Back from the south

Hi there, and welcome to possibly my last update from Taiwan!

It's Tuesday, tomorrow will be my last day at ASIAA and I won't have regular access to the internet until I return to Germany.

Today, I will finally go up Taipei's tallest sight, Taipei 101. The weather should be nice and visibility rather good. Phew, almost missed that one :)

Last weekend, on Saturday, Christof, Birgit and I went to Kaohsiung. The bus there was crazy! Sooo comfortable and convenient! Each seat was fully adjustable, giving you an automatic massage even and there was a TV for each seat with a whole menu of computer games and movies to choose from. I recommend the Steven Soderbergh movie: "Everybody needs a release." Really cool.


In Kaohsiung, we were picked up by Andy and Steph. He had just moved most of his stuff back to his hometown, since he will start working at ESO in Garching on October 1. We arrived in the evening and took it easy. Just had some beers with Steph and Nelly, a girl from Mexico City who had dropped in on short notice. It was a cool and relaxed evening involving Taiwan Beer and sitting around on the wooden floor in a Japanese style room in Andy's house.


Sunday around noon, we went shopping to what is Taiwan's largest shopping mall, Dream Mall. It was really huge and expensive. The high abundance of Western stores a bit disappointing. I had hoped to find some cool Asian stores, but instead, I was surrounded by the same old stores I get at home or in North America. There was one cool exception, though. A store with moving shelves and really funky decor. It sold hats, T-shirt, shoes and fingernails, but also hosted a variety of small shops selling drinks and a larger restaurant. The ambient music made it all a very relaxed setting, but I couldn't figure out how to perform the actual shopping part, since the shoes were hidden in plastic bubbles, for instance. But I've run out of money a while ago, so it's maybe better that way...



For lunch, I tried another Taiwanese specialty that I hadn't had before. Check the picture and comment on what you think it is. Andy showed us later that you actually eat the bones and stuff as well, but I didn't like that stuff that much anyway...


After lunch we just drove around a bit more, had coffee in the harbor building on Cijin, the harbor island in Kaohsiung and took a walk outside before going for dinner in a place only really known to locals. Each dish was 100 NT$, which translates into 2.20 Euros. Of course, the five of us ordered around 10 of them, which got all of us quite full. Here's one of my choices: Whole fish, fried, with their bodies completely filled with fish eggs. You eat the whole fish, by the way, including head, tail and bones. And, as most of the time, the stuff was really yummy once you forgot what it was that you're eating...



After dinner, we walked around some more in downtown Kaohsiung. To the right is ba-shi-wu dalou, the tallest building in Taipei (85 floors).


This river is called ai he (love river), but is actually a canal. With Mid Autumn Festival coming up on Tuesday, there weren't many people around, but you could see occasional fireworks in random places.


Christof left for Taipei again that night and so it was Steph, Birgit and I who went to Henchuang the next day. In Henchuang, some old guy with rotten teeth drove us to a rental place that didn't want to rent out their "cars" to us. The second place we went to did, but at a rediculous price. After about 20mins of bartering, we arrived at a value just slightly higher than we had wanted - 1300 NT$ for three scooters. Bartering is fun, especially, if you don't know Chinese and they don't know English! The machines we got were in a really good condition and fast! At 100km/h I got scared. Here's me and my machine - awesome helmet, eh?


The scooters took us to a remote location whose English name I don't know (and I can't write Chinese characters). It's a path along what starts as a river and gradually turns into larger waterfalls which have formed basis that you can actually swim in. This place was soooo beautiful. The ascent was a little bit challenging, you had to cross the river quite often and pull yourself up rather steep muddy or slippery paths. Totally worth it, though! When do you get the chance to hike around in a rainforest and then get a natural waterfall massage?





Since it started raining as we were up there, we decided to go for lunch and then on to hot springs. Riding scooters in the rain is fun! But only if it's 28 degrees while it's raining, I guess. The hot springs were'nt too spectacular, but very relaxing! We hung out there for a couple of hours and had dinner. That's us machine heads.

After returning the scooters, we got back on the bus and commenced our mammoth bus ride via Kaohsiung and arrived at our house in Taipei around 5 am this morning.

Later today, I'll have to rehearse my presentation for tomorrow, study some for my last Chinese lesson tomorrow morning and finally get started on planning my Vietnam trip. Now it's time to go to Taipei 101, though.

See you guys later! And good luck with your exam on Thursday, BigSis!