I only visited the Macau Peninsula. The rest of Macau consists of the islands of Taipa and Coloane, and Cotai, which is the reclaimed land between the two islands where the new casino and hotel projects are. All I saw of this was bridges going off to a shoreline which must have been the near edge of Taipa. One of these bridges started near the ferry terminal, and the ferries went under it when coming and going.

My Hong Kong guidebook had one tour of the area, so I mostly followed that. Here I use the mostly Portuguese names for things it gave, although I am not sure if that is the normal convention in English.

Walking towards the historic centre from the ferry terminal the first major sight was Fisherman's Wharf, a theme park on the waterfront with some open shopping areas. It has a number of themed areas mostly in pseudo-historical styles, including some classical Chinese buildings, a Roman amphitheatre, and a volcano. After passing Fisherman's Wharf there was an area (called Nape, I think) of what seemed to be large casinos and hotels.

Farther in on the peninsula was what is apparently the historic centre of Macau, Largo do Senado. This square is surrounded by a number of old buildings, which now mostly contain modern shops. On one end of the square is São Domingos, an old church which includes a museum of Catholic artifacts from the area. The streets near the square also have a few older buildings, and a lot more touristy shops, especially for food. The whole area was very crowded, and the mixing of the actual old buildings with modern tourist shops made things feel somewhat less genuine to me, and more like an extension of the casino area.

However, once off the tourist streets there were more streets that were less well maintained and had a fairly dense residential feel. Here shops were largely marked in only Chinese.

Near the Largo do Senado is the ruins of São Paulo, and the Fortaleza do Monte. São Paulo was a seventeenth century Jesuit cathedral which was mostly destroyed in a fire a couple hundred years ago. The remaining part is just the front façade, along with a few small bits of excavated ruins and a crypt containing remains of some of the Jesuit founders and Japanese Christian martyrs. The site also includes another small museum of Christian artifacts. The Fortaleza do Monte is a fortress of a similar age on a hill overlooking the ruins of São Paulo, which was originally also used by the Jesuits. The fort contains the Museum of Macau, which I didn't go in to. It also has good views out over the peninsula.

After seeing the Largo do Senado area and the ruins and fort, I went south west trying to follow what my guide book identified as the "well-signposted Historic Centre of Macau Trail". I didn't manage to find many sign posts, but went along what was probably the right street. The route was much quieter than the Largo do Senado area and lacked the tourist shops, but still seemed to be maintained for visitors and had a few more old buildings along the way (with sign posts to more). The street I was on ended at a small park between the A-Ma Temple and the Maritime Museum. The A-Ma Temple is a Mazu temple which predates the Portuguese arrival, and which is said to be the origin of the name Macau. By the park there was an accessible stretch of waterfront, which began after a harbour. As far as I can tell the other side of the water there is outside Macau.

I walked back to casino area and then the ferry terminal along a larger road between two lakes (or at least enclosed bodies of water) and the edge of the peninsula. This road connected to two more bridges to Taipa. I also went past Macau Tower, which has a mall and the world's tallest bungee jump.

In general Hong Kong feels very dense, as is expected. However, it is not dense in the sense of an endless urban area, but rather in the sense that everyone has decided to live around Victoria Harbour, a relatively small area bounded by hills. The unpopulated hills are often visible, and there is a reasonable bit of green space within at least parts of the city. I didn't have any very strong reaction to Hong Kong overall, although the density and the transit were impressive. One of the other people in my hostel described Hong Kong as a European city inhabited by Chinese people, and in that way it doesn't differ hugely from parts of Greater Vancouver.

The public transit in Hong Kong is really good. The MTR rail system (mostly underground but sometimes on raised tracks) is very extensive and has several intersecting lines covering the city and also reaching parts of the mainland New Territories and Lantau island. There are also many buses and at least on Hong Kong Island also trams. In the Western New Territories there is light rail. From what I saw it was bit slower than the MTR due to having to stop at streets to let cars pass, but was still pretty efficient. For all of the transit you can use an Octopus Card, which you add money to and then just touch to a machine when boarding and/or leaving (when boarding for buses, when leaving for trams, and both for the MTR and light rail). There are turnstiles for the MTR, but the light rail seemed to be on the honour system. There are also ferries over Victoria Harbour (though I'm not sure if these are really for transit or more for tourism) and to the islands. These I think are more privately operated, but also accept the Octopus Card. Additionally, convenience stores usually take the Octopus Card. A card is often just referred to as an Octopus, which leads to some mildly amusing instructions about where to put your Octopus for various tasks.

Unlike in Taiwan street rules actually matter (although certainly they are not always followed), so that for example crosswalks are usually honoured by cars even when other traffic lights are not giving them motivation to stop. One travel website I read advised having a look at the Road User's Code, which is not actually law but apparently can be taken into account in legal cases. The markings for crossing roads are somewhat complex (perhaps no more than in Vancouver, but there are a number of subtleties), but are throughly thought out and seemed to be used consistently. Whereas in BC crosswalks are usually at intersections and can be unmarked, Hong Kong takes a different approach to street crossings. As far as I know there are no unmarked crosswalks. The advice given is to cross streets at any safe location when there is no marked crossing place or an over/underpass. Further, intersections are not considered to be a safe location for crossing, so the advice is to cross away from intersections in this case, and the marked crossing places are also often set back from intersections. Often there are barriers along streets to control where people can cross. In some places there are overpasses or underpasses (called subways) instead of crossing places on the street. I found this could be confusing since I often had to backtrack to find over/underpasses on discovering that there was no street-level crossing place.

Hong Kong often gives the impression of being very carefully managed. For example, there seems to be a registry for slopes needing stabilization, and such slopes are marked with tags giving the registration number and contact information. Things and places that are out of order often have apologetic signs in cases where there wouldn't be any sign in Vancouver. Doors that get a lot of traffic commonly have signs indicating how often the handles are sanitized, with times frequently around every two hours. This also applies to bathroom fixtures and some railings and similar things.

There are often large birds circling above the buildings in the city. I think these are black kites.

Money in Hong Kong was a little complicated in comparison to Taiwan. Unlike Taiwan there are cents in the currency, leading to a wider range of coins. There is a relatively large amount of variety in the coins, with a couple kinds having wavy edges and one having two metals like a toonie. Bills are often issued by private banks, and include a range of designs including some with plastic windows.

I mostly explored in Hong Kong using the guide book I had picked up in Taipei, "Hong Kong Step by Step" from Insight Guides. This was organized as a series of tours in various locations, which I largely followed.

After finding my hostel on the first day I walked over to the Causeway Bay area, not far from my hostel (and the closest area to it that my guide book covered), and spent the rest of the first day following my guide book around there. This included a couple of temples, Victoria Park, and a shopping area including both street markets and the relatively upscale Times Square mall. After that I took a tram up past the Happy Vally race course, which I couldn't see into much since it seemed to be closed and under renovations, and walked down the other side of the race course. Across the road from the race course is a sequence of cemeteries. The largest is a Christian cemetery (or possibly more than one joined together) which contains graves from something like a century and a half ago through the present. The older graves and monuments are largely from the colonial military and administration. There are also smaller Muslim and Parsi cemeteries. I didn't look as much in these since it was harder to tell if they were open.

On Friday I got up fairly late in the morning and started by walking back through Victoria Park to see the Noon-Day Gun being fired in its small enclosure on the waterfront. This isn't too dramatic, with one guard type person coming to ring a small bell and fire the gun. For some reason the bell gets rung both before and after the gun is fired; I'm not quite sure what the point of the second ringing is since it is hard to miss the gun going off. After that I walked along to Central District to tour there. Central seems to be largely a series of malls and large office buildings connected by raised walkways, but there are also some small parks and squares, with larger parks farther up the hill. The malls here (and in general in Hong Kong) tend to feel very upscale, so I didn't spend much time in them. I found that the raised walkways made it hard to get around without knowing the area, as they are not as extensive as sidewalks but are sometimes the only way to cross streets. This area also includes the Central MTR station (serving two of the main city lines) and the Hong Kong MTR station (serving the two lines out to Lantau island, including the Airport Express), connected by a long underground walkway. Not far from the MTR stations and accessible by one of the raised walkways are terminals for the harbour and island ferries. Continuing up the hill from the dense part of Central, I went past a few old colonial buildings and through the Zoological and Botanical Gardens. Nearby is also Hong Kong park, but I only went through it briefly on the way out later. Just past the gardens is the lower end of the Peak Tram, a funicular railway which has been around for a bit over a century after being developed to replace sedan chairs as the way for wealthy Peak residents to reach their homes. The tram has a few stops on the way up the hill for local residents, but the main stop is at the Peak Tower on top of the hill. The Peak Tower is very touristy with a number of souvenir shops, restaurants, and small attractions. There is also a viewing area on the top of the tower, but it cost a bit more and so I stuck to the views from the publicly accessible areas. Outside the Peak Tower (which doesn't make the way out especially obvious) there are a few more similar shops and attractions, and a public viewing area. These buildings are all just to one side of Victoria Peak itself, which is much quieter and is largely forested with some exclusive housing. I waked on the road (more of a trail, although there are some driveways off it) which circles Victoria Peek, which had more views of the city and also of some of the islands. There was also a road leading up to Victoria Peak itself, where there is apparently a garden and better views, but I didn't try it.

On Saturday I took the Star Ferry across Victoria Harbour to the Tsim Sha Tsui area in Kowloon. Like the Peak Tram, the Star Ferry has also been in operation for a bit over a century and seems to be considered a major attraction. The ferries retain a somewhat old fashioned feel with simple wood and metal fittings. Most parts have open sides (and therefore have especially good views), but there are also compartments with glass windows. On the waterfront near the ferry terminal on the Kowloon side are a cultural centre and a couple of museums, and the Avenue of Stars which has plaques and some hand prints for actors and directors from the Hong Kong movie industry. Continuing inland there is a long shopping area along Nathan Road and many side streets. One area of side streets has many clothing outlet shops and custom tailors. Also on Nathan road is Chungking Mansion, a somewhat infamous building which contains a number of hostels, among other things. Apparently when going to any particular hostel in the building you have to be careful not to be mislead by people trying to get you to go to their hostels instead. The whole area is more gritty than central, with fewer flashy malls and generally less well maintained buildings. However, as with central there are a few old colonial buildings and a few parks including the large Kowloon Park. I gather there is a relatively large South Asian population in the area, and seemingly a large Muslim presence given the mosque by Kowloon Park. Farther into Kowloon I went through parts of Yau Ma Tei and Mong Kok. The latter apparently may have the highest population density in the world. There are a number of night (or at least street) markets in these areas. In general these seemed to have fewer places to eat than the night markets in Taiwan, and instead had a lot of stalls with clothing and relatively generic decorative items. It looked to me like many of the stalls were very similar to each other. There are also some more specific shopping areas, including a religious supplies street near the Tin Hau (Mazu) temple, a goldfish market, and a flower market.

On Sunday I went back to Kowloon to see a few more things I hadn't on the previous day. One of these was Kung Fu Corner, a martial arts demonstration which happens every Sunday afternoon in Kowloon Park. I also went farther into Kowloon on the MTR to see the Wang Dai Sin temple. I also wanted to see the Chi Lin Nunnery, but got there after the visiting hours and could only see the first courtyard garden (I went back later; see below). In the evening I went back to the Tsui Sha Tsui waterfront near the ferry terminal to see A Symphony of Lights, a display put on more or less every evening using lights and lasers on buildings in Central. Several buildings have lights which can form distinctive moving patterns. Others are just platforms for the laser show part. The whole display is set to music which is played on the waterfront.

On Monday I went out to parts of the Western New Territories (in the part of the New Territories attached to Kowloon and the mainland, rather than the islands). My first stop was at Tseun Wan where one of the MTR lines ends. Near the MTR station is Sam Tung Uk Museum, an old Hakka walled village (although it seems small for a village, with only a few houses) which was in use for a couple of centuries, up until 1980 when it was evacuated and then after a few years restored and turned into a museum. I also took a short bus ride out of Tseun Wan to the Yuan Yuan Institute, a temple for Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism simultaneously, and the Western Monastery next to it. After that I continued from Tseun Wan on a bus along the coast to Tuen Mun, farther into the New Territories, and then took the light rail back to another MTR station (at Yuen Long, I think). Along the way I stopped briefly to look (from the outside) at the Chung Koon and Miu Fat monasteries.

On Tuesday I went to Macau.

On Wednesday I went with another traveller from my hostel to see more of Lantau island, following part of the route in my guide book. We first took a ferry from the terminal in Central to Mui Wo on the island, and then took a bus past a long beach on the side of the island opposite the airport, and then up into the hills. The bus ended at Ngong Ping, a touristy village which is next to Po Lin Monastery and its Big Buddha statue. We went to see the statue and the small museum in the base of the statue, which includes both relics of the Buddha and more ordinary religious artifacts. We also got lunch at one of the monastery's restaurants (it had two, one more expensive than the other, and also a café). The monastery was very crowded with tourists, although I assume there must have been some place past the immediately visible buildings for actual monks, if there are still some there. After lunch we went separate ways, and after concluding that the next bus on the guide book's route would require a long wait I instead took the cable car, Ngong Ping's other main attraction, down to the Tung Chung MTR station near the airport. The cars came in regular and glass-floored varieties, and I stuck to the cheaper and less intimidating regular kind. The views were limited by fog, but still impressive especially when the airport was visible.

On Thursday morning I went back to Chi Lin Nunnery to see the inner public courtyard with a main temple and shrines; previously I had been able to see only the outer courtyard garden and the park across the street (which I think is related to the nunnery). The nunnery is built in Tang dynasty architecture with no nails. There are many more buildings extending back from the public areas. I also ate lunch at the vegetarian restaurant in the park across the road. I think the restaurant was associated with the nunnery, although it was surprisingly fancy with a waterfall over the windows and meals delivered in multiple courses. (It was still reasonably priced for the amount of food, though.) After that it was time to go to the airport. I had been thinking of trying the Airport Express MTR on the way out, since it sounds convenient and quick once you get to the terminal, at the Hong Kong MTR station in Central. You can apparently even check luggage for the plane at the station in Central. However, I ended up taking a bus again since it was cheaper and also stopped right outside my hostel.

The K Mall building where my last hostel was located is right across the street from Taipei Main station, and the lobby on the 22nd floor had good views of the city.

A lot of the apartment entrances I have seen (including that of one I stayed in at the hostel in Kaohsiung) have a solid metal door plus another outer metal door with open or glass parts. Some of the buildings also seem to have tall internal open spaces.

I didn't do very much while I was in Taipei this time. One thing I did do was visit the Taipei 101 Mall (in the lower floors of the Taipei 101 building) to find a bookstore. The mall is a little more upscale than a lot of the street shops. I think this might be the case for many of the malls here, but I haven't seen too many. However, there are also underground malls near some of the central MRT stations (at least Taipei Main Station (the malls there reach to the next stations on two lines) and Ximen). These are more like the regular street level shopping.

On the 6th I left early for Taoyuan International Airport. The route to the airport is fairly rural, which isn't surprising given that it is some distance from Taipei. The visibility wasn't good enough to photograph them this time, but the first time I took an airport bus (when arriving in Taiwan) I could also see a number of large residential-looking buildings mixed in with the farmland.

Taitung is very small, and has a lot of park right next to the city centre. The day after I arrived I took a long walk through Black Forest Park, along the beach, up the path along the old railway, and in Liyushan Park. Black Forest Park (or at least what I think was Black Forest Park) is a large area just to the east of the main part of the city. It includes some lakes, and connects up to the beach. The beach stretches back from there along the water in front of the city, and in some places has some more park behind it. The old railway path starts at the old train station (which unlike the new station is located conveniently right next to the city centre), and goes several kilometres inland following the disused train tracks. The farther parts of this are more or less in countryside, but along the way there are a few café type places. Liyushan Park is a wooded hill near the old train station, with trails (mostly stairs) and good views of the city at the top.

One unusual aspect of Taitung is that fighter jets from a nearby air force base train over the city and parks in the morning (and also the evening according to my guide book, though I didn't notice as many then). While I was there they mostly seemed to do loops passing over the ocean, part of the city, and Black Forest Park. Sometimes there were several planes in formation, but mostly it was single jets looping one after the other.

The next day I visited the National Museum of Prehistory. This was ok but not great, because the exhibitions often don't feel quite complete (this may be due to limitations of the English labelling). However, it was still interesting. It had displays on geography, archaeology, and the aboriginal groups.

While I was in Taitung I finally managed to photograph some of the lizards that occur around here. I've seen lizards before, especially in the south, but mostly they move too fast to photograph. There are also some smaller lizards, but I haven't managed to photograph them.

Taitung was a great place to spend a couple of days. I could easily walk a few blocks from my hostel to get breakfast and then a few more blocks to go eat on the beach.

On Thursday the 30th I took the coast bus to Hualien (there are two major routes between Hualien and Taitung; one bus line goes along the coast, while another bus line and the train go through the valley between the coastal and interior mountains). The bus took most of the afternoon, so I got to Hualien in late afternoon and found my hostel. I explored a little bit in the remaining part of the day. Fortunately I ran into a German women I had met in the hostel in Taitung, along with another German traveller she had found. She was also vegetarian, so we went and found food together.

The day after I arrived in Hualien I went to Taroko National Park (quite close to Hualien) by bus. I initially went to Tiansiang, a village part way into the park, and walked back along the road from there to the park entrance, sidetracking to a few of the easy side trails. The main attraction in the park is Taroko Gorge. I assume it is the gorge the main road goes through, but I was never entirely sure. In any case, both the main road and most of the side trails run through deep gorges, largely in marble.

I stayed one more day in Hualien so I could explore the city properly. Hualien also has a lot of parks in the city, though they aren't quite as convenient as those in Taitung (possibly just because Hualien is a larger city). There is a park along the beach (although for most of the distance the beach itself is not accessible), with a bike trail continuing along the waterfront near the port, and trails and green space along the river. There is also Meilunshan Park, on a large hill with views of most of the city. The park covers most of the hill, but there is also a military installation at the top.

I also visited the Tzu Chi Campus. This is the main centre of the Tzu Chi Foundation, a charitable organization which (at least in their own description; I don't know much about it otherwise) does a lot of work around the world. The main visitor attraction here is the Still Thoughts Hall, which I gather is used mostly for training volunteers, but the campus also includes a hospital and a university both run by the foundation. While the foundation is Buddhist, they have no problem working with other religions and seem to have a number of volunteers who are not Buddhist. My tour guide was apparently Catholic, and spoke very passionately about the organization.

One distinctive feature of Hualien is the stonework. Since the area produces a lot of marble, sidewalks (and I think buildings, although I didn't notice it as much) are often in relatively fancy stonework. There are also a number of stone sculptures throughout the city, and quite a few more in the grounds of a cultural centre. There was also a stone sculpture museum by the cultural centre, but I didn't go in.

Overall the east coast was a more attractive place to visit than the rest of the country. The cities have more green space (although this may partly due to smaller cities), and there are quite a few accessible national parks. There are also more travellers including a number of English speakers, especially in Hualien, and people seem more used to tourists. In Hualien there were even people outside the train station trying to convince me to come to their hotels instead of my hostel. I would have liked to see more of the national parks, but decided it wasn't worth trying to work out the buses in the time and budget I had left (the alternative to the regular buses is organized tours, which were more expensive and didn't really interest me anyway). The east coast apparently also is relatively multicultural, with a large aboriginal population. This mostly wasn't very visible to me. There were a number of aboriginal sites around, but I didn't go to any; they were largely either relatively inaccessible or quite touristy. The cities seemed to be trying to recognize the aboriginal population, at least with decoration and occasional informational displays. I have no idea if this went deeper or not.

On Sunday the 2nd I took the train back to Taipei. This route was initially similar to the bus ride from Hualien, but sometimes went farther from the coast. After a while the terrain opened up a bit; I think this must have been where the coastal mountain range ended.

The World Games were on in the city while I was there. This didn't affect me too much, but there were a lot of obvious foreigners in the city and I felt a little less awkward speaking English than usual. There were also fireworks displays every night (I assume that was for the Games), which we had a good view of from near the hostel, and concerts going on in the evenings. It's possible that some of the nice aspects of Kaohsiung were there only for the Games; I didn't have anything to compare with.

The downside of the area was that the food options were relatively limited, and were mostly western-influenced cafés and pub type places. This meant that I had a harder time finding vegetarian food than before. There were a couple of the usual smaller places, but they tended to be closed when I was looking for food. There was also one larger vegetarian restaurant which I never tried; I assume it was relatively expensive. I think there were some better areas for food elsewhere in the city, including a few night markets, but I didn't look far enough to find them.

Kaohsiung also has a recently constructed MRT system. It is much like Taipei's, but a little flashier, with some fancy stations and touch screen ticket machines. This was nice for getting around, although my hostel was in a good enough location that I did not need it too much.

One day I went to old district of Zuoying to see Lotus Lake. Around the lake are several religious displays in the form of pavilions and large statues. I assume these are mostly for (local) tourism, but some are associated with regular temples nearby. One of the displays is the Dragon-Tiger Pavilion, where each animal's mouth is an opening and you are intended to enter through the dragon and leave through the tiger; going the other way is supposed to be bad luck.

I also walked out to some of the accessible waterfront by the harbour close to my hostel. The parts I saw were alternately actual harbour (including what seemed to be a military section) and lines of cafés and other food stores.

From the waterfront I took the ferry over to Cijin island, where there is a beach fronting directly on the ocean. Cijin also has the Cihou battery, an old Qing dynasty fortification designed by British engineers. On the same hill there are also more modern military installations (most or all of which are not in use, I think, but inaccessible), and a lighthouse which was closed when I got there.

Back off Cijin on the other side of the harbour entrance, I walked to the National Sun Yat-Sen University campus. It is less defended than the Donghai University campus, but one of its pedestrian entrances is a tunnel directly through a hill. In the same area is the old British Consulate at Takao (apparently actually a residence rather than the consulate itself). It was a bit overly touristy, but also had a nice view.

One day I bussed out to Foguangshan Monastery, about an hour from Kaohsiung. I didn't get a tour here. The monastery has a spread out campus including the main temple and mediation hall, smaller temples, a large Amitabha statue, a museum, and a school.

I ended up staying in Kaohsiung a couple more days than planned, because I liked it there. On Saturday the 25th I backtracked to Tainan, which is only about 35-45 minutes away by train. I couldn't get a hostel in Tainan (of the two I located one didn't reply to my email and one was full), so I stayed in a hotel instead. There also wasn't a whole lot I wanted to see in Tainan, and the urban areas don't seem to differ much from other cities (although maybe I just didn't look around enough to find more distinctive parts). There were a lot of temples to see, but by this point I felt I had seen most of what I could at the usual temples without having a guide or taking more time to watch ceremonies. Between not wanting to see much and the added expense of the hotel, I only stayed in Tainan for two nights, and after arriving and working out where to stay I had about a day and a third to explore.

Tainan is the site of the first Dutch settlements in Taiwan, and also the place where Koxinga defeated them and took over their forts. On the first day I visited Chihkan Tower, the site of the old Dutch Fort Provintia. There wasn't much remaining of the original fort besides a small section of wall. The visible buildings are Qing dynasty pavilions, and the site has various historical artifacts and information including Qing dynasty steles and a recent statue of the Dutch surrendering to Koxinga.

The next day I walked out to Anping, the old district close to the ocean. The walk took me along a long canal (or possibly river, though it wasn't moving much). There were walkways and trees along the edges, which made it feel a little like the Love River in Kaohsiung. However, the margin was not as extensive and there were not as many shops along the way, so it didn't have the same effect. There was also a short tunnel which led down beside the canal so you could see underwater. The water was so murky that it was only possible to see a couple of inches from the window, although a few fish and other creatures came close enough to see.

My main stop in Anping was Anping Fort. This is the site of Fort Zeelandia, the first Dutch fort in Tainan. When the fort was built it was on a small island, but it is now attached to the rest of the city. As with Fort Provintia there isn't much remaining of the original fort besides some wall pieces (although there are more here), and there are a number of steles and other historical artifacts of various ages. Here there are also more recent Japanese fortifications.

Nearby is another Qing dynasty fortification, called the Eternal Golden Castle although the remaining part is just earth and brick walls with one remaining original British-made cannon. I also found what may have been fire ants here.

Nearby in Anping there is a large park by a harbour. There were many people flying kites here, and stalls selling kites nearby.

While I was in Tainan I also took advantage of my hotel being located in middle of an electronics selling area to buy a larger SDHC card (16 GB vs 4 GB for the old card) for my laptop, something I've been meaning to do since Taipei. This is mostly because I was running out of space to store photos from the trip. I also bought a card reader (which was a little under 3 CAD) so I could copy from my old SDHC card.

I left Tainan on Monday the 27th. I had been thinking of trying to spend the night at Little Liouciou Island, where there is apparently a campground that rents tents cheaply. However, after finding the port (near Kaohsiung) and comparing the ferry and train timetables, I concluded that it would not work with my other plans. Instead I went back to Kaohsiung and took the train to Taitung.

On Thursday I did more exploring in the city, mostly going to find some of the temples a little farther from the train station.

I also bussed out to Donghai University, because I wanted to see a university campus here and my guidebook mentions it as having interesting (Tang dynasty themed, apparently) design, as well as indicating that the Luce Memorial Chapel on the grounds is one of the few things worth seeing on the west side of the city. The campus is fairly large, so it took me a while to look around. Along one major walkway the buildings to the side are grouped into compounds with low walls (I assume this is the Tang themed part). As far as I could tell each compound was for a single department. Most of the rest of the campus that I saw had similar architecture, but less distinctive layout. While I assume the compound walls were for show, the campus was actually somewhat fortified. On one edge, bordering what I think was some kind of industrial area, there was a moat (actually a stream with a deep bed which ran along the edge of the campus) and a fence with razor wire. On the edge by the major road there was a wall with occasional entrances often watched by security cameras. On the other hand, from what I could see other edges of the campus were much more open. Inside the campus near the edge with the industrial area there was an area enclosed by another wall with more razor wire. Based on a map I think this may have been the female residences, but there was no visible activity around it to give any indication. There also was what looked like a quiet (and relatively undefended) residential area with small houses. I assumed this must be for professors.

Friday was basically more of the same. I looked around a little more in the city, and located Chun Shui Tang teahouse, one of the places with a claim to have invented bubble tea. I got a pearl milk tea and noodles there. I also bussed to Dajia, where the Jhenlan Temple is the source of an annual Mazu pilgrimage.

On Saturday I left my hostel in Taichung and bussed to Puli. I hadn't booked a hostel in advance there, but went to one mentioned in my book and had no problems getting a bed. Puli is in the very centre of Taiwan, and has a park with a couple of spots claimed to be the geographic centre of the island. I had time to find the park and found a road leading up the hill behind it to a view point overlooking the city. I stayed in Puli for two nights.

On Sunday I bussed to Sun Moon Lake. It is quite nice, although very crowded at least in Shueishe Village where the bus arrives. There is another town, called Itashao, on the other side of the lake, and various things to see around the shore. However, I didn't want to risk getting stuck at the lake, so I confined myself to walking near Shueishe, especially to a couple of temples. I didn't get to see the large temples near Itashao up close. One of these has a relic supposed to be from Xuanzang. My guidebook indicates that the temple also has relics claimed to be of Shakyamuni Buddha himself, but I don't think I actually saw any mention of that at the lake. The lake is also the traditional home of the Thao aboriginal group. Lalu island in the lake has special significance to them, although since the present lake was created (it was artificially enlarged by the Japanese) the island is tiny. At the moment only Thao can go on the island, although it seems that tour boats are constantly nearby. Cih En pagoda and the two major temples on the other side of the lake, along with the island and a smaller structure on the side near Shueishe, all line up in a way considered lucky. Unrelatedly, I also found more of the large spiders by the lake, and photographed one this time.

On Monday I went to the Chung Tai Chan Monastery, a large (thirty seven floors) and fairly recently built monastery just outside the urban part of Puli. The monastery also runs schools nearby. I hadn't been expecting to be able to see much here, as my guidebook mentions that tours past the first floor need to be arranged at least a week in advance, and that even then most tours don't go to the top couple of floors. I hadn't planned nearly that far ahead. However, the woman who ran the hostel knew an English speaking monk there, and phoned him to get him to give me a tour. When I got to the monastery it turned out he was actually very busy with his work in the architecture office there, so I got added to another English tour that was about to start. This one seemed to be specially arranged for a small group of people, and did the entire tour including the upper floors. Our guide was a very friendly nun with good English (she was German, I believe), so the tour was definitely worthwhile. Past the first floor we were not allowed to take any photographs.

After the monastery I bussed back to Taichung and got on the train. I stopped briefly at Changhua, just a few minutes down the line from Taichung, to see the Giant Buddha statue they have there. It was indeed large. Buddha gets a nice view over the city, and for some reason also a singing fountain just outside the entrance to his plaza. There were a few interesting older temples in Changhua, but as it was already getting dark when I got there I did not investigate much.

After that I continued on to Kaohsiung. Tainan would have been the more natural next stop, but I was having a hard time finding hostels there, and decided to go to Kaohsiung first while I work that out.

Another thing I didn't mention in the previous post is that many of the larger streets have overpasses or underpasses in addition to crosswalks. Another interesting traffic detail is that at some intersections there seem to be displays with the countdown for the current intersection state (in addition to the crosswalk countdown). One more random item to mention is that there are a number of malls in addition to the shops on the streets. I didn't look much at these, mostly just because they are largely underground and the entrances are not obvious to me.

Getting the train to Taichung turned out to be easy. I probably could have got a cheaper ticket, but the price was reasonable as it was. The train platform was somewhere in the depths of Taipei Main Station; there must be several levels of tracks there between the MRT lines and the intercity trains. The train stayed in a tunnel for a while after leaving the station, and if I remember correctly there were one or two stops in there. After that there was a while of passing through urban areas, followed by a mix of urban, agricultural, and industrial looking land. Closer to Taichung the ocean was visible not too far away on the right of the train, and mountains were visible on the left.

The hostel is located in the Ximending area of the Wanhua district of southwest Taipei. Ximending is a apparently a trendy place for youth to go. It definitely becomes crowded with young people in the evenings and weekends. There are a lot of food stores around, and several film cinemas that the area is apparently known for. There are several streets that are given over to pedestrians when it gets crowded. The other parts of Wanhua I've seen are similarly dense but seemingly less trendy.

The sidewalks are very busy here, with open store fronts and small stalls. On many streets the buildings overhang the sidewalk, with a row of pillars near the street. The inner part of the sidewalk gets shaded and is mostly used for walking. The spaces between the pillars get used for scooter parking (sometimes this is in addition to a row of parked scooters on the street as well), stalls, store displays, and seating for small restaurants. Almost all of the stores have automatic metal doors which are lowered when the store is closed. Higher up, many of the buildings have metal cages for window boxes and balcony extensions.

The streets themselves are also very busy. There are a lot of scooters. Crosswalks generally have a much longer pedestrian crossing time than they do in Vancouver, at 60 to 90 seconds. However, vehicles get a correspondingly long time as well. Some intersections allow pedestrians on crosswalks in both directions at once, and in some places there are marked diagonal crosswalks that can also be used in this case.

There are also a number of bikes around. Later I saw what looked like rental bikes near Taipei 101. I was once told (when walking by the river; see below) that on weekdays there was only one bike rental location, somewhere near Taipei Main Station, so I'm not sure if the one I saw was actually usable. In any case, I would not dare ride a bike in the traffic here.

On Thursday I set out in the morning to look for the Danshui river which is the west edge of Taipei. That took longer than I expected, because the parks along the river are separated from the streets by a wall, and the entrances are not all very visible. However, I eventually found a way in, and walked along the river for a while. There are fairly extensive parks for some distance along the river, which seem to be there at least partly for birds. For most of the distance the trails closest to the river are between a marshy strip by the water and a grass strip inland. There is only intermittent shade, so it is quite hot. Perhaps due to this, I was about the only person on foot on the trails. However, there were a number of people on bikes. Occasionally there was more shade, and in places there were groves of trees with seating areas and playgrounds. I turned into the city again at Zhongxiao road and went to find the Youth Hub (on Zhongxiao a few blocks past Taipei Main Station) to get my travel card. After that I decided to keep exploring on foot, and continued along Zhongxiao to the Xinyi district in east Taipei. Xinyi has Taipei 101 and some of the other large modern buildings. It feels bigger and cleaner than Wanhua, but there is much less going on on the streets. The sidewalks are wider, but not used for as much. Even scooter parking seems to stay in the street here. I walked by Dr Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall and Taipei 101, but other than that there isn't too much to see in the area. On the way back to the hostel I tried the MRT for the first time.

The MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) is the city rail system. It's comparable to Vancouver's Skytrain, but handles many more people, with long trains and large stations. There are several lines going in different directions. The system is quite easy to use. There are displays at stations indicating the fare to get to each other station, with the cost starting at 20 TWD and going up by distance. The ticket machines give you a token which you use to get into the track area and out again at the other end. Most of the system (that I've seen, at least) is underground, but the line that goes north over the Keelung river turns into a raised track. In the underground part the stations are usually under streets, with entrances on both sides of the street and sometimes on all four corners of an intersection. The stations are sometimes so large that going through one can feel like a journey by itself, at least without already knowing where to go. There are a few nice details, like displays at stations indicating when the next train will arrive and lights on the trains indicating which side the doors will open on next. Interestingly, the train doors stay open longer than the Vancouver Skytrain doors do. Perhaps relatedly, people getting on seem to block the doors less than they do in Vancouver (wider doors and better floor markings for lineups probably also help).

I haven't used the bus system except in special cases (see below), but it looks similarly well thought out. There are many buses of various sizes on the streets. Bus stops have route maps, and in some cases have displays indicating when buses will arrive.

On Friday and Saturday I spent most of both afternoons at the National Palace Museum. I hadn't been planning to spend so much time there, but it was very interesting. The main exhibits are primarily jade and bronze pieces up through the Han dynasty and pottery from subsequent dynasties. There was also a room of highlights including the Jadeite Cabbage with Insects and the Meat-shaped Stone, although I found these less interesting than the more historical pieces. I also visited the Chihshan Garden next to the museum. Getting to the museum involves taking the MRT to Shilin and then a bus from there. Shilin apparently has a bit night market. I looked around a little on the way home, but didn't see too much.

On Sunday I walked around on foot a little more, and then went to visit Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and the botanical gardens. Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and the plaza it is on, including the National Theatre and Concert Hall, are very large and have impressive architecture. I didn't know enough about what I was seeing at the botanical gardens to find anything too exciting, but it was a nice place to walk. A prominent feature was the large lotus pond.

On Monday I went to the mountain trails just east of the city. It probably wasn't the best day to do this because it was starting to rain and was windy (although actually it has always been windy when I have been in large open areas in Taipei), but I decided to start and see if it seemed safe. There turned out to be a number of people on the trails, so I decided it was ok to continue. The trails are largely stone steps and go up very steeply on the slopes. I found the steps took a lot of energy to go up, but they make the trails clean and well defined. Everything was very well maintained. Some of the trails had lights, and are apparently lit at night. The trails were well marked and most of the signs had English. Besides the route signage, some of the lower parts had displays on ecology and geography, and there were plaques built into the trail that seemed to be showing plants and animals. I spent the afternoon walking, and got to what I think must have been the Elephant and 9-5 peaks (this was one place where English signs were lacking). Both of these points and a number of places along the way have amazing views of the city. The highest location I reached, at what I believe was 9-5 peak, looked to be roughly at the same hight as the upper floors of Taipei 101.

There are a number of small buildings near the trails, even near the top. There were several temples and quite a few shrines. I didn't look too closely except in the couple of places where the path went right through them, but I could hear chanting from some of the temples. There were also some buildings that seemed to be for park maintenance, along with small gardens and collections of potted plants. I'm not sure what the other buildings were. It is possible that there are a few people living up there, but it may also be that these buildings are connected with either the temples or park management, or are just old and abandonded.

There were a couple of quite large (maybe palm-sized including the legs, although fairly spindly) spiders with webs in the bushes a few feet from the path. I didn't go close or try to photograph them at the time because I wasn't sure what they were, but I after a quick search later it looks like they might be called giant wood spiders, and are not dangerous. You can find existing photos from the same area. There was also what I assume was a praying mantis, what was probably a plump grey squirrel (it was moving too fast to see well), and a large snail. There were also a number of dogs along the trails, not all of which had any obvious owner. This is often the case in the city as well. However, the dogs are almost always very well behaved, and I've only had one bark at me. They are generally not large. In the city there are also a few cats in parks (the Chihshan garden and the botanical gardens; I didn't see any on the mountain, though). They look like house cats, and I assume must be living in the parks. I've only seen one cat that looked like it lived with someone.

Tuesday was relatively quiet. I stayed near the hostel in the morning and early afternoon, partly to see if I would get an email about one of the tours for the youth travel program, and also to give my feet a break. Later in the afternoon I went to see more of the Longshan Temple area and saw some of the other temples and the night markets. Longshan Temple is in Wanhua a few blocks south of Ximending. The temple has an MRT station named after it right across the street, along with a plaza and an underground mall. The area around it has many religious supply stores, lots of food including several vegetarian places near the temple, night markets on a number of streets, and several smaller temples. The rain continued intermittently, and for a few minutes on Tuesday evening it rained hard enough to be audible inside the hostel.