Friday, July 31, 2009

Random musings about Taiwan

As a Westerner in Taiwan I feel like a mini celebrity most days. I don't know why it is but there are barely any tourists here, which makes me an oddity. Most days (particularly outside Taipei), we'll go the whole day without seeing another Westerner. If you do see one, it's such an odd sight that even I've started pointing at them and shouting "Waiguoren! Waiguoren!" ("Foreigner! Foreigner!").


I really love Paul's neighbour who we call ayi (Aunty), although she is no actual relation. Apparently my name literally means "cat food" in Taiwanese. Ayi said last time we were here all here other neighbours thought she must have gotten a cat because she kept calling "cat food, cat food" all the time! Ayi is famous for her pineapple cakes which she makes from scratch. I was hoping to steal her secret recipe while I was in Taiwan.


The other day I got my chance. Paul and Charles went on a day trip to Kenting. Since I was still tired from Yushan I decided to stay home. I asked Paul's mum whether she thought ayi would be making pineapple cakes that day. An hour later I was over in ayi's kitchen helping her make 40 of the cakes which she told me were all going to be for me! It was awesome. Unfortunately I think that some of the ingredients aren't available in Australia. Also, half way through the session I realised I was reading the measurements off the Taiwanese measurement scale instead of the metric one....hmmmmmmm....perhaps I wasn't as successful in stealing the recipe as I thought.

Oh yeah, we experienced our first earthquake the other day. It only lasted for a few seconds but it was enough to make me rush over to Paul shouting "An earthquake, shield me, shield me!". According to him, it was just a strong wind. I mantain it was an earthquake (the rest of Paul's family back me up).

Thursday, July 30, 2009

Taiwan - Taipei / Kaohsiung

We have now made it down to Kaohsiung after spending a few days in Taipei. The weather since we have been here has been scorching and humid which really makes it quite uncomfortable to go sightseeing in the middle of the day. Nevertheless we managed to pack in quite a bit during our time in Taipei.

We stayed at Holo Family House in the middle of Taipei near Taipei Main Station. It was a very friendly hostel with a great location but it was by far the most expensive place we have stayed so far in Asia. I think the times of US$10/night hotels are over for us on this trip - darn it!

We had a nice time catching up with Paul's friends Glenn and Aki for dinner one night. It was quite funny - since Glenn and Aki have lived in Taipei for about 1 year Paul thought that they would know somewhere nice to go for dinner. Glenn and Aki thought Paul would know because he was from Taiwan!! In the end we ate at a dumpling restaurant that Glenn and Aki picked which was very nice. We also caught up with Paul's friends Bonny and Sonny, his cousin Shing-yi (Sandy) and his friend Chia-heng (Hans) and his girlfriend.

Most days we headed out to see some of the sights around the city and at night we always ended up at one of the night markets. We managed to see the National Palace museum again (yes, we lined up for another view of the jade cabbage), checked out the 2/28 Peace Park and Museum, spent a day shopping for electronics (it's Taiwan - it's what you do), trawled Taipei 101 for a few hours and checked out one of the parks in the suburbs. We also spent a day shopping for outdoor gear as we are freaking out that we are going to freeze in either Mongolia, Tibet or Nepal. At night we saw Shilin night market, Yong-he night market (near Shing-yi's house), Shida night market and on one night we rode the train all the way to Miaokou night market at Jilong. Because Jilong is a port there is tonnes of seafood in the night market. We loaded up on takeaway crabs then ordered rice and veg at another stall and ate the lot.

I really can't say enough about Taipei's MRT system which allowed us to get all around the city without any problems. Although there are heaps of different lines, they are all colour coded and they have English translations for everything so the couple of times I had to use the MRT by myself I didn't have any problems. The whole time we were in Taipei I don't think we waited more than two or three minutes for a train and the air conditioning in the trains was pure bliss. There are MRT stations near most of the major sights and where there isn't there's always a connection that's really easy to work out (a free shuttle to Taipei 101 and connecting buses to the National Palace Museum for example). Even when we wanted to visit a park which was a little way from the MRT station the station staff told us to get on a free shuttle to a hospital that was right across the road! The fares for most of the trips we took were around NT$20 (less than AU$1). It really is the only way to get around in Taipei.

While we were in Taipei we visited a travel agency to try to see whether we could book a train ticket to Mongolia to solve our irritating onward ticket problem. It turns out that you can't book the ticket from here but the travel agent suggested that she just do up a fake ticket for us to show the airline - sweet! Hopefully that solves that problem.

After Taipei we went back to Ilan for another few days (during which we managed to fit in another few banquets). We tried to ride all the way to the sea with one of Paul's cousins but unfortunately it started storming - thwarted again! Paul's cousin had this really cool folding bike. They are everywhere here and I am very taken with them. They fold up quite small and you can fit them into a bag which you just put in the boot of the car or in the luggage compartment on the train. Very nifty.

We've been in Kaohsiung for a few days during which we have attended another four banquets. I can literally feel myself expanding from day to day. As I am usually the "honoured guest" I have to eat first and everyone keeps giving me food until I can barely stand. It is such a mean tradition in country of people who never seem to put on any weight. Seriously - have you ever seen a 45kg girl sit down and eat a bowl of noodles bigger than her head? I have.

In a couple of days we are heading up into the mountains to climb Yushan (Taiwan's highest mountain). I really, really wanted to climb Yushan this time and I was initially very excited to do it. Now though I don't know how I am going get up! We are going with a mountain climbing club so they will probably be really fit. I feel like our last two weeks in Thailand (which were basically spent laying either on the beach or on the deck of a boat) and the 9 or 10 banquets I've been force fed in the last 2 - 3 weeks have not exactly increased my fitness levels. Hmmmmm....

Experiencing a little problem with Picasa at the moment but more photos should be up as soon as I can resolve that.

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Taiwan - Wujie / Taipei

We spent our last few days in Thailand being rained on in Krabi. Rock climbing turned out to be quite expensive and considering that the last time I went rock climbing I only managed to get about 1 metre off the ground before panicking, we opted for another snorkelling trip instead. Unfortunately, as Paul mentioned, we were rained on for most of the day and the trip ended up being cut short. We weren't too disappointed though - by the time the trip was over we had already seen enough to know that the snorkelling wasn't going to be anywhere near as good as either Ko Tao or Ko Phi Phi.

We flew out from Krabi to KL on the 13th and spent the night in a hotel right near the LCCT (low cost carrier terminal) which we were quite happy with as it meant we got to eat three meals in the airport food court - kind of like a last Malaysian supper. By now we have our packing down to a fine art and we lumped our bag onto the scale at check-in the next morning happy to see them come to exactly 30.0kg (the limit). There was another strange safety demo from Air Asia on the way to Taipei (referring to the plane as a "spaceship" throughout - they actually got applause at the end of the demo!). We surreptitiously ate the sandwiches we picked up from the airport foodcourt onboard (you are supposed to buy overpriced meals from the airline if you are hungry).

After four hours we touched down in Taipei. Paul decided to enter on his Taiwanese passport - 5 minutes later he was through immigration, leaving me in a line of foreigners snaking for what seemed like a kilometre being served by only four immigration officers. Almost an hour later I finally made it through....

Paul's mum and dad were waiting for us outside and they were very happy to see us. Their first words to Paul were to tell him how dark and skinny he had become - ha ha! We were whisked back to his Dad's home town of Wujie on the east coast, which only took about 90 mins thanks to a new highway which has been built since the last time we were here.

We spent a relaxing few days hanging around Wujie. The town is in Ilan county which is wedged in between the coast and a mountain chain that runs halfway down the length of the country. It is very pretty with lots of rice fields around the houses and the mountains rising up in the background. Wujie is about 5km from the sea and you can smell the sea breeze when you go outside. You can ride a bike through the rice fields and on a bike path by the river all the way to the sea. We caught the tail end of a typhoon while we were there so we didn't get to go all the way to the sea. We are heading back there after Taipei and I plan to make it to the sea then. We also spent a day cooling off at some cold springs at Suao. The springs are 22 degrees year round but it was too cold for me to go right in - I ended up just soaking my feet for most of the day!

In the traditional Taiwanese fashion, Paul's relatives in Wujie were all clamouring to take him out to banquets. We had banquets on three of the four nights we were there. My favourite one had about a gazillion course all coming one after the other - from a huge plate of fresh sashimi complete with an ice sculpture (!) to a plate of fresh lobster, chicken soup with a whole chicken, a whole steamed fish, crab and noodle soup with tonnes of crab in it, crab balls both braised and deep fried, plates of squid, plates of abalone - the courses went on and on and on. I think I have probably stacked on a few kilos over the four days and Paul has most likely gained nothing!

We have a few things that we need to sort out in Taipei to organise the next few months of the trip. Weighing most heavily on our mind at the moment is the fact that we don't have an onward ticket for China. We plan to take the train to Mongolia and then exit overland to Nepal so we won't have a flight booked. I doubt it will be a problem with Chinese immigration as we have the correct visa and it is difficult to get train tickets outside the country. But we have found that the problem is generally not with immigration but with actually getting to the country in the first place - Air Asia always asks to check you onward ticket where it is a technical requirement to have one. Hmmmmmm - so frustrating. At this stage we are looking at either getting a fully refundable ticket out of China and refunding it later, or getting a travel agency here to book us a ticket on the Trans-Mongolian so that we can show that (this is probably a good option as you need to book a bit in advance anyway). It all depends on the price...... This is the type of situation where you start wishing you were a package tourist (almost....)!

Monday, July 13, 2009

Robbed - 10/07/2009

I seriously cannot believe my luck! Yes....I was robbed - and the worst thing is that I only discovered it nearly 2 weeks later in Phuket. I usually keep some emergency money aside in a concealed section of my backpack. When I was clearing my bag out one night, I noticed that the hidden wallet seemed a bit thinner. I remembered that I was only thinking how fat the wallet was last time I checked (too many $1 notes). I then looked deeper and realised that a hidden credit card was missing too. Panic kicked in! I took everything out from the bag and laid it on the floor. I was so frustrated to discover that travellers cheques were gone, a credit card was gone and bloody US$300 cash was also gone! I also later found out that the bastards used almost $2800 on the credit card to buy 2 mobile phones, diamonds and to eat out at different restaurants.......Spewing!!!!! Hope they choked and died from that Vietnamese gourmet food they had. :(((((

Besides the robbery, our Phuket experience was ok. We got there at around 10:30pm and checked into the 'On On Hotel' in Phuket town. It was the hotel that was in a scene from the movie 'The Beach' with Leo Di Caprio in it (although the hotel was really in Phuket instead of Khao San Road, Bangkok as shown in the movie). It was so old but it was very cheap. The whole room cost us A$10. I realised the hotel had not changed one bit when I saw the movie again a few days later.

We moved to Kata beach the next day to enjoy the beach culture. Phuket town was inland... Kata turned out to be the best part of Phuket island as it was away from all the madness in Patong Beach and had some really nice restaurants/cafes around. The beach was nice with clear water, but it was also polluted with rubbish. This English chick pulled out this huge rice bag from the water all wrapped with fishing lines and with seaweed growing around it. I nearly vomited when I saw her catch.

We hired scooters to roam around different beaches and to go to Patong for some cheap supplies. Patong was seriously nuts There were more bars there than Khao San Road in Bangkok. Pretty much there were bars every second shop. A lot of touts tried to tempt us with ping-pong shows and other “interesting” shows. But Naomi nearly growled and released her claws at them for even approaching me with her standing next to me. It's pretty unusual for me to refuse free entry to clubs, but hey, Patong was a dangerous place.

We also went to see Transformers 2 while we were in town when it was pouring down one day.
The beaches in Phuket weren't really too bad. But it's difficult to always compare the beaches here in SE Asia to the Gold Coast or Byron Bay where we have some of the best beaches in the world. Without all the rubbish, I am sure the beaches would be super lovely in Phuket.
We then went from Phuket to Phi Phi Don Island.

Phi Phi Island

Boy oh boy, Phi Phi was a beautiful island. It's actually made up of 5 islands. But they were all beautiful. Unfortunately I had to spent the first day and half ringing banks and insurers and all the miscellaneous companies that I was in no mood to talk to during my holidays. It was torturous dealing with ANZ (mum's bank) who wouldn't fax me or email me any of the fraudulent transactions done on the credit card. It would have been a 2 second phone call if I was dealing with NAB....perhaps it's time to change banks people!

We stayed in Phi Phi Princess resort which was actually quite nice. Small but very clean room with ensuite. We spent a day doing a snorkelling tour to all the different spots around the islands. It was some of the best snorkelling ever! It was up there with Ko Tao's coral gardens. We also visited some of the most beautiful beaches I have seen. We stopped by Maya Bay on Phi Phi Lae Island where 'The Beach' was filmed and another bay on the other side. The water was seriously crystal clear with coral gardens at the entrance of the bay. We took heaps of photos which we will put on the blogsite soon. The bays were absolutely amazing. You could see fish just from the beach and could see like 20 metres into the water from the surface. If I ever get to have a Castaway experience, these bays would be my top preference.

I also spent a morning on a remote beach (Ao Lo Mu Di) on Phi Phi Don Island before we left. The boat charter ended up to be a brilliant idea to get there. I had the whole beach with its emerald green water to myself. What did I do? I swam and floated in the water and looked at clouds passing by and when I got tired, I went back to the beach and lay underneath the coconut trees and read my book. Talking about lifestyle!

I had the worst stress attack on the way back. I accidentally jumped on a random tourist cruiser without knowing where it was heading. Everyone on the boat had this sticker from the tour except me. I just pretended that I was one of them and casually asked other tourists where the boat was heading. To my greatest relief, they said the next stop was the pier. I was so stressed as I did not know whether the crew would chuck me overboard and feed the sharks because I did not have the sticker, or just leave me on a random beach. Also Naomi would kill me for not being back on time for our afternoon ferry to Krabi (mainland).

Overall, Phi Phi islands were the best part of my Thailand trip. I found the beach that I was looking for that I heard and dreamed so much about. I feel like I have relaxed on Phi Phi and could probably spend another week there just doing nothing.

Ao Nang, Krabi

Ao Nang is this little beach town about 20km from Krabi. We felt that there might not be much to do in Krabi town, so came here to stay until we depart Thailand on 13/07/09. We got here on the 10/07/09 and spent yesterday doing a 4-island tour on a longtail boat. It was the most insane experience ever. As the weather was pretty rough, a couple of times I thought we were going to overturn the boat. At our first island the boat could not pick us up because of the high wind and we had to hike over this steep slippery hill and swim to the boat on the other side. We constantly enjoyed huge waves and were absolutely soaked. Some of the girls onboard were so pissed that they nearly shouted at the tour guide.

It was pretty bad though I had to admit. They should have cancelled the tour after the first island when the storm were rolling in. Instead we spent the next few hours just waiting for the rain and wind to slow down so that we could continue to the next island. It was dreadful sitting in the rocking boat where you could see sea one second and sky the next and with splash bullets hitting your face. Never mind, we already enjoyed the best of what Thailand had to offer.

Oh, the air-conditioner in our room leaked last night and went all over my phone. My good luck continues....again. The guesthouse is trying to get it fixed by sending it to the shops. But as I am leaving tomorrow, the chance of getting it fixed is close to Buckleys. I just hope that I get some compensation for it.

We are leaving for KL tomorrow afternoon (13/07) and arriving in Taiwan the next day (14/07). I am looking forward to have some homemade meals soon!!!

Peace and out.

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Koh Tao - 30/06/2009

We arrived in Koh Tao from Bangkok 2 days ago and we are ready to leave this island.


Bangkok


Our time in Bangkok was pretty uneventful. We got our Chinese visa organised for a ridiculous fee of 1,650 Baht which is equivalent of A$64. It's the most out of any country that we've visited (although it is for a double entry visa). I was dead scared when I walked into the Chinese Consulate. I was really glad that I got out from the Consulate in one piece in the end without a major argument. They did ask me to change my former nationality from Taiwanese to Chinese but I refused. In the end, I just crossed it out and told them that I have no former nationality.


It was a bit of a mission going to the Consulate itself. It took us 3 hours and 4 different means of transport to get there the first time. When we got there we found out that it was closed for the day and we had to wait until the following Monday to apply! We were so despondent that we went to watch Terminator 4 and have nice food in the foodcourt of MBK shopping centre (one of the biggest in Bangkok.


MBK was absolutely HUGE. You could seriously get lost in it. It's like half of Queen Street Mall rolled into one concrete building. We went back a few times afterwards and still couldn't see the whole 7 floors.


When we went back to the Consulate on Monday morning, but almost missed the business hours again thanks to the Thai royal family. The police blocked the roads and the pedestrian overpasses to wait for a royal convoy to pass. We couldn't understand why the police officer was stopping us at first so we kept walking. He nearly pulled a gun on us for being above the royal convoy below.


We did a lot of markets in Bangkok on Naomi's insistence. I was ready for a foot massage every night after market visits. I don't think I ended up buying much at all from the markets.
We also managed to visit the National Museum. It was actually very informative and had a great collection. Apparently it has the biggest collection in SE Asia. It was interesting to learn about the history and the culture of Thailand without going to all the remote towns in the country.
Tuk-tuk drivers in Bangkok are seriously out to make big bucks from tourists. I told some tuk tuk drivers that they were dreaming when they quoted us 220B ($9) to going 4-5km. We ended up catching a full on air-con metre taxi back to our hostel after the night market for 35B.


Ko Samet


We went to Ko Samet for 3 days while we waited for the Chinese visa to be processed. Ko Samet is around 3.5 hours south-east of Bangkok. We stayed in a bungalow which was 15 seconds from the beach. I had the best time there. The beach was awesome. The water was crystal clear and the weather was fine every day during our stay. The Lonely Planet guide didn't really rate the island as it apparently get overcrowded on the weekend with rubbish on the beach etc. We didn't experience any of that during the 3 days that we were there. Mind you, we were there from Tuesday and left on Friday.


We had a very relaxed time there. We caught up on plenty of sleep on the beach under coconut trees. We had really cheap cocktails on the beach and some delicious BBQ seafood dinner almost every night on the beach. We had high hope for the southern islands as they apparently are a lot better than Ko Samet, UNTIL we got to Ko Tao....


We met the funniest Kiwi guy Richard on the way to Ko Tao. He's probably in his late 30s and travelling by himself for 2 months in SE Asia before he heads back to the cold in Wellington. He was telling us that how he agreed to go on a tuk-tuk around Bangkok for like 20B and of course, the driver insisted on making a quick stop to a tailor shop. He apparently walked in and walked out in 20 seconds and complained to the driver that if he was going to be taken to a tailor shop, might as take him to a proper clothing factory. Off he went and an hour later, he walked out a few hundred bucks poorer after ordering 2 suits, 2 silk/cotton shirts and some ties. I bet the driver absolutely loved him! The same thing happened to us in Chiang Mai, except our tour finished early cos we were too stingy to buy anything.


He also had some experience on the sleeper buses in Vietnam. The same one that we went on. Except apparently someone vomited all over himself and the seat on the exact seats that we were on right down the back. I am sure it would have been interesting if it happened on our bus...Not.


Richard also got himself a 4 week package from some travel agency the tuk-tuk driver took him to. Apparently he spent just over US$1,000 for a whole 4 week action-packed beach/island holiday around here. He booked up the package deal after a monk told him that the King of Thailand had declared that all tourists could get 30% off package tours for one day only. Hopefully it all worked out for him. So far so good as we saw him check in to his hotel in Ko Tao. God speed Rich!


Ko Tao


We heard a lot about Thailand beaches and islands back home and I was really looking forward to experiencing them in person. We decided to come to Ko Tao first as it was supposedly less-developed than some of the others but also boasted great beaches and spectacular snorkeling.

We picked this beach area called Chalon Baan Kao bay as it is away from the main town but still had a beach of its own. So after an exhausting overnight bus/boat, we got to our nice bay at 10am. After checking in our bungalow and walked a little on the beach, we realised that there was no way in hell that we would be able to swim in the mud and among the jellyfish. After our resort staff described it as stinky, we fully gave up on the idea.


We hiked to Shark Bay which was recommended by the resort staff. After some cross country hike we got to the coral beach. The water was very calm and emerald green and had lovely brown floaty things in it. Needless to say, we were slightly disappointed again.


The second day was quite exciting as we hired a little scooter to roam around the island. It was the first time that Naomi let me hire a scooter. I had some opportunities in Langkawi and even Cambodia and Laos until she vetoed the idea. Thankfully Ko Tao was difficult and expensive to get around places. It was also small enough to navigate without constantly worrying about traffic (which was light anyway). I was quite excited when I mounted the bike. I was a champion at it after the first 3 minutes of riding! It's like riding a bicycle but without pedals. I had the best time riding up and down the island. I even took it out for a fun night ride after we got back to our hotel that night :)


We spent a day down at the popular main beach - Sai Ree Beach. The beach was passable. It still wasn't as good as I had expected (def worse than Ko Samet!!!). At lease that water was clear and calm I suppose. It still had some bluebottles and other jellyfish though, but not on our part of the beach. By the end of our second day, we both were quite annoyed and disappointed with the beaches here in the southern islands. We decided to give it one more chance by going on a snorkeling trip (650B each) around the island the next day.


Thankfully, it was the BEST idea ever! The day was absolutely beautiful and the island looked nothing but spectacular from the sea. There were thousands of fish at each spot that we went. I even got to snorkel with sharks and school of tuna. We also saw this garfish that was around 1m long. Snorkeling with sharks was interesting. After we spotted them, Naomi instinctively pulled me in front of her as if I would do some karate chops on the sharks or something. I think they sensed danger from me and swam away after a while.


The underwater world was truly amazing. The coral gardens were sooooo huge. Corals of different shapes, colours and forms were everywhere. It definitely restored a little bit of our faith in Ko Tao. The operators also took us to this 3 islands (Ko Naan Yuan) which were joined to each other by a white sand bar. The beaches there were gorgeous. The water was clean and was of pristine blue colour. As the sandbar was in the middle of the sea, you could see thousands of fish just from the beach. We did around of 2 hours of snorkeling and swimming there. It was such a beautiful setting. There was also a diving resort there with sea-facing bungalows....maybe next time.


We could really see why people come to Ko Tao. Perhaps we came for the wrong reasons. It was quite obvious that people came here for the scenery under the water. There were dive shops everywhere on the island. I also overheard some people say that divers on Ko Samui and Ko Phangan all ended up here in Ko Tao as a day trip. I really wanted to do a 4 day dive course. It would be the most logical place to do it. Except that it would set me back 8,500B. I know it's only equivalent of A$340, but still would have broke my budget. Maybe next time....


Overall, it was really a beautiful island. It's 1/7/09 today and we are off to Phuket on quest for that beautiful beach that we have been hearing about all these years.