Category: Taiwan2005

Michelle had her first Halloween that she participated in this year. The Disney Channel Taiwan held an event down at the new Shin Kong Mitsukoshi Department store and Irene signed Michelle up for it.

The rain has continued on and off today, but it wasn’t so bad as to stop us from going. There was a small crowd, hardly surprising for a new, imported holiday. All the kids were in costume (Disney did tend to encourage Disney-type costumes) of all types and Michelle was the cutest of them all, if only she’d smile.

Strangers were asking to take her picture and lots of people commented on how cute she was, but Michelle was in a daze to begin with, and by the time they were halfway done with the parade of kids around the block, she was ready to go home.

The Disney Channel had video cameras all over the place, taking shots of the parade and the kids, but they managed to completely bypass Michelle every time. At first I thought I was just being conspiratorial minded, but the parade was just one static shot of the kids and their parents going by, being projected up on the jumbo plaza TV so everyone could see the kids in costume.

Just before Michelle would have been on camera, they panned away to show the hosts being irrelevant on the stage, and when they panned back, the got a nice picture of Irene’s back. Michelle was completely excluded. I honestly wonder if they were intentionally excluding waiguoren kids.

We did take pictures of Michelle with the scariest Minnie Mouse ever. Taiwanese girls can play it young and cutesy a lot longer than most western women, but the woman dressed up as Minnie looked more like an over-age prostitute dressed up for a specialty trick. Peter Pan just looked like a goof-ball.

The Chinese Wiggles showed and did a few numbers, but Michelle isn’t interested in the Wiggles anymore. They grow up so fast.

On our way over we discovered the “easy” route to get to the Taipei 101, 1 bus, no trains, no running. It also passes next to the “The Frying Scotsman”, an authentic fish & chips shop from Scotland. I’ve been meaning to eat there, as that’s the way fish was meant to be served, since I arrived. Today we stopped to give it a try.

Closed until 5 on Sunday. If you ever go, check their hours online beforehand.

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

My Flickr account allows me to upload a maximum of 2 GB per calendar month.

Sometime back on this trip, I began to think I might accidentally exceed that limit before the trip was over and be stuck towards the end of this month without being able to upload pictures as things happen. So, at that point I started only uploading selected pictures instead of every picture that I didn’t immediately delete.

Here I sit on the 30th of a 31 day month and have only uploaded 1.1 GB, so I’m now uploading a couple hundred older pictures ranging from our mini-trips to Alishan through Chingjing Farm.

We’ve got Halloween stuff today, so I’m sure there will be some pictures of Michelle still to be posted this month, so I’ve left myself some room for more current photos. In November, I’ll continue uploading the older photos.

Incidentally, if you’ve been looking at the photos I’ve been posting on flickr in addition to the ones I post here at lonelocust.com you may not have noticed that flickr offers a few alternate ways to view photos.

The main organizational tools used by flickr are “tags.” Tags are arbitrary keywords assigned by me to my photos for organizational purposes. Ultimately I have to go back a do a lot of additional tagging, because the only tags I regularly use on this trip are TAIWAN (every photo taken here gets that one), TAIPEI (only those taken in Taipei or suburbs) and FAMILY (every picture that has a member of my family or myself in it). At the moment that’s not very useful to people unless they only want to look at pictures of my family or only look at pictures from Taipei.

The tag browser is on the right hand side on my main flickr page, or, you can jump right to a page of tagged photos by going to the address: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gridman/tags/taipei/ to look at photos only tagged as taipei, as an example.

You can also browse photos by date. The default for flickr is by upload date, which I think is somewhat stupid, but you can select an option to view them by date taken (My digital cameras all embed the actual photo date in the file, making this automatic.) For a calendar view you can also get to that from the left of my main photo page or go directly there with this address: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gridman/date-taken-calendar/.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Taiwan, Travel

I mentioned previously that there are three Costco’s in Taipei, and that the third one is so far out that it was off our maps and no one had any idea where it was.

My frivolous goal is to photograph every Costco in the world, which may seem impossible, but it gives me a goal.

As we began entering the outskirts of Taipei, Mr Huang spotted and pointed out the third Costco. I briefly glimpsed it as it passed behind a hill, and was not visible when we got past the hill. I was playing with the GPS so I managed to get a fix, but the camera was on the floor and I couldn’t react fast enough to take a picture.

Now I know where it is. My expedition to Carrefour had been about a 1 mile walk from the last station and I took readings there and at the station. The third Costco appears to be about 2-2.5 miles further in a direct line from the Carrefour. As the subway station was sitting right along the railroad tracks, there should be a straight, level path in that direction. I might consider trying to locate it on foot, despite not having a street map of the area. The non-linear nature of the city streets makes it potentially difficult, but I’m reasonably sure I could navigate back to the station if I had to.

It will just depend on available time on a trip that is now certainly looking more towards the end than the beginning.

When we got back we finally went out to dinner as a family. I was hungry enough even Chinese food sounded good.

We went to a place that specialized in Northern Style Chinese food. That consists of lots of dishes made with flour, noodles, dumplings, bread-like things along with other things such as hot pots and Peking Duck. Chinese restaurants in the US have an overwhelming majority of Southern style restaurants, as the predominant immigrants during the railroad era were Cantonese from the south. Generally when Americans think of Chinese food, Cantonese style is what dishes come to mind.

To my knowledge, in Phoenix, there is not a single Northern style restaurant, which is a shame, as I like it better.

I mention dinner not because of the food, but because of the entertainment.

My mother-in-law has been complaining that Michelle is a poor orphan because we’re so harsh on her. (Gosh, we make her put her own shoes on and hold hands when crossing the streets, what brutes we are!) She’s been spoiling her rotten, and her increasingly bad behavior lately can be tracked right back to one thing: She’s runs to grandma every time she doesn’t like something we tell her to do. Grandma promptly does it for her and bribes her in the process.

Tonight at dinner, the restaurant staff (wisely) gave Michelle a set of plastic dinnerware instead of the china everyone else got.

Grandma promptly noticed that Michelle’s dishes looked “old” – not “dirty” or “broken”, just “old” and so she took them away from Michelle and gave her a set of china.

She promptly took the china bowl and slammed it down in the china saucer and then took the china soup spoon and started banging it inside the bowl. The owners realized they must have accidentally given the wrong dishes to her and tried to swap them, but now Michelle (and her nut grandmother) wouldn’t let them. Michelle just wanted to be troublesome and grandma still felt the dishes looked old.

Later, Michelle kept climbing all over grandma with dirty, messy hands, which, as grandma is a bit of a clean-freak, amused the heck out of me. I was hoping she’d pull her wig off in public.

If the day hadn’t been long enough, Irene and I were going to go to the night market, but the rain finally came and we (somewhat relieved) didn’t go.

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

For at least the last three trips, I’ve wanted to go to Keelung. It’s the last “major” metropolitan area in Taiwan that I haven’t been to and that, predominantly, is why I wanted to go there. Combine that with the fact that it really isn’t very far from Taipei and it is just been a bit frustrating that I’ve never been there.

Keelung is a small container and fishing port on the northern coast. I have no idea how busy it is as a container port, but it certainly is nothing in comparison to the massive, world-class port in Kaoshiung where the bulk of Taiwan’s shipping occurs.

On previous trips here, Irene has gone to Keelung without me, usually without my knowledge. She goes for seafood with her friends. When I’ve asked about going, she’s always replied, “There’s no reason to go to Keelung if you’re not going to eat seafood.” I disagree. One goes to a fish & chips shop for seafood where the fish has been properly processed and the fish flavor appropriately disguised.

When we arrived in Keelung, we spent an inordinate amount of time circling round and round the busy, narrow streets. I know we were just going round in circles because the GPS told me so. I couldn’t tell one street from the next and so only had the vague notion that it seemed like we were traveling in circles.

We passed Keelung’s famous night market, several times, and I thought perhaps we were going to stop if only we could find parking. By this time, after 5:00PM, I was hungry, and despite the obsession with seafood in the area, I felt sure I could grab something to eat in the night market. Grilled corn on the cob, a Chinese sausage or something like that would have been very good, and Irene and her dad could get some fresh seafood. That’s the kind of native eating I like, where they eat their thing and I eat mine. I hadn’t had breakfast when I went out in the morning, but I grabbed a couple pieces of chicken when I was waiting at the subway station to be picked up. Otherwise, I was running on empty.

However, we were not going to the night market, and finally Mr. Huang found what he was looking for, a road that lead up to a small park with (are you ready for this surprise?) stairs leading up from it. They parked and sent me on my way.

My guess was that it lead to a vantage point where I could see the city and perhaps the port, but sunset is just after 5:00 these days and the sun was already gone.

After several false “tops” of the hill, I finally reached the real top, which had giant statues and a commanding view of the area. I snapped a few pictures in the fading light and headed back to the car. After I got back, we drove to the other side where a parking lot was only 10 steps from the statues, rather than 100.

Now only a couple pictures away from a full memory card, we returned to Taipei along the freeway.

And you’d think that would have been the end of my day, with one exception…

(to be continued)

Technorati Tags: Blog, Family, Taiwan, Travel

It’s 20-30 km from Jinshan to Keelung and then a freeway drive back to Taipei, a surprisingly short drive back to Taipei at that.

Between Jinshan and Keelung is Yeliou, a place that I visited in 1999. It’s the northern tip of the island and home to many bizarre erosion formations in the coast.

As we were passing it and I had my camera with me, which was now getting perilously low on available memory, I asked if we could stop. Why not?

The kids were still asleep, so Irene and I went in alone, for a total of 25 minutes. I really didn’t feel I had the right conditions, or lens, to get the pictures I wanted, but I got a few I liked, and several more which I think I can photoshop into something better. We certainly didn’t have enough time to really cover the whole place.

One thing bothers me, if I’ve never been to Keelung and I’ve never been to Jinshan, and Yeliou sits on the road between them, how did I get there before?

My guess is that we went through Jinshan, as the scenery of Keelung was totally unfamiliar, while Jinshan was typical of the outer inhabited areas and easily forgettable.

And so finally we went on to Keelung…

(to be continued)

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

After my conversation with Irene about Bamboo Lake and Gold Mountain, my father-in-law decided that, since I hadn’t been to the town of Jinshan, he was going to take us.

And so, before I was really sure what was happening, we were in Jinshan, a small, old town on the northern coast.

By this time, both kids were asleep in the car, and so when we arrived at the “very old temple”, only my father-in-law and I got out to look at it.

You have to walk down a narrow, crowded vendor street to get to the temple. It was an old temple, not exactly my bag of tea, but since Mr. Huang had driven us here apparently to see it, the least I could do was take a few pictures.

However, while I was trying to study the temple, he was far more interested in explaining to me the food that was being prepared on the steps of the temple.

He explained to me something like, “Tourists buy the food, then take it down the street to the stalls”, indicating the other food and good vendors down the street.

Apparently it is all the rage, because lots of people were lined up “buying” food on non-disposable plates and then walking down the street towards the other vendors.

I couldn’t see any logic to that, so I naturally assumed it was a religion thing, which doesn’t have to make sense. Of course, I wasn’t interested in spending money on such a venture, but Mr. Huang really seemed interested in participating.

Ultimately nothing came of it, probably because I kept ignoring the food and concentrating on the temple and because there were many, many people standing in line.

When we got back to the car, I asked Irene what the heck was going on and after a conversation with her father, she explained that the restaurant was just “in front” of the temple, and had been there for a long time and very famous. It is so popular that they’ve purchased some of the other stall spaces down the street for people to take the food and eat. Mr. Huang just wanted a snack.

Well, that’s what happens in translation sometimes.

As Jinshan is a coastal town, we stopped at the docks where there is a fish market and Mr. Huang bought a fresh fish to take home.

Presumably from Jinshan we’d head back to Taipei; however, Irene also mentioned to her father that I’d never been to the town of Keelung, either.

And so…

(to be continued)

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

After they picked me up at the Technology Building station we drove up to the Yangmingshan area, which is a mountain park north of Taipei and a very popular one-day getaway for the locals. Not only is it green and pleasant, but there are numerous hot springs spas in the area provided by the natural geothermal springs in the area.

This trip really wasn’t the best planned out activity I’ve every been on. We had no real reason for going other than to go, and so we had no specific agenda either.

We stopped first at the actual Yanmingshan Park, which is a small, well-manicured park inside the larger park area, then we went to Cingtiengang (which I think they changed the spelling on), which is a large, grassy area “famous” for cows (actually water buffalo.)

It was swarming with school children. For as far as the eye could see, there were swarms and swarms of school children out on a field trip. I got to thinking about it and virtually everywhere we’ve go this trip, we encountered hundreds, if not thousands – for there were hundreds in the park this day, of kids on school excursions. Do they ever spend time in class?

These particular kids appeared to be all schoolgirls, about 12-15 years old, and they were moving around in clustered groups of about 20-30 per adult, and whenever they encountered Michelle they went ape-shit over her. Of course, they assumed she only spoke English and tried talking to her in English, and, of course, she decided to clam up and pretend they didn’t exist for the most part.

But throngs of schoolgirls can be a difficult force to resist, and they would gather up around her and take pictures of her, like they were mobbing a movie star. At one point, it overwhelmed her and she began to cry.

I haven’t mentioned it much on this trip, but, like last trip, Michelle generates a lot of attention from the locals. Unlike last trip, she has competition. James, being the baby, gets more attention than she does, and she usually fares better when he’s not around.

Just like with Michelle when she was his age, people come up and ask to hold James, sometimes taking him away to show others – although that more often happens in restaurants, and the people wanting to hold him are employees prompting me to believe they’re trying to help Irene eat in peace. People are always trying to play games with him from other tables in restaurants or just when we’re walking down the street.

The wedding photographers were out in full force, too. No fewer than five crews were in the parks with the clients, dressed in wedding costumes being posed and photographed for their obligatory albums. I’m still disappointed that it was raining so hard that Irene’s and my album was done entirely indoors, but I don’t relish the torture they’re putting these people through to get their shots.

Michelle got to play on a suspension bridge, which she loves and I spent my time trying to read the road signs and asking questions like, “Zhuzihu, ‘Bamboo Lake?’ Have I ever been to Bamboo Lake?”

“Yes”, says Irene, “you have.”

“I don’t remember seeing anything like a bamboo lake.”

“There’s no bamboo there, only flowers.”

“Fine. I don’t remember any lakes, either.”

“There’s no lake there, either.”

“Oh”

“It’s where they have all the flower orchards now. You’ve been there.”

“OK, what about Jinshan? That means ‘Gold Mountain’, right?”

“No, you haven’t been there. There’s no gold there.”

“I didn’t think there would be, I just wanted to know if I’d been to that mountain.”

“Oh, it’s not a mountain, it’s a town on the coast, outside the park.”

“Oh, OK.”

And so, unbeknownst to me, a chain of events was set in motion…

(to be continued)

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

I took nearly 300 photos yesterday, this one was priceless.

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

The weatherman got it wrong and it was a busy, busy day because of it.

Today’s forecast called for another cold front to blow in bringing colder temperatures and rain. Yesterday when I was returning from Costco, I was pretty sure he was right. The temperature was dropping, the wind was blowing and ominous dark clouds were beginning to cover the sky.

At least that’s it looked like when I dropped into the hole at Jingan station. When I popped out again at Guting station, the sky was completely blue, no wind and hot. That’s one of the weird things about Taipei and the subways, even though the stations are only a very few miles apart, sometimes it feels like you’re popping out in a different world.

Still, we had anticipated a rainy day schedule and when I got up it was clear that wasn’t the case. The sky was blue with few clouds. Since we’d made no plans for the day I decided to go to Linguan station, which I’d noticed on the way to the zoo, and look around the hills in the area.

It’s a short walk from the station to the “park” which has a formidable sign in front of it that a says a lot of things – in Chinese. At the bottom of at least 3 paragraphs worth of Chinese, there are two English words: “No Entry”

Normally, I would take that to mean something like “do not enter” or “keep out” but in this case, I took it to mean, “Welcome.”

Why? Three reasons

• This is Taiwan, a country that obeys no semblance of traffic laws and virtually every men’s room in the country sits in a thick cloud of smoke, almost too thick to see the “No Smoking” placed right over the full ashtray. (Why do they put the ashtray there? Because when they don’t the toilet paper dispenser is melted and warped out of all recognition with all the cigarette butts that are put out on it.
• The sign was probably a bad translation. For example, in Daan park there’s a “do not” sign at all the entries of the park with pictograms on it and along with all the normal ones like “no campfires”, there’s a clear picture of a dog peeing on a tree with the universal circle with line through it. There’s a long Chinese explanation and the simple words “No Pets” in English. I checked with Irene and the Chinese does indeed prohibit pets peeing in the park, not prohibit pets in the park.
• The locals were totally ignoring it and going in and out of the park

Inside it’s nothing like the city parks, it’s a dense jungle with rough, slippery rock steps and poorly delineated trails. Signs abound warning about the dreaded fire ant which has recently invaded Taiwan and presumably lurks in the park.

The area has a very “lived in” feel. Small shanty like structures stand full of junk, but don’t look like they re inhabited. Clearings and spots along the paths have plastic chairs and tables left there as if the owners will be coming back any minutes. Places where the trail is particularly hazardous have been covered with carpet remnants to make them more safe.

I was just about to plunge deeper into the jungle and see if I could head up to the top of the mountain when Irene called to tell me since the weather was good we were going to Yangmingshan and that I needed to return.

I was to meet them at the Technology Building station and I got there first. As I waited, a line of children, lead by a teacher and surrounded with other adults came trick-or-treating down the street, going from business to business.

Unlike trick-or-treating back home, they marched down the street, parade-fashion, with the teacher banging a drum and the kids all reciting “Trick or Treat…” and then something of similar length in Chinese in time to the drum.

The kids were really cute in their costumes. Halloween is a relatively new concept in Taiwan and Michelle will be participating in one Sunday sponsored by the Disney Channel.

When they arrived to pick me up it was on to Yangmingshan…

(To be continued)

Technorati Tags: Blog, Hiking, Taiwan, Travel

The skies are blue today, and the temperature is beginning to go back up, but the weatherman says a new rainy, cold front arrives tomorrow.

It was too sunny out for Irene to go for a walk, so I decided to try navigating to another Costco in the Taipei area.

There are three, one I’ve already been to and photographed, one that is so far out that it isn’t on my map of Taipei, and finally one out in Yung He that should be reasonable walking distance from the Jingan subway station.

GPS in hand and some Herb Alpert on the iPod, I headed out.

As you can see from the pictures, obviously I made it to the Costco, and there really isn’t much to tell.

It’s a Costco.

Luckily, the girl at the counter was able to figure out I wanted a hot dog for lunch, even though I tried in Chinese. (Irene tells me that “hot dog” is translated literally as the Chinese words for “hot” and “dog.”)

Mercifully, it had western-style sit down toilets.

Full on hot dogs that didn’t taste like Vienna sausages, I headed back to the subway station. This is an area of town that (A) I’d never been to before and (B) was pretty devoid of western influences, but I did run across one interesting thing:

KLG Fried Chicken

I’ve seen signs for these before, usually on the outskirts of Taipei, seen from a car or train window as we’re rushing out of town somewhere. In all my walking in the central part of Taipei, I’ve never once seen one, but today I found myself face-to-face with the Colonel’s chicken avatar.

Actually, the chicken looked pretty good, but I was full. Hopefully I can get back there before I leave and try it.

Michelle absolutely refused to put her shoes on without assitance this evening and therefore lost her chance to go to school tonight.

She was perfectly capable and happy to put her shoes on back home, but since she’s been here she’s playing helpless. Of course, grandma and grandpa always play along with her, but today she lost.

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