Travel-related posts before they get moved to travel.lonelocust.com
Hat tip to Michael Turton over at View From Taiwan blog for this picture. (Posted to flickr) Many, many times I’ve wanted to capture the very essence of the nearly ubiquitous Taiwanese open-front restaurant, with it’s little plastic stools, fold up tables, metal work area, that strange metal box thing in the back and the … Read more
How often do I get the chance to compliment someone on a job well done? It seems all I’m ever doing is pointing out the flaws. Well, today is different. Kudos and thanks to (of all people) the US Government, passport office! I submitted my expired passport, by snail mail, Friday June 6th. My replacement … Read more
It wasn’t intentional (at least not on my part), but I managed to get several similar pictures on this trip as I did on my original trip to Alishan in 1998. In this one I’m demonstrating on the train, traveling in style in 2007. These purple flowers are all over at Alishan. I’m quite certain … Read more
So that it doesn’t seem like I’m constantly down on Taiwan’s dubious implementations to be more “greenâ€, here’s one that makes perfect sense at every level. Taiwan’s Bureau of Energy, under the MOEA, said Taiwan now has 350,000 traffic lights using LEDs as a lighting source, with the remaining 420,000 traffic lights to also use … Read more
Why is jetlag sometimes so difficult to overcome and other times easy? I can’t seem to shake it this time. I thought I’d won out against it yesterday. I’d managed to sleep (with a couple interruptions – Michelle has conjunctivitis and a cold) almost all Friday night, Saturday, I was awake all day. I thought … Read more
I’ve already recounted my tale of the Giant Rat of Sogo, in which I was trapped for 4.5 hours in a rat-infested department store, but what I failed to mention were the “magic†rocks. We were in the bedding department, negotiating the purchase of a house-warming gift. The negotiations were in Chinese, so I was … Read more
Continued from Part I So, I was complaining about the “green fever†that’s sweeping Taiwan, and why it doesn’t make sense when implemented in a knee-jerk fashion or without the benefit of scientific inquiry. The in-laws wanted us to eat more food at home. They feel it’s valuable family time. My wishes that I want … Read more
On my first trip to Taiwan, using a film camera, I took nearly 40 photographs, most of them awful. On this trip, using two digital cameras (and the trip being almost 3 times as long), I saved almost 2,000 photos, after having deleted at least another 1,000 for a variety of reasons. Somehow most of … Read more
One of the interesting aspects of riding on the buses in Taipei are the TV monitors they have to entertain you – or distract you from the driving. Several buses run a series of short animated films, some of them quite funny, others quite bizarre. Some give their URL at the end, but I couldn’t … Read more
I hate jet lag. We took off at around 11:00PM in Taiwan, and after dinner, managed to sleep at pretty much the normal time. By what was 10:00AM for our bodies and time for the day to really get going, we landed at 7:00PM in Los Angeles. There were no sanctioned connecting flights that night … Read more