My first Car...umm I mean Scooter

Jake and I were given a couple of scooters from Marc Heckman, for only $3USD each. The name transferring cost were a little more. They have changed my whole world in Taiwan. I have been able to expand the world before me. It takes me only 15-30min to get to a place that use to take me 1 hour to get to by bus. This makes me really want a motorcycle in the states except the driving here is way more effective on a scooter. You can't just weave in and out of cars in the states.

Bike Trip Part 3 (Day 2)

We slept that night for 4 hours waking up early the next morning around 5:30 am. To ride! The sun and heat didn't really give me the option to sleep longer.

We rode for hours and hours, just peddling none stop except for the occasional 7-11 stop. At one point we didn't see a civilized town for a long time. Our water bottles got low as our skin boiled in the heat. Eventually, we stopped and asked these kind elderly people sitting on their porch for water. We ended up sitting there for 1-2 hours, being served tea, hot water and watermelon. Jake fell asleep while I stumbled over my Chinese trying to get directions. Before we left they gave us a little ice cream, fruit and hot tea to go.

These photos aren't of abandoned buildings but of actually people's homes. This is a very normal site to see houses and buildings in the country or city to be so full of junk even in some store fronts.

Fellow Bicycle-lists

We rode mostly near the west coast. Some villages had piles of clams lined up all through the town.

All day we rode using the Sun as our compass. But as it faded we continued to ride. As it became dark we ran into another young gentlemen on a bicycle. He rode past us, an hour later to be we passed by as he walked his bike along the road. The next time we saw him he caught back up to us. He began speaking English to us. We then rode along the road with him too the city of Puzi. 

 After looking at Jacob's bike he decided we needed to take Jake's bike to a bike shop. His uncle happened to own one. As they worked on our bikes more and more people began to show up. It was about 9pm, and we realized all these people came to see the Americans. Before we left there was about 15 people or more that showed to see us. They took our picture and sent us off without a bill.

After riding into Tainan we needed a little help knowing how to get to the train station. I knew if we got there we could find a hotel. After asking a 7-11 employee, one of the costumers offered to help and drive his car as we followed by bikes to get us to the road we needed.

At night everything in Taiwan looks pretty sketchy even though its not. So it is really hard to judge the unsafe areas verses the safe. We saw a sign for this hotel across the street from what seemed to be a big party area. After walking down the dark ally (picture above), and being greeted rudely by the employee of the hotel, we really didn't know what to expect. The hotel turned out to be nice and clean but very small.

We rode 150km that day to arrive in Tainan (台南) totaling about 200km for the trip.

Taiwan Night Market - Yi Zhong Night Market (一中街)

It is habitual for the Taiwanese to head to the night markets every weekend. If you go on vacation they will tell you about the famous night market in that city (having such a small country you eventually realize that everything is kinda famous).  The streets fill up with crowds of mostly college and high school students.

The night market food and atmosphere is one very similar to a carnival. They have corn dogs, candied; strawberries, tomatoes, and Taiwanese plums, many different kinds of teas, and lots of clothing stores.

Sleeping on the Job

Some people don't consider the fact of the crowds of people when trying to drive a car or scooter down the streets. For everyone else they take the next road to avoid the crowd.

What makes the night market so special is the strange smells. I would describe it but my description might offend those reading this. The stinky tofu stand is the easiest thing to find, as to the smell that helps you find its location. The Taiwanese love to share their strange foods with you and feel like your the one missing out if you don't try it. Here are some first timers trying out the stinky tofu.

4th of July Celebration

They don't really celebrate 4th of July in Taiwan.
Seeing how America's birthday is so important to us. I went out and bought some fireworks with some friends and celebrated in the park. We had some fireworks that had picture of a butterfly, apparently they flew and sometimes at you.

Bike Trip Part 2 (Day One)

We started riding at 4:30pm with our bikes roped with things to the side and back of it, from Shovels to skateboards and giant jugs of water.

(I didn't take as many pictures this time just because I wanted to experiment with video.)

It wasn't long before we weren't 100% where we were. After following the sun we managed to get stuck on the wrong side of a river shooting us far west instead of south. After a long bike trail someone guided us to a bridge to get across the river.

7:30pm (25.4km) - Jake began dragging behind, only to find out he had a flat tire. He just replaced the tire the day before.

After walking across the bridge and too the first Family Mart (like a 7-11) we saw, we managed to get help to find a bike shop. The Family Mart employee showed us the way. While there with the very friendly bicyclist mechanics, Jake decided to get new handle bars, a new higher seat bar, replaced a broken peddle, replaced the back tire air tube and the front wheel entirely.

We continued to ride until about 1:30am going a total of 61.1km, for the day. We found a place nice place at Fuhai Park to camp, 16km south of Lugang.

Point A - Starting Point

Point G - Wrong turn that got us stuck on the wrong side of the river sending us North West.

Point I - Jake gets a flat tire

Point K - Our Camp site

Go Skateboarding Day 2012 Taiwan

I posted on facebook and called my Taiwanese friends, but none of them wanted to skate today.

Bike Trip Part 1 (Intro)

Jacob and I are leaving for a 3 1/2 day bike trip, today. We will ride from Taichung with the plan to reach Kaohsiung. According to google maps it should take me 1 day and 9 hours non-stop walking. Though if our exploratory minds take hold, we may not even go to Kaohsiung. This trip is open to changes along the way. We will be sleeping in tents making our own food, bringing money only for emergencies. Below is the rest of the packing list.

New Apartment

Working on unpacking all our stuff.

Jake and I moved into a small three story home being rented by a few different foreigners. The "headmaster", Dave has been renting the house for about 5 years. He makes croutons for some local Italian restaurants, writes articles for multiple magazines, teaches English and also has a son living in Taiwan who owns a small local magazine.

For the past year after working all day at SYME, Jacob and I would go home to not really get away from work but to enter work throughout the night, teaching English and trying to interact the best we could. It was a lot of fun, but after being here for over a year you need to be able to go home to relax from the 7:30am-8pm day. It has also allowed us to meet a lot of new people that we would have never met before.

A Day at the Office

This time we didn't spend our day sitting in the office, but went out with the SYME staff to have some fun.

We started on the wrong side

Not the best trampoline in the world, but it was still fun in the blistering heat.

Hanging out in the hot springs that weren't actually hot springs but water heated by machinery.

After climbing one dinosaur I got eaten by another.

There was plenty of exercise stations along the hiking path, as if hiking wasn't enough exercise.