Miscellaneous Adventures

I know it's been a few weeks since our last update, so we apologize. Since our last post we've had 3 people come to visit as well as digging into various projects. It's Monday morning before work so I (Russ) thought I'd fire off some pictures to update you all. Enjoy!

 Taipei 101 from the base: this building is taller than the CN tower and just as unnecessarily expensive to go up it

 Some cool structures on Tiger Mountain

 Either the worst sword or the best umbrella ever made

 A staple in our diet. Japanese style teppanyaki prepared right in front of us as we eat.

 A tree with danglies

 The world in tile form

The McMilktea: a Taiwan exclusive McDonald's dessert

 Korean BBQ with Cassie and Byron

 Beitou public hot springs: for $40NT (<$2 CAD) you can enjoy hanging out with a lot of old Taiwanese people and soak in natural hotspring water. The hotter pools are at the top and as the water filters down it gets progressively less hot. After going here we were the most relaxed we've ever been.

 A cool tree.

 A tiny zamboni.

 The view from the Maokong Gondola. This gondola goes from the end of the city subway line, up the mountain to a place that sells very unique and delicious mountain tea. In the picture is Sharon's friend Rose from England. It was great having her and Joe visit and miss them lots!

 More on the gondola.

 Heavenly meat bags.

 The Avengers (and Jason Stathem looking pissed off with a gun)

I woke up one morning at 5:30 and biked to the park. Expecting it to be empty I realized that the park is alive and well at that time of day with people doing Tai Chi. It was neat to see.

BAM! Everybody stretch!

The next day I felt like this egg. Give me warm bacon to snuggle with...

 The best article of clothing yet.

 This board game.

This artist at the market close to our place.

 Lunch: rice steamed in a bamboo shoot, greens and garlic, pork, and river shrimp.

 Wulai Waterfalls (approx 1.5 hours south of Taipei). Wulai is another place with natural hot springs. What is cool about Wulai is that it's not in the city so the riverbed is all hot spring

Cable car that goes up to the waterfall. 

 The view from the cable car.

Sharon in the hot spring. Where her feet were it was perfect bath temperature. If she were to move her feet to the right of that rock, it would be hot jacuzzi temperature, and if she were to walk 3 feet into the river she'd get cool lake temperature. It was an amazing experience that is hard to explain and even harder believe as a Canadian.

It's been a great few weeks and we look forward to taking more day trips and showing you those. Godspeed all! 

- RS=T

Taroko Gorge and Hualien

Alrighty, this is a big one. First off, Happy Easter to everybody and a happy spring to those who desperately needed it after the harsh winter you’ve had. 

Although the Taiwanese don’t nationally celebrate Easter, they do have their own Spring long weekend. Friday was Children’s Day and Monday is Tomb Sweeping day where families go and visit their loved ones who have past. Since there was nothing going on in the city we thought it’d be a great opportunity to go and check out one of the most popular attractions in Taiwan: Taroko Gorge!

Taroko Gorge is located on the east coast of Taiwan, just north of Hualien - a medium sized coastal city. We boarded a train from Taipei (north) which took about 2-3 hours. 

Taipei in the north, Hualien at the bottom, and Taroko Gorge just above Hualien

When we got to Hualien we had to take a bus another hour and a half, which was taxing on my patience but was well worth it. 

In a nutshell, Taroko Gorge is a massive river system that cuts through the east mountains of Taiwan and flows into the Pacific Ocean. There are three things that make this gorge the major attraction of Taiwan:

1. It’s all marble
2. The shear depth of the gorge
3. the ambitiously placed temples along the river system

I tried my best to get pictures that would translate all of this to you, I hope these do it justice. 

Check out all the marble

The river is abnormally low which was cool because we could see more rock, but it would also be cool to see it full of rushing water.

I love being in the mountains because they are truly humbling. In Toronto, the biggest things around you are all manmade. Out here, you see things that humans could never build. Huge walls of marble that shoot straight up from a blueish river into the clouds. Mountains so big that they had to blast holes through it in order to build roads. It makes you truly respect nature and those who attempt to live within and work with it. 

These temples show just that. The one on the bottom of the cliff has been rebuilt 5 or 6 times due to mudslides and falling rock. The one on the top left was very hard to get to. There were hundreds of tourists who came to see these and only a few managed to climb the stairs built into the mountainside to get to the higher one. We were two of those people.

This basin should be filled with water

When you get to the top you have the option of seeing the temple or if you walk 20 more steps up you can go to the bell tower, so we went to the bell tower where you can ring the bell out to the gorge below.

Another thing that is interesting about these temples is the amount of marble that they are made out of in comparison to every other temple we’ve seen. This is for obvious reasons of course and was cool to see, but it almost made me feel like I was back in Woodbridge visiting my grandparents. 

We walked down and said goodbye to Taroko.  That night we saw a lunar eclipse. I’m so happy that these shots turned out.

We headed back to Hualien where we spent the rest of our weekend.

There is less to describe here other than it was cool to see and spend time by the ocean. Since this is a marble heavy area, there was a lot of cool marble statues and artwork. 

Avalokitesvara - A Buddhist bodhisvatta who stands for the compassion of all Buddhas.

 

It was super hot and had to stay cool so we went to a favourite desert place loved by the locals. Attaching a block of ice to a drill press, this restaurant shaves ice into a casserole dish and covers it with syrup and condensed milk. The ingenuity of the desert far exceeds the flavour, but it was still delicious and more so very refreshing!

We also got help from a bellman at an apartment building, who told us we walked too far from the main part of town and offered to drive us back. So nice of him.

At the end of the trip it was time to go home, but not before heading to church (it still is Easter after all!) 

The mass was small. only 50 people crammed in a small chapel. There were a few foreigners but most of the people were Pilipino or Indonesian. The priest was from France and is now officially the nicest French man I have met. I took this picture of a statue of Mary to remember the mass and everyone we met. We did quite a lot this weekend and I’m super happy it all worked out and that we could share it with you. 

- RS=T

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- RS = T

PLAY BALL!!!

It's that time of year again all across the world --- baseball season has begun! Here in Taiwan it's no different. Taiwan has it's own major league of 4 teams, which used to be much bigger but had to shut down and restart under a new name and management after years of corruption and match-fixing (much like the Canadian Soccer League http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/exclusive-canadian-soccer-an-easy-target-for-match-fixing-1.1212414)

 Here is a picture of the stadium. It was busy but not insanely 

busy like other sporting venues we've visited.

Unlike the CSL however, this is Taiwan's sport. You could argue that basketball could rival it, being that most kids either follow the NBA or play it (I actually met a teenager who said that Chris Bosh is his favourite player. What made this funny was that he said "not just because of the Heat, he liked him before when he was on the Raptors". I was stunned). However, with the significant Japanese influence in Taiwan's history, baseball has much deeper roots and well...... LETS PLAY BALL!

Elephant Clappers. No balls came our direction unfortunately...

It felt very much felt like we were at a soccer game. The stands were separated with the home team (Taipei Brother Elephants) on the left and the away team (Lamigo Monkeys) on the right.* There were chants, drums, a horn section, and a guy with a big microphone. It was as chaotic and lively as I've ever seen a sporting event. Check out the sites and sounds here:

https://youtu.be/pldA_Z7Ec6s

*Note: The other two teams in the league are the EDA Rhinos and the Unified 7-Eleven Lions. If I weren't such a homer I'd be cheering for the 7-Eleven Lions.

As with baseball games, there's always other ways one must amuse themselves for 9 innings. Cassie for example made a friend today :)

She asked him to be friends, he said he'd have to mullet over

 The Elephants won 10-6! Our team is now 2nd in league points which is amazing! We are however in 3rd last place...

...Sharon and Cassie bought clappers which will be great souvenirs as we look back on today. Byron bought a hat to match his jersey from last year and I purchased a sweet new jersey. Although you can't really see it in this picture it looks like Byron's.

Elephant is the new yellow 

Around the 6th inning, Sharon lost her sunglasses under the bleachers. The stadium staff was very kind about it and let us find them after the game. This may have been the best part of the experience because we got to enjoy the sights and sounds of post game baseball. We ended up cruising around so long that we had to get escorted out of the building. They were all very friendly about it but I respect their wanting us outta there.

All in all it was a great experience. I can't say that it was MLB quality play or speed but that's not even necessary --- the atmosphere and experience was a definite grand slam! 


-RS = T

Raj and Benji

A hoy hoy,

It's been a very fun and busy two weeks. On top of officially starting our new jobs, we had our friends Raj and Benji coming through on separate trips. Needless to say it's been a busy few weeks of dining, entertaining, playing music, laughing, and exploring. It's great having people visit you to remind you to get out an explore, especially as you begin to settle into a lifestyle. 

Here are some pics of one night in particular with Benji, Sharon, Byron, Cassie, and myself. Benji's visit was only for a week and it was sad to see him go so soon.

The arcade down the road has a gun range for $4. We decided to take our American friend somewhere were he felt like home...

Amazing banana shirt...

Amazing strange shirt... (we could only take two pictures before we got yelled at, but this was a pretty hilarious place to browse)

Inside Longshan Temple, all decorated for Chinese New Year...

...Next we have Raj, who was amazing to hang out with over his stay here in Taiwan. Like Benji, it would be great to have him stay here for longer, but we had some great times while he was here. These are pics of a place called E7, which, for $12 gets you into a bowling alley, pool hall, and general random arcade for 3 hours. It might be my favourite place in Taipei.

Sharon, myself, Raj, and Byron bowling...

Byron and Raj playing a strange scooter game...

this is not just an ass pic 

Sharon playing pingpong...

Some delicious dumplings after all the fun...

 mmmmmmmm!!!!!

It's now Monday morning, and both of our friends have gone their separate ways. Raj to Canada and Benji to journey across Asia. It's been a great two weeks and now we are off to work!

- RS = T

Pingxi Lantern Festival

Greetings! Or GREETINGS as I would say if you were standing farther away.

The mountain town of Pingxi

Today Sharon and I went to the Pingxi Lantern Festival, which, if you look at the "Top 10 things to do in Taiwan" is high on that list. The festival takes place in a small mountain town called Pingxi, which is an hour east of Taipei in the mountains. Here's the story:

The Lantern Festival is a super old tradition (many thousands of years and I don't know the number.. between 2 and 100) that the Chinese use to celebrate the end of winter months, and the beginning of the new year. People write their wishes for the new year on their lanterns and like a hot air balloon send them into the sky. This is us with our lantern...

Sharon wrote "Go Leafs Go" on the opposite side

We hope this reaches Canada by 2034

Different colours are meant for different wishes. We didn't realize until afterwards that yellow was for money. The others? (orange = good luck, green = health, blue = friendship, purple = happiness, pink = love, white = future, and red = all wishes come true). We just picked the one closest to us. Here's what it looks like right in the action...

 

After we sent ours off we walked through the old street in town and watched some lanterns get sent off, check it out here:

http://youtu.be/Tnd0l3glS0o

*note: The music playing? That'd be the garbage truck. All garbage trucks play music in Taiwan. The ones in Taipei play Beethoven.

...and here are some shots from a distance.

It was getting a little cold so we hopped into a small tea place and enjoyed some saxophone played by the owner while watching others send off their lanterns:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GARBs5BK-XQ&feature=youtu.be

Until next time,

- RS=T