Tag: Taiwan

I’m pleased to see Taipei making upgrades to the public infrastructure. For example, they’re installing lighted, covered bus stops in many locations. Apparently, another one of the city’s quality-of-life improvements is the installation of new, very expensive, public garbage cans.

I’ve already mention previously that Taipei used to have public garbage cans, then they instituted a pay-per-the-bag garbage scheme and had to remove the public garbage because everyone was dumping their household garbage to avoid paying. One trip later and the garbage cans had been returned.

This trip I’ve noticed that the garbage cans frequently have household garbage just piled up in bags next to them. Perhaps that, in some way, is why the new garbage cans are being installed, although I fail to see how they are superior in any practical fashion.

In any case, the new garbage cans are going out and they’re being stolen by people who want nice, new solid metal garbage cans at home.

But pictured here is one that really puzzled me. This new garbage can has been mounted on the street and is still in the city of Taipei wrapping paper. Further down the street, you can see the old square garbage can next to the bus stop sign.

Here’s my question: What possible reason would there be to install a garbage can and wait before opening it for public use? Does it have to be prepped in some way?

Looking closer, here’s something even funnier: It’s already filled with garbage, anyway.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Taiwan, Travel

Is there anything more instinctive than a revulsion to the creepy-crawlies?

Nothing comes immediately to mind, especially when brutes like this can run out into the middle to the room at rodent-like speeds. I saw this guy out of the corner of my eye last night and nearly jumped out of my skin. He ran to ground here (before be met an untimely demise) where I caught a few pictures for posterity.

Incidentally, the black baseboard he’s resting on is 4 inches, top to bottom.

They say they’re good for catching mosquitoes and cockroaches, but as the kids and I are, essentially, sleeping on the floor, I’d rather he wasn’t running around the floor. I wouldn’t give the family dog good odds in a fight with this monster.

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Follow-up to my earlier post on Diana’s wedding proposal.

For the last 3 days or so, the Taipei 101 now has a sign saying “Yes, I do!”

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I love the traffic lights in some cities in Taiwan. They have a countdown timer that shows exactly how long both the red and the green lights last. (Not sure about the yellow light.)

I’d like to think there’s no negatives to this scheme, but, of course, some jackass will use the knowledge of when the light is changing to speed up and run the intersection in a dangerous fashion.

Oh well, nothing’s perfect.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Taiwan, Travel

Honestly, I really do have a brother-in-law, he’s not just a comic fabrication that I use to add levity.

He’s got a girlfriend – the same one he had last time we were here. We haven’t figured out why they’re not married yet. Then again, maybe it isn’t that hard to figure out why they’re not married yet.

Batrina (That’s the girlfriend. Don’t ask me where she got that moniker.) is going to England to study at Leeds for 1 year.

The picture here is a nice new piece of luggage/backpack that was on the floor when we got home from Alishan. It’s Johnny’s. It hasn’t moved for two days. He’s got no reason to use it. Why did he buy it then?

My wife got the story from Batrina. She bought it for Johnny. Long-term girlfriend going away for a year to a foreign country, buys her boyfriend a new piece of traveling luggage: It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this one out.

Johnny’s response: “Oh, you wasted your money. I don’t need luggage.”

I’m going to buy him a shirt that says, “I am a cartoon character.”

Technorati Tags: Blog, Family, Taiwan, Travel

One of my favorite pastimes in Taipei is to drop into the subway system, pick a station I’ve never been to and go there to explore. Since most of the stations are subterranean it’s impossible to have a feel for where you are.

Each station has a map showing what’s around it. Maddeningly, they’re oriented in a random fashion. North is almost never up, which makes it more difficult to visualize.

I chose Yongning station because of three reasons: (1) I had no idea where Yongning was (2) It’s the terminal station on the subway’s blue line, and (3) It’s a new station, completed since the last time I was here.

When I arrived, the map provided with with little hope, the major landmarks in the area were a cemetery, a waste water treatment plant and a cement factory. No parks, museums nor shopping complexes.

When I popped my head out of the station, I noticed that I was near one of the perimeter mountains around Taipei, that it appears to be an industrial area and that it was beginning to pour rain again. With my trusty umbrella in one hand, GPS in the other, I headed out in a direction that turned out to be South-West. The most distinct landmarks were the cow statues in the middle of a street. No clue what that was about.

What a bleak area. Double-stacked freight trucks plied up and down the streets, honking at each other constantly. Packs of wild dogs roamed the streets, following people menacingly and the inhabitants just stared at me like they’d never seen a foreigner. This area certainly seemed off the beaten path for tourists.

About 1.5 to 2 Km out from the station, I decided I’d had enough. The storm had turned into a proximate lightening storm, and I’m not comfortable walking in the lightening with an umbrella/lightening rod. I needn’t worry about that for long, for the wind started picking up, blowing at almost gale force. At one point, while crossing a street, the wind caught my umbrella and shredded it. The metal stays tore through the fabric like a big metal spider. One of them latched into the back of my shirt and tore a hole in it, effectively locking the remains of the umbrella around my head. I had a hairy, blind moment or two as I fought the monster off.

I was glad I visited, but I was equally glad I’ve “checked off” Yongning station and aren’t likely to need to return.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Taiwan, Travel

This trip to Alishan and Fenchihu happened to be about the same duration as our 1998 trip. We arrived at Alishan late on the first day, took the train down to Fenchihu mid-day the next, returned to Chiayi mid-day the next. On our trip in 2005, we really took the time to explore the Alishan completely, but bypassed Fenchihu.

Fenchihu is a small town, but due to tourism, has more than one hotel. We decided to stay in the same hotel we stayed in last time, but this time we upgraded from a “wood” room to a Japanese tatami room. (In Taiwan, which gets most of its tourists from Japan, it’s not uncommon to have hotel rooms designed specifically for them.) I’ve just always wanted to try a tatami room.

It was a nice room, with a full computer-controlled environment system and 42“ wide-screen hi-definition TV. On that 37” TV we have over 60 channels of the worst reception I’ve ever seen in my life. If nothing else, at least I got to watch an episode of Primeval.

Being in the middle of the week, there were no other guests in the hotel at all.

Apart from being a pleasant escape from the city, we didn’t find much of anything in Fenchihu the first time, but we also felt like we must have missed something. In preparation, I did a flickr search for all photos tagged with “fenchihu.” (I also searched for those tagged with the proper name in Chinese and a couple alternate romanized spellings. What I found were a lot of pictures of the same four or fice things: The railroad tracks, the old steam engines, bian dan, the ticket station, some landmark. There were other things, but the majority of people posting pictures didn’t get beyond 100m from the train station.

This time I decided I was going to make a photo collection of the “real” fenchihu.

Up before anyone else, even most of the locals, I was out on the streets taking pictures. One of the things I like about Taiwan is, when you get to these small towns, if you can get past the broken-down garbage dump nature of a lot of the places is that everything looks so lived in and make do. (I think it’s the look they’re going for with the inside of the Doctor’s TARDIS, although perhaps without so many old plastic bags.)

I personally wouldn’t want to live this way, but I find it fascinating to observe.

As with most things along the Alishan Forest Railway, Fenchihu owes its existence to the lumber industry and the train that brought the lumber down from the mountains. In the old days, Fenchihu was the spot where the trains would switch engines. The next leg of the journey required more powerful engines and when the train arrived in Fenchihu, the stronger engine was up to steam and ready to go.

More recently, the town has erected a museum, of sorts, to bring more railway tourism. The museum, which costs nothing, contains a couple on the old steam engines, a few pieces of the machinery used to work on the engines and lots of pictures. Our hotel provided us with a free tour (Chinese only) which included a lecture on the background of the trains.

Once a year or so, they trot out the old steam engines, which were used from 1912 up until the 1980’s, for the railway buffs. This might or might not be a secret: none of the steam engines work, so they’re retrofitted the inside of one with a diesel engine so it can move around.

The second thing that apparently brings people to Fenchihu is the bian dan. One place in particular is the most famous. As it happens, this also happens to be the hotel we stayed in. The owner is wily old bird. His picture can be spotted in several places around town. Not just his photograph, but professionally done advertisements of the old man, sitting like some old zen master chef contemplating his creation.

Too bad the food didn’t live up to the expectation. The bian dan I got the day before on the train was better.

There are also some (typically) quite steep hills with trails (read: mountain staircases) in the area. The tour guide took Irene and me up a short on the evening we arrived, and I explored another before breakfast.

After we left our room we tried another path that was equally as vertical, this time with the kids. By the time we returned to the train, I was really feeling the pain in my calves.

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