Category: Travel

I really don’t understand jet lag.

Oh, I understand the principle behind it, just not “logic” of how it works.

For example, since our return, I wake up at 3 to 4 in the morning, that’s 6 -7 PM in Taipei. Not me usual “wake-up’ time.
Come around 1PM, I’m suddenly falling asleep again (that’s 4 AM Taipei time, and significantly later than then I would be going to bed)
After a few hours, I’m wide awake again (OK, that coincides roughly with morning in Taipei)
But then i crash again at 9:00PM (noon, Taipei)

Rather than just being ‘off’ 15 hours, I seem to be cycling through short periods of wakefulness and sleep. Hopefully it will get straightened out soon.

I had lots of paper to go through, so it wasn’t a problem that I was in the office before 5:00AM this morning, but I don’t want to do it everyday.

Luckily, Friday is a holiday, making this a two-day week for me, then I’ve got 3 more days to “recover”

The kids are all messed up, too. That doesn’t help.

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Nothing more need be said at this moment.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Travel

Our departure from Taipei was not without incident. My father-in-law’s car is not particularly large, and most cars struggle with two carseats, not to mention five large pieces of luggage and 6 people.

When we arrived, we’d managed to cram it all in the car, but Irene’s mother didn’t meet us at the airport. For our departure, she had to come see us off and so we needed another car. Once again Mr. Huang 2 came to the rescue, and we split the luggage, the kids and the in-laws over two cars. Michelle and grandma travelled with Mr. Huang 2, while Irene, James, I and most of the luggage drove with grandpa.

We arrived at the airport before them and lined up our luggage in the check-in line that wasn’t open yet. There were already 8 to 10 luggage carts in front of us and the lines tend to get very long, so we parked and waited. Irene, carrying all our documentation, went back to her father to pick up James. Meanwhile, I noticed that the line was scheduled to open in under 5 minutes. Knowing (and respecting) Singapore Air, I suspected they’d open exactly at the scheduled time.

Irene came back, but Mr. Huang 2 hadn’t shown up yet with Michelle or the rest of our luggage. She called them and they were lost. Just then the line opened. Six windows opened simultaneously and suddenly there were only 4 carts in front of us, and the line was moving quickly.

Irene stresses about the packing, the flight, the farewells, the kids… I stress about reaching the window and saying, “Uh, we’re not actually ready to check in, we’re missing a daughter and two pieces of check-in luggage.”

We reached the counter quickly and explained the situation. It didn’t phase them and we were going through our paperwork when Mr. Huang 2 and the calvary arrived, just in the nick of time.

We passed some time in the airport “snack bar” which has previously always been closed, and I ordered my last meal in Chinese on this trip. A “French Bacon Sandwich” at Starbucks. It was appalling!

Farewells were more painless than usual and we were through immigrations.

Inside the terminal, there was actually a children’s playground where Michelle started happily playing. She was alone at first, but then another half white/half Chinese child about here age, perhaps older came to play. Michelle immediately started asking her to play with her, in Chinese, but the little girl never responded.

At first I thought the girl might not be Chinese at all and didn’t understand Michelle. Then her mother came over, who was obviously Chinese, but when she called her to leave, she called in broken English. Apparently the girl couldn’t understand Chinese. What a shame. It’s so much easier to learn languages at that age, and if they don’t they’ll just end up struggling forever like I am.

I’m writing this now on the flight. There’s still no Internet, but the flight is over 50% empty and there’re plenty of room. I’ve moved into a row of my own and have space to open the computer and work.

Even with the room, two kids makes a bit of a hassle, especially for Irene.

The flight is not about 9 hours in, I’ve finished watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Fantastic Four, War of the Worlds and Batman Begins. I suppose as a quadruple-billing, that’s not too bad. It’s also about the time I’d be waking up in Taipei, but it is 5:30PM back home.

I haven’t had much sleep, but the kids have slept nearly the whole flight. When we get home, I suspect they’re not going to want to go to bed.

This the third time I’m trying to write this and every-time I break out the computer, we hit turbulence. Sure enough, as I type this the signs have come on.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Family, Kids, Taiwan, Travel

As a recap, my day of travel went like this:

Action	Taipei Time	Phoenix Time
Get Up	Monday 7:00 AM	Sunday 4:00PM
Catch Flight	Monday 10:55 PM	Monday 7:55 AM
Arrive Phoenix	Tuesday 1:41 PM	Monday 10:41 PM
Arrive at Home	Tuesday 4:10 PM	Tuesday 1:10 AM

That’s over 30 hours without benefit of more than 40 minutes sleep.

When the shuttle had dropped us and our luggage on the sidewalk outside the house, Michelle, who was in a light dress began complaining it was cold. I got the family inside and I began hauling the luggage in.

One of our bags weighed in at 31.1 Kilos, just .9 Kilos short of the weight limit on a bag, and the others weren’t light, so it took a while for me to haul them inside, mostly on auto-pilot.

As I was outside though, I was still struck at how amazing the stars were. The sky was so big and there were hundreds of stars looking back at me. It’s such a pretty sight and it’s the feeling I always get when camping, when you’re out away from city light pollution and the sky has billions of stars looking back at you. I was also struck by the fact that normally when I’m out at night in Phoenix, I always think how small and starless the night sky is, but not today.

Taipei has no stars and the sky is as small as you can see from one building to the next

On a second note, Michelle was right. We left the house thermostat to keep the house cooled but at a high temperature, since no one was home. When we got inside last night it was very comfortable, but I’m awake now not because I’m trying to get back on schedule, but because I woke up freezing at 5:00AM and all the blankets and such are packed in baby James’ room and I don’t want to disturb him in his sleep.

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The daylight hours are wearing thin, my Easycard is almost out of credit, there’s nowhere left to go except wait for the time to go to the airport.

We had a couple errands to run earlier and we went by bus. I think I’ve completely failed to the latest edition to the buses and train stations. Each bus and every train platform now has TVs located on them. They’re showing a “channel” called Bee TV, with no sound, of course. This channel features ads for upcoming movies (I can’t tell you how sick I am of the commercials for “Lord of War”, “Doom” and “Nana”. Those commercials have been playing since we got here. Meanwhile, the commercial for Legend of Zorro only showed for about a week. Other commercials feature ads for Taipei tourism, anti-pregnancy ads and Pili Puppet series available on DVD and VCD.

In between the commercials they show cartoons, mostly Japanese and Korean. A significant portion of them feature farting furry animals.

There’s the panda who likes to drink soda, then farts, which teaching important lessons like, “brush your teeth”.

Today I saw one in which a rabbit was fishing. The fish comes up, pulls the hook up only to see a carrot. He comes up to the rabbit, slaps him with the carrot, tells him he needs to use a worm, then slaps him with the carrot again. The fish goes back into the water. The rabbit looks thoughtful, stands up, sticks his butt into the water, farts, then walks away.

The fish surfaces and gasps for breath.

Sure, it’s funny, but what does it mean?

In another a raccoon comes and burps on the rabbit.

And then there’s Mr. Boomba. In the latest one I saw, he spies a fly in the urinal and so targets the fly and drowns him. The fly, not actually dead, flies up and goes straight into Mr. Boomba’s mouth as meditated revenge.

Is this really wholesome family entertainment for the masses on busses?

On another miscellaneous note: There’s a new flavor of Doritos in town. In the last couple weeks Doritos and Lays have been promoting their “Fusion” line of International Flavors, many of them involving seafood or other totally inappropriate flavors. Today I spied “Tomato Smoked Chicken” Doritos. I can’t even comment on the mentality that came up with that idea.

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Last night, as part of the parade of dinners that precedes our departure, Johnny and his girlfriend Batrina (whose name will ever be “Britanica” to my mind) took us out to dinner.

They took us to a Yakiniku place, complete with pit-style Japanese tables and, of course, taking your shoes off for dinner.

Pit-style tables are essentially benches surrounding a table. Or you could consider it to be a table sunken in a hole in the floor, depending on if you want to think you are sitting on a bench or the floor. They don’t allow photos to be taken, but I snuck this shot of Michelle as we entered. The picture turned out awful, but I decided to keep it just to illustrate this entry.

Now, if I understand this arrangement correctly, this style of seating is quite popular in older Japanese homes in colder climates (actually, all of Japan is a colder climate than Taiwan, with Okinawa perhaps coming close to the same climate) because under the table is some form of heating pit. Sitting at the table kept your feet warm and body warm.

No such heating was in place at the Yakiniku restaurant and the cold cement floor and even colder metal poles holding up the table really began to freeze my feet.

Because you cook your own food at the table, on grills and a boiling pot, dinner tends to be a drawn out affair. In fact, you’re given a 2 hour time limit with all the food you can cook. At least, that’s the way Irene explained it to me. Looking at the menu made me think it wasn’t all you could eat, but as we didn’t pay, I never figured it out.

The food was good. I could cook some meat on the grill and give it to other people. It gave me something to do for two hours when normally the Chinese conversation would bore me senseless and it helped my diet. It takes minutes to cook each thin slice of meat (that’s not to mention the lamb chops or chunks of chicken or sirloin, which took longer) and only seconds to eat each single, bite-sized piece. Combine the cooking time, the 12″ round grill and the fact that politeness dictated that I give up 75% of all food I cooked to other people, I got about 28 bites of food.

They were good bites, though.

Also, since you sit there for the whole time (and, in fact, we overran the 2 hours by quite a bit) my feet positively froze solid, right through.

At one point, I got up to use the restroom, partially from necessity but mostly as an excuse to put my shoes on for a couple minutes.

While I was there, I was considering the bathroom fixtures. A mirror had been placed all around the bathroom, presumably so you could watch your own face while you peed, but the simple fact that I’m a giant in this country meant that I was only able to look at my own chest. My eye-line is fully 6 inches higher than the mirror.

Positioned above the mirror are all the little accouterments that go in a modern restroom, deodorizers and such. One of them was the kind that has a timer and every so often depresses the top of an aerosol spray can of deodorizer. it wasn’t directly over the urinal, but was about 8 inches to the side, towards the sink. It was exactly eye level for me.

In a piece of comic timing to brilliant for words, as I turned away and moved towards the sink it blasted me full in the face. Let me refine that: comic, if it happens to someone else. Painful if it happens to you. Luckily I wear glasses and didn’t take the blast full into my eyes.

Afterwards, the family went to the Taipei Milk King next door. This interesting place sells various forms of milk, tainted with other substances, such as Tomato Milk, germinated Rice & Job’ Tears Milk or Japanese Yam Milk. They also have other specialty drinks, such as Houseleak Drink, which I presume is what comes through the roof after a strong rain shower.

When we go home, we packed until 2:00 in the morning, but we still aren’t done. We should be close enough to finish easily before departure.

Technorati Tags: Bathroom, Blog, Family, Food, Kids, Restaurant, Taiwan, Travel

It’s now less than 24 hours before we leave Taiwan and I should probably be packing…but I’m not. Irene is packing clothes right now and I’ve got a lot of gear to figure out where it goes…and to be sure I take everything I brought.

As tomorrow will undoubtedly be consumed with farewells and last minute things, today was my last unscheduled day in Taiwan. Irene and the kids were meeting friends to say goodbye, so I took the opportunity to go hiking one last time.

I broke out the trusty Chinese/Japanese hiking guide and scanned for my next excursion. This time I located a trail that loops through the mountains between Qilian and Qiyan MRT stations in the Beitou district, which is north, towards Danshui.

Yesterday, I left the house planning to eat one last time at Mr. Cong You Bing’s place, but he as closed. I don’t recall that he used to be closed on Saturdays, but then he also didn’t used to stay open past lunchtime either. Maybe he’s making longer days but shorter weeks. Being hungry I stopped at 7-11 and, not finding anything promising to eat, I tried a hot dog. I had managed to blot the whole experience out of my head and didn’t report on it yesterday.

Today, with equally small prospects, I decided to try a different “flavor” hot dog. They have “original”, “garlic” and “spicy.” I tried spicy yesterday and words cannot describe how awful it was. It bears no taste similarity to any real hot dog ever! Today I went with original.

For starters, I have a pretty subtle sense of taste, but as far as I could tell, there was no difference whatsoever. Perhaps they were misidentified.

Taiwan is a funny place. Take garbage collection for example. They collect garbage every day, but they don’t go door to door. They go to designated street corners and everyone in the neighborhood brings out their garbage and hands it to the garbage truck people.

This strikes me as an enormous waste of everyone’s time. We have to be home at 4:45 in the evening (or whenever it is) to have our garbage collected.

Taiwan is a heavily polluted place, the cars and factories belch noxious filth into the air all the time and rarely is there a day when you can’t see the air in front of you. Yet, Taiwan wants to be seen as progressive and “green.” So what do they do? Do they implement programs to cut down air pollution, which impacts the quality of life of every man, woman and child on the island? No, they decide they need to do something about their garbage dumps.

For starters, a few years ago, they implemented a scheme where you can only throw your garbage away in city bags. Bags that you purchase and are clearly identified. It’s a great way to make people pay for exactly the amount of garbage they generate, I can’t deny that, and since you have to go to the garbage truck and hand them your garbage, they won’t take your garbage without it being in the proper bag.

And woe to he who purchases counterfeit garbage bags! (Yes, of course there’s a market for counterfeit garbage bags.)

So, what happens when you implement a scheme like this? Yep, you got in one guess, people started dumping their garbage in street garbage cans to let someone else pay. And so all the garbage cans outside 7-11’s and on the streets disappeared.

So, what now? Every shadowy space, every rooftop accessible from an overpass, every hidden bush just off a trail has piles of garbage under it.

Eventually, the city had to put garbage cans back on the street, but only at bus stops on main streets and MRT stations, with a warning that they are not to be used for household garbage. They’re few and far between and they’re usually stuffed with household garbage.

Clearly this system doesn’t work, so do they abandon it?

Oh no, they expand it into a fascist recycling program. Now everyone has three garbage bags to take out, one for garbage, one for recyclable materials and one for food waste, which is apparently fed to pigs somewhere.

And so it was that I was walking down the street, looking for that next city garbage can thinking, “I’m going to continue to eat this horrendously awful hot dog until I reach the next garbage can and then I’m going to feed to back to the pigs.” Appropriate, since I think it was once parts of a pig, but I can’t stand to imagine which parts.

After yesterday’s experience with Taipei hiking signs, I wasn’t expecting much, and paid particular attention to the maps I had. Once again, my city map didn’t match with the Taipei hiking map of the area. This time, there was also no sign at the MRT station pointing the way, so I headed off in the direction indicated on the map and hoped for luck.

Pretty soon, I came across a sign; at least I was traveling the right direction, but my hopes were soon crushed when the next sign seemed to make no sense at all. I was walking down a city street, and the sign pointed directly to the gated entrance to a University.

After thinking about it for a while, and seeing that there was no guard at the gate, I decided to follow the sign anyway. I continued to find signs as it wound me up the steep roads on the University campus. Finally I came to not only what was obviously the real trailhead, but also a map.

This map of the trail also didn’t match either of my maps, so I snapped a picture of it for future reference.

This trail took my up what shouldn’t so much be called a mountain, but a giant rock. The usual stairs were cut right out of the exposed rock, all the way to the top of a promontory called Battleship rock, or something like that. When i reached the top, I was surprised that the rock was scoured and worn and covered in white sand. It didn’t take long to figure out why – once I got up into the wind, I was being scoured with blowing sand, too. I’m not sure where it was coming from, but there was a strong wind from up the canyon and the sand was fairly constant.

Here’s a word of advice about Qilian station: It’s the only MRT station I’ve ever seen that doesn’t have a 7-11 or other convenience store right nearby. My plan was to buy a bottle of water when I arrived, but since there was no place to buy one, I was without water.

By the time I reached the top, I was considering going back. I sweated out the bottle of water I drank when I left the house, and was only about 1/3 of the way down the trail (not counting the roads to get to the trail.) It had been uphill every step of the way, hot outside and humid. I was worn out already.

After resting a while, I pushed on, mostly because the trail seemed to be level or slightly downhill. The mountain I was on was the highest in the vicinity, so I figured I wouldn’t be going up too much more. The gamble paid off, the rest of the hike was fairly easy and enjoyable, had I not been tired out from the first part.

At the end of the second segment, the trail ended at a Buddhist temple, which, as far as I can tell, all have soda vending machines. A can of “Sport” later and I was ready to go!

This trail, unlike yesterday’s, had trail markers all over the place, making it easy to walk along. Much of it was unpaved, and pines and other trees kept it shady and pleasant. By far it is my favorite trail I’ve taken in Taiwan so far.

Once I got back to the city streets, though, the city trail signs failed miserably, but I doggedly tried to follow the map just to prove it would work. Along the way, I passed an unusual place. A little temple had been built next to a stream. The stream was pouring quickly down the side of the mountain and had been cemented, presumably so that the water could be channeled under the road. Cars and motorcycles were parked next to the temple.

At first, I thought they were worshiping, but instead they were washing their vehicles. They had brought buckets and were taking the water out of the small pond at the bottom and using it to wash their cars. Somehow I suspect this is in response to some water conservation technique in use by Taipei.

The signs continued to elude me and only the GPS saved me. By shear coincidence when we went to Danshui the other evening, I’d taken a GPS reading at Qiyan station, which now kept me on course. I still tried to follow the map(s) but I seemed to be walking in an arc around the station when suddenly I saw a sign pointing to an MRT station – in exactly the wrong direction. Just at that moment an MRT train came by on the overpass which I’d mentally dismissed as an expressway.

The sign was pointing to the Qilian station, but according to the GPS, the Qiyan station was still closer, so I followed under the tracks until I came to the station.

I rode into the Guting station, and as it was now well after 3:30 and I’d only had 3/4 of a hot dog all day, I was famished. I stopped at MOS and had what I expected to be my last MOS burger of the trip. I ordered in Chinese and the transaction went flawless. Just the way I’d want it to be.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Food, Hiking, Taiwan, Travel

While I was hiking today (more on that in another post) I saw a lot more “wildlife” than previously.

There were lizards everywhere, and these two enormous bugs. (That’s a 58mm (2.3″) lens cap cover for size comparison.)

The mantis seems content to let me photograph him, although I think he may have been eyeing me to see if he could take a bite out of me.

The grasshopper didn’t let me get very close before he took off, but when he spread his wings and legs out, he was so impressive, I tried to get a shot of him in flight. He landed on the trail about 15 feet ahead of me, we I crept closer, camera on “sports” mode for rapid picture taking as he took off.

He wouldn’t take off, the camera just clicked away and he ignored me. Finally I tossed the lens cap at him while snapping photos. I got several great pictures of the lens cap in flight and the grasshopper completely ignoring it. A nearby lizard distracted my attention and he took off, never to be seen again.

At one point, an animal crossed the trail in front of me. It was about cat-sized, but dark and furry. It didn’t give me the impression of being a cat, and it was only 10 feet in front of me, but by the time I got to the place it crossed the trail it had gone to ground and I couldn’t see it again.

There are feral cats and dogs all over Taiwan, so I nearly had myself convinced it must have been a cat, but about 20 feet down the trail there was a newer section of cement. The cement was riddled with these footprints.

While I know these footprints couldn’t be the exact same animal I saw, the prints prove something lives in reasonable abundance in the area that it would walk all over wet cement. I don’t know what kind of animal it was, but this print is neither cat nor dog. It looks a bit racoonish to me, but I don’t think they have them in Taiwan.

Anyone know what it is?

Technorati Tags: Blog, Hiking, Taiwan, Travel