Category: TaiwanHoneymoon

Our flight to Singapore was at 9:20AM, so we planned for an early start to the airport.

Unfortunately, Chu-Wan refused to go out in public with only half of one eyebrow and spent an inordinate amount of time constructing a new one, which made us late for catching the bus to the airport. Chu-Wan’s father came to the rescue and drove us to the bus stop, but it was already gone, and so we chased the bus down in his car, somewhat like a car chase on Hawaii 5-0, until they stopped at the next stop and we got on.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Taiwan, Travel

I awoke with a bit more energy than the day before, and I was going to need it. This was phase two of the Wedding Photography Adventure: Picture Day. With luck we’d spend the entire day driving around scenic spots in and around Taipei having wedding pictures taken.

Luck wasn’t with us. After days of perfect weather, today it had settled into a steady rain. We spent the entire day confined to the studio, we didn’t even have time to leave for lunch; however, a catered box lunch was included in the package. It would have been totally inedible had it not been for the fact that I could neither smell nor taste anything.

An all-day picture shoot would be exhausting at the best of times, but with my sinus problems, I was constantly blowing my nose. This tended to wipe off the make-up, so they had to have someone powder my nose between every shot. Also, my ears were so clogged I could barely hear anyone speak, but since the photographer only spoke Chinese, I couldn’t have understood her anyway. Hand gestures didn’t help much either, since I was wearing fake glasses with no lenses in them.

From 9 in the morning till after 6 at night, I was blind, deaf, unable to smell or taste. The only way they could accomplish the shoot was to have the photographers assistant powder my nose and pose me like a mannequin between each picture.

Strangely, by 6:00PM I was beginning to get my strength back and so we went for a steak dinner. I was able to eat the whole thing, but was still unable to taste anything.

When we left the studio, Chu-Wan discovered something unpleasant. During the elaborate make-up job they did on her, one over-eager make-up girl shaved off 50% of one of her eyebrows.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Taiwan, Travel

I awoke the next morning, surprised that I had slept for over 14 hours. While I was nearly unconscious, Chu-Wan had gone out to the night market with a school friend. I had been too sick to notice.

I was almost unable to get out of bed all day. In an attempt to get me to eat, Chu-Wan brought me pizza, which I couldn’t eat. While I have a healthy distrust of doctors I do realize that when I can’t eat pizza, it’s time to seek professional help.

My father-in-law took us across town to their family doctor.

Doctor’s offices are quite different. For starters it was open till 9:00PM for walk-in patients. I was diagnosed as having a viral infection in the sinuses, as well as bronchitis. I was put on a series of antibiotics and given a really, truly painful shot of vitamins to help compensate for my lack of eating. We had a really big day ahead of us tomorrow and it didn’t look like I was going to make it.

I had one more shock before I left: The bill for the doctor’s visit and prescriptions came out to a grand total of US$25.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Taiwan, Travel

I awoke with a cold. Visions of my previous Taiwan trip, which had been hampered by a bad cold were haunting me. “No”, I cried, ” this will not happen again!” Perhaps saying this outloud the moment I awoke was an indication that fever had already set in.

The Leofoo breakfast was identical to the day before, but this time, instead of a selection of Christmas music they instead played only a muzak version of “Joy To The World” – over and over again. It was a particularly long version – perhaps 10 minutes from start to finish, and when it finally would end, it started again. It may have been the fever or it may have been the muzak, but I could feel my sanity slowly began to slide into oblivion. That was the first day that I thought I might someday be able to drive in Taipei traffic.

Once again, the weather was great, so we walked 2 miles to Sogo Department store, hoping to find Japanese books in the Kinokuniya bookstore inside. Unfortunately, they didn’t open till 11:00 and it was only about 9:30. Already I was feeling run down.

Rather than plunge on, I needed a rest, and so we stopped into a small café across the street call the Sun Merry Café. Chu-Wan made some phone calls to her friends while I sat, relaxed, drank some tea and looked through tourist literature. The Sun Merry Café is an upscale place, with tasteful decour and a unique glass door on the men’s room, allowing the people on the pay phones to watch men urinating. Culture Shock rears its ugly head in the strangest places.

It was still too early for Sogo’s, so we headed on to the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Park. A beautiful park, and a solemn memorial for the founder of the Republic of China. An honor guard is always on duty when the memorial is open. The guard remain perfectly motionless for most of the time, but at (apparently) pre-determined times, both guards change their position, very slowly and in perfect unison.

Figuring we’d waited long enough, we headed back to Sogo’s, which was now open, and up to Kinokuniya, which was, for one day only, closed until 5:30PM. Inside the bookstore they appeared to be conducting some form of staff brainwashing or motivational exercises. By now, I was loosing ground fast and we went back to the hotel, where I went to sleep for the remainder of the day.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Taiwan, Travel

The Leofoo was a pretty hotel with small, but clean rooms. Each morning, guests were given a “Western-style” all-you-can-eat buffet breakfast. The meal consisted of sausage, bacon, eggs, rolls, toast, corn flakes and a curious, soggy, gloppy, watery rice dish.

The prospect of all-you-can-eat bacon for breakfast was tantalizing; however, the reality was somewhat less than satisfying. The Taiwanese eat lots of pork and, reportedly, there is no incidence of the disease Trichinosis on the island. Consequently, the bacon was rare – pink, in fact. A lifetime learning that pork should never be eaten unless fully cooked was impossible to overcome and the bacon remained safe from my food marauding expeditions.

One nice thing about the buffet dining room at the Leofoo was that we sat next to a second story picture-window looking down on a busy intersection. From the safety of the second floor I could watch the chaotic turmoil that is Taipei traffic and prepare myself psychologically for dealing with it before each day began. On our first morning at the Leofoo, I watched an ambulance, siren blaring, attempt to make a left turn at the intersection. The maneuver took fully 5 minutes as the rush hour traffic simple refused to yield to the ambulance. Even the scooters and pedestrians continued on their way, oblivious to its errand of mercy.

The best part about the ambulance diversion was that it temporarily drowned out the selection of awful Christmas muzac playing incessantly in the lobby.

We set out for Chu-Wan’s parents’ house. The weather was perfect. We had been expecting continuous rain, but the weather couldn’t have been much better. Her parents had only returned to Taipei a day before us, as they have been in the States for our wedding, so all we did was drop off some things we had brought for them in our luggage, checked my Internet mail and headed off for a walk in Ta’an park. I spent a good half hour attempting to get my dad’s GPS unit to function, but to no avail. It later turned out that I needed to turn off battery-saver mode after travelling any distance over 400 miles, but I didn’t learn that until I returned home.

After failing to get the GPS working, we set out to the South-East corner of the park to locate the web-cam operated by the city Taipei. Normally the camera looks over the elevated freeway, but sometimes it points towards the surface streets and the park can be seen. If the camera had been pointing towards the park we were going to attempt to set a time for our friends back in the States to see us on the camera. During our whole trip, the camera stayed stubbornly pointed at the freeway.

On my previous trip to Taiwan, there were times when I had been sorely desperate for American food, this time, my in-laws went to great pains to find me places to eat. After our walk in the park, they took us to the Basil Mint restaurant. An oddly-named place specializing in American food and Australian seafood. It was all-you-can-eat, and I ate a lot – gorging myself on steak, fried chicken, grilled chicken, lamb and spaghetti. We ate lunch with friends of Chu-Wan’s father, one of whom was a businessman working in Indonesia. He told us several stories of the violence going on there targeted at ethnic Chinese.

Afterwards, we started our great Wedding Photography Adventure. Phase one was to go to a place called “Catherine’s” – one of the many places that specializes in wedding photography albums. The wedding albums are apparently unique to Asia (so far) and consist of a rather elaborate glamour photo shoot, which ultimately results in a handsome album and portrait of the couple. The photos involve multiple clothing changes for the groom, and many more for the bride, including complete make-up and hair changes too. The process ends up taking several days to complete. Today we just went for Chu-Wan to select the dresses she’d be wearing. Meanwhile, my father-in-law took me to a men’s ware store to buy shirts and ties.

Before leaving the States, Chu-Wan had reminded me to bring a suit. She failed to remind me to bring shirts, socks and ties to go with the suit. I’m a proponent of travelling light and was making every effort to keep the baggage to a minimum; however, forgetting the clothes was just a stupid oversight.

We walked back to the hotel, finally confirming my suspicion that, despite having 2.6 million people, Taipei actually covers a relatively small geographic area. On our trek, I made note of the various exotic western restaurants that we might eat at: Subway, Tony Roma’s. Hooters (Never made it there, but really have to see that one for myself! I suspect they have to import foreign waitresses to “fill out” their staff.) Hard Rock Café, Ruby Tuesday, TGI Fridays, Ruth Chris Steakhouse and Trader Vic’s – just to name a few. Ultimately, we decided on RoundTable Pizza, and I was once again pleasantly surprised at how similar their pizza tastes compared to the American “original”.

Before we go on, I can tell you I spent most of the rest of this part of the trip in bed. Sounds perfect for a honeymoon, doesn’t it? Well, read on…

Notes from the 21st Century
My original post didn’t have that cool embedded image from the web cam. When I was dragging the text, which included a link to the webcam, into my blogging software, somehow it turned it into an image from the webcam.