A visit to Hsinchu

I paid a visit to Hsinchu yesterday...
Omg...still 30-31 degrees in November...
It was a gmba event...Ramiro held a speech when I arrived...
This is Nick from Colombia...a new student...
Professor Wu, my very good friend...
Omg. alot of Vodka and beer...I like...
Em was also paying a visit...
Then all students were asked to go up and talk...it was 6 ppl from my year...many people signed up but few showed up...
There were alot of food...
I didnt eat to much...I was mostly mingleing with Cory, who I havnt met for quite a while...
More food...
He still has his "No mokus passenger" sticker on his bike...so funny...
Omg, all the russians and urkarinans are gathering at 7-11 near the south gate...just like in the old good times...
We later headed downtown...but on my way I saw that the guys from Thailand brougt a "doggy box" with all the food leftovers to their dorm...
Some guy wanted to go to the red bar...so we did...(the password of their wifi is their phone number)...
It was mostly foreingers or old taiwanese GMBA students who joined (most of them lives in taipei)...this is yenny form indonesia...
Ramiro had birthday...
Some guys were playing dart...
We later on went outside...
My friend Vanessa told me that her name was picked becuase it meant "sexy" or something...so cute...
Omg, someone used my camera and took a pic of me...
Maffia?!?!, we had our own drinks as well here, and the owner was ofcourse irritated due to this...it gave us a reason to leave, not too late...(hsinchu is hsinchu after all (read: compare to taipei, not super many things to do)

Knowing taiwan

or should it be calles "zhidao taiwan", cuz initially everything was in chinese...even the film and subtitles showed in the bus...
I was told 07.40 as a meeting time, not even the hosts showed up until nearby 8...I used the time going back to my dorm, passing my lab etc...
As usual in taiwan people like karaoke...some foreingers in the back tried to get into party mode...
But as usual in taiwan, the taiwanese people want to sing in chinese...so that no other can sing along :(
The first stop was at a rice museum i think, however everything was in chinese...even the guide only spoke chinese..a brave classmate tied to translate once in a while for the people whos chinese is not "museum level"
And no english text at the cases...
We ended that visit by learning how to fold grass animals like deers and dogs, that was interesting...
After that we went somewhere else...I guess the taiwanese people knows where, cus this guide only spoke chinese aswell...
Some said it was a school from japan...
Our guide took us to some new place...some one said he spoke taiwanese...I tried to play music in the back, to have some entertainment while the chinese people enrichended their cultural life...
The next visit was some theater I think...
And people got dressed up...
And we took a picture with the asian close on, that we could buy for 100NTD (25 SEK)...
Then we ate food, they had some interesting salty fish that i liked...
And back to the bus, with more chinese guidance...so sad, and so boring...
We continued to some store that were selling tried meat...
And there after to DaJia, to a temple that, after looking around realised I have been there 2 times before, without thinking about that it was the same place...
Taiwanese people are very religous, they ofteh pray and donate things at the temple...
Its kind of sad, cuz many temples are owned by the maffia, making the organized crime institutions richer and richer...
They had alot of stone carvings...super detailed...so amazing...
many were machine made, but most were hand made...
In the basement, they had a 250Kg gold statue of the goddess...without any security, saying, "its a religous symbol, so people wont steal it", how ever, spending almost 3 years in asia, i know that super many people belive in money...I wonder when it will be stolen...
Another statue was in pure white jade, the most expensve jade...its also funny, since asians often say that jade is priseless...however, they always seem to put a price on it, when money comes up...
After 30 mins of guidance, a new guide who spoke english came...and suddenly I understood and could ask questions...
Many people were praying, and donating fake money...that they bought at the temple...
Next place was some hakka house...they had alot of birds walking around...
I tried to find any info in english...but this place was only for chinese people as well...
We continued to the nightmarket in Taizhong...
Alot of traffic...the city felt a little bit like taipei...
We there after went to the hotel, and later on to a famous hotpot, that I also visited before...like 3 yearsago on my roadtrip around taiwan...it was 16 degree AC inside then, and about 35 degrees outside...
It was not that super cold today, maybe due to that it was not super warm outside...
And the waiters always uses handsfree and bows when they leave the table...
We were suppose to go to a "cool club" later on...so we took cab...
We had 3 cabs, however the place were closed that we were heading for, so we needed to go for another club...
This is a club where u had to dress up...I could only think about russian nouveau-riche people...who think they are something...for something they have...
This is the place we ended up in...some classmates thought this was the best place in taiwan ever...
They day after we visited a paper factory...
They said, "if one not hand make the paper, the fibers will be in strpes, and one cannot paint on them"...I wonder if they ever visited a paper factory in europe...since there they always machine make paper for writing
The guise taught us how to form the paper...and how to colour it with coal...
Then we all did an attempt...
And then we could buy things like red paper of a fan strucutre, to past our picture on...
The next destination was the wine factory...I went there last summer as well...its a pity i never get to see the production of the alcohole...
Some classmates enjoyed that we got to taste alot of wines...
And other taiwanese liquids...
This is a tunner for taiwanese people to enjoy beeing drunk..dangerous in my opinion, since many of the asians, may end up thining the the grous always lean to the left when people are drunk, there are alot of prejudice here in asia all the time...
And here one can read how to identify drunk animals...the same taiwanese fact culture...very funny for europeans to read...
We contines to another taiwanese restaurant...
Korean, Thai guy and Malaysian girl...enjoyed the taiwanese food...
It was acctually warm here, south of Hsinchu...I was wearing shorts...all day long...
We continued to a village near Sun moon lake, the largest lake in Taiwan...enlarged by the japanese people...
Chilling near the bridge...where the finish for the swimming caravan was last year...
As well as in Alishan, they perform aboriginal dance...so cool!
Its so interesting and inspiring with taiwanese aboriginals...they are so original...and unfortunately so few...dancing a dance, i also seen pictures of as south as kenting area...
There after we took the boat for a tour...they spoke chinese during the guidance, but not many people could hear the guide was talking about...
We were mingeling around instead...
Enjoying the lake, and the villages that are recently built...not much care for the nature...new buildings for more tourists is the vision...when will it end?
This is a hotel inspired by Burj al arab...the finest room costs about 30000NT per night and the toilet is said to be of gold...why toilet? bedroom would be cooler...?!?
We also passed by the only island on the lake...so exclusive, i want to to go that island...its said to be holy by the local people...
A typical sign here in taiwan...a question without question mark (usually taiwnaese people uses tones, and some people think about the tone when they write (without adding the tone in the text...so for westerners its hard to know what they though about...)
Its a big touristic event here, tourist boats diving around...
And on the shore they have local activites...that is nice...
After  the trip I went to the ice cream bar I went to last time...
And bought chocolate ice cream...it was nice...but they were super slow, and we had to run to the bus that left at 16.40...
The guy who arrange kept on speaking chnee all the time...so I never undedrstood what was next onthe schedule...so confusing...I asked around, and some people said that this was a local famous chocolate bar...
People started to queue...
There were one queu for icecream, one for free try of chocolate, one for if you wanted to buy already packaged chocolate and one if you wanted to design your own candy composition...very confusing, and no info in english...I just wanted to see how they made the candies...but no...that ws not possible...
This is the ice cream bar...
I tried, chocolate, coconut and chili ice cream...
I also bought whiskey chocolate...kind of expsnsive (350nt for  6 pieces)
And I sneaked in to the "own composition store" i was sick and tired of the tai people speak ing chinese, tellig me something I did not understand...
After this we went back to Hsinchu...

Knowing Taiwan

I went on a trip with my class...to Tainan and Kaoshiung...
7 in the morning it was said...but not until 7.30 people started to show up (except me and some early ppl)

I sat in the back to sleep, since I only had 1 hour of sleep the day before...

We went to many taiwanese retaurants...(since we were suppose to get to know taiwan)

We visited budist temples...or similiar...

the grass was very nice...super short like on a golf court green...

We found out that a swedish general was famous in taiwan (among the ones who knew him) for being in some troups during the occupation...

And then we visited a fortress...which I've been to many times before...

We ended the day with going out the one of the few bars in Tainan...

We had taiwanese drinking competitions (taiwanese ppl drink beer with 1dl cups, so it is not so much of a punishment to have to go bottom up...)

We continued to eat slized ice...with banana and chcolate...

Even it is wast mostly foreingers in class who joined up...people got super drunk...I had to answer questions whether they did anything stupid tha naight before...
My conclusion: nothing unusual happend...

Teh day after was soft...we went to kaoshiung...
eating more food...

Another temple visit...

People were so tired so we went home after some uberella painting...

It was nice...it is always fun to hang out with my classmates...

Penghu island visit

Day 1


Students ready for take off... Mongolia, Sweden, Spain, South Korea, Indonesia, China, China and USA.
Today I flew to Penghu island with parts of my class (and some other students from my school). Since my Information Managent teacher invited us. We went directly from the TSMC visit to Taipei airport by high speed rail. Finally at the terminal we found out that our flight was cancelled.
I tried to read my teachers book. it is in chinese.
we waited for some hours and took a later flight. The lunch at the airport was also cancelled due to some reparation of the restaurant... it took about 45 min to go to the island. when there we took a bus to our hotel. It is far from town, but very near the beach. it is a strategy to be far from town, so that no person can drop of from any activity (our teacher told us). We, us students and the professors friends (mostly taipei people) ate dinner outside the entrance of the hotel.
we had some presentation about ourselves (even though almost everyone spoke chinese). and after dinner we spent a short time on the beach, before going up to our room
3 guys at the honeymoon room (we were 5 ppl sleeping there)
Day 2
After a short breakfast we took of to some island more to the west. The largest islands are connected by bridges. The areas was interesting from a geological point of view.
After 3-4 stops we returned to the hotel to dress up in "formal" clothes. Then we took of to a restaurant, which seemed to be used primary for weddings. After this we visited some museum where our professor held a speech (or presentation) for 2-3 hours. Since it was in chinese, we escaped and went to buy beer. We went back, ate some snax and studied a little since we have an accounting quiz on monday.
After this we went to an "all you can eat" restaurant, mostly chinese food and sushi. After some hours of eating we went back to the hotel.
Day 3
It was the same time this morning as well (9 am), to catch the tour bus. We are always in the last minute... we headed to a beach near by (everything is near by at penghu, it is a pretty small island, about 60000 ppl living here). Some people collected corals, others took a nap in the shade. after 30 mins we went to another beach. where we stayed 15 mins. Then we went for sliced ice, and some shopping in a near by village. Some people had to catch a flight back to mainland taiwan, so we said goodbye to them and continued to an "all you can eat" oyster place, out in the water...on a floating bridge, to which we needed to take a boat. there was also opportunities to fish...
There were many militairy ships over there, looking like swedish ships.
I ate oysters with wasabi. We needed to barBQ them ourselves...which took time...but it is easy to know when they are done, since they open.
"All you can eat"-BULLSHIT! I could eat far more but we needed to leave anyway...i broke my old record by far, i ate for 1-2 hours.
After this we visited an island which we can only walk to during some times per day (depending on the sea level). After this we went for dinner, and then we took a walk looking for a pub. we found 2 but only had time to visit 1, since the bus back to the hotel left back at 9.
They have an Imperial Cat Hall here in Penghu.
Day 4
This day we did not leave the hotel until 10.30, since we was about to take a boat to an island north of the bigger island, called JiBei. It was very windy on the boat, but nice.

At the ferry station, there were boats going to a range of different islands near by...(including mainland taiwan).

When we got to the island we visited a 5 star hotel, I was told that the scale in Taiwan is (4 stars= luxy hotel, 5 stars = luxy hotel + conference room). The definition of luxy remains unsaid...

The hotels usually have funny names in these places...
We sneaked in and took some coffee, while waiting for activites...
after 25 minutes we went to a restaurant to eat lokal food.

It was obviously seafood on the menu.
We where there during low season so it was a ghost town feeling about the place...
When lunch was finished we started fgo to towards a beach...in the  burning sun... after a while did we pass by a bicycle store, so we rented bikes....and the trip went faster...

The saddles was low, and the brakes was broken... but we managed to ude the bikes anyway...

When we finally made it to the beach we bought some cactus icecream (colour; red).

All the benches at the beach had these spikes 1-3 mm on them...my shorts got stuck in one of them...a 2 cm hole occured :S
They sold shorts at the place...so I guess it was just a way to make more money...
while eating out icecreams, we watched the jetskies driving kids back and forth until it was time to return to the ferry...

The guide, me, the Professor, Ronny looking to his right and Pablo at the airport just before take off...
The others are suppose to stay until tomorrow morning...
I finished my penghu trip by eating lokal food...

It was PengHu Handmade Thread noodles with PengHu FengRu tea...
It was time for a short toilett visit, and my friends joined me...

The gate was changes in last minute..but they did not inform us...we where kind of lucky to ask some guard why the gate never opens (since some other staff said that they are just late). Some ppl said that the plain might be taking off early since they are affraid that they will be shot down by the fire works...(good quality of airplane?)

Since it is the 10th of oct (national holliday in taiwan) they had alot of fireworks...
They where in Penghu this year, and we where suppose to see them live...(it was a part of out schedule...) but due to school tomorrow we choosed to see them on the bus back to Hsinchu...
I allready miss the great time we had on PengHu...alot of laughs...and great food and great schedule!
Unfortunetely I did not bring any sunblock, so my face was kind of red when I came back to Taiwan... on the other hand I made the Penghu people scared, by looking like a hitman...

We were suppose to wear formal dress during some of the events...I brought my student suit... even though I am 10 kg heavier, I can still wear it...puh
This weekend "life was a party" and I was invited!
song of the weekend..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cv4rOY95vRE



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