Wulai hot spring village

Saturday (the 27th) was a rainy and a bit cool day but seemed to be perfect to try out one of the nearest hot springs. So me and Jesus took the bus towards the Wulai hot spring village which lies in a valley 25 km south of Taipei. The bus was full of people from the rural areas who like to have a closer view on foreigners by guessing where are they from…? …we got used to it…but once an indigenous look like men full of tattoo remarked that my Spanish neighbour is similar to Jesus…ok… but when Jesus showed up his name, all the bus – including us – was burst into laughter…:)

When we arrived, the Indian man who made fun of Jesus invited us into his mother’s restaurant. What a nice gesture to foreigners…ha? The food was very delicious. The rice prepared in bamboo had an excellent taste with the pork and other salads…
After lunch we went to look for the free hot spring what the guide book suggested. This is actually consists of a few little pools on the river side and it was built by local villagers to utilise the rich hot water for their own health. Different pools have different temperature what they regulate with cold water. But most of them are still very hot around 38-45 C. Anyway, sitting in the hot water during the rainy hours was a pretty cool feeling…
Later we went up to the mountain by taxi to see a water fall which is the biggest in Northern Taiwan. It was almost 5 but the Yun-Hsien Resort at the top of the water fall was too attractive to miss out. We got up there by a cable car which looks likes a ski lift. This park is basically an excellent place to spend a nice weekend enjoying the green Taiwanese nature all around. But at that time the rain was so heavy that we didn’t have too much time to enjoy the beautiful sights of the park. We were just running up on the stairs to reach the hotel’s swimming pool which looked great in a picture at the cable car station… Finally we found it with also some Jacuzzi…so than the “day of complete relax” was absolute plenary!

Pictures about the tirp are in my google web album as usual:
http://picasaweb.google.com/tamasintaiwan

Chilling out in the uni's tropical swimming pool...

On Sunday I was just walking around the campus when I explored a huge open air swimming pool inside a park! wow...! it was just hidden by the trees. On Monday after I bought my bike, me and Jesus – Spanish guy living next door to me and he really looks like Jesus! :) – checked out this fantastic pool. This one is far more better than the one inside the sport complex. It is 50 m long, girded with palm trees…it’s just amazing. I can use my gym pass to get in once a day…so I suppose I will spend most of my sunny spare time here to swim, relax and have a nice sun bath…! :)

Just check out in the album what I'm talking about!:
http://picasaweb.google.com/tamasintaiwan

A trip to the Pacific Ocean!

After the registration process for the Chinese courses (on the 20th of September) I had some lunch in a Greek restaurant with a few other exchange students. Afterwards me and Andreas left Taipei to check out the beachside on the east cost while others … have to study or work hard…haha:)
First we fed the little Golf with petrol for half the price than in Europe! Through the way to the coast we also saw a new part of Taipei; the business one....with the empire of Acer and so on…
After one hour of driving to the Northeast direction we reached the cost at Juifang. The coastline is amazingly wide with all the rocky hills falling into the Pacific Ocean. We had a stop just to enjoy the sun before we moved towards the Fulung Beach area…to the south on the east cost side.
When we got there the sun had already gone down and it was a bit cloudy but what we found there was gorgeous. The long sandy beach with some small grassy hills seemed to be perfect. The cool Pacific Ocean with the huge, sometimes 2-3 meter’s high waves allured us for a bath! The waves were really cool... I loved them a lot!
Before we left, I luckily met with a Hungarian men who teaches English for 8 years and has a Taiwanese wife here. He invited me for a Hungarian party in October organised by the Hungarian council in Taipei. Well... you can find Hungarians all around the world!
On the way back we had a delicious seafood dinner with a huge lobster which had been swimming in the aquarium 15 min before we ate it). I drove back to Taipei and realised that Taiwanese drivers are very bad…comparing to anyone! By driving through the city you can see ‘almost accidents’ all the time, as they know nothing about keeping to the right but they really like to change lines often or just ignoring them at all. But my favourites are the scooter drivers…somehow they think that there are no traffic rules applying for them. Fortunately I am in the car so I don’t need to be scared…but they should! :)

pictures are in the Pacific Ocean album:
http://picasaweb.google.com/tamasintaiwan

Visiting the National Palace Museum

The 19th of September was a nice

sunny day without any class… I was thinking about a trip to explore something from the ‘30 things not to miss’ list from my guide book…I chose the National palace Museum which has an extraordinary collection of Chinese
art and historical artefacts. It is located a bit outside from Taipei to the north. Andreas - the Swiss guy who I know from the welcome reception also study business courses – was up to go there as well so we took a good old WV Golf what he just got from his volunteer student to use it during his stay in Taiwan …nice, isn’t it?…so I hope this will be ‘Das Auto’ which will help us to explore the island!

The museum is a 4 floors large building among some hills in the Shilin district. The Japanese influence in its architecture is - I think - quite surprising to visitors, although many foreigners realise that the Taiwanese culture is actually a mixture of Japanese, Chinese, Western and aboriginal cultures creating a completely different atmosphere from what visitor can experience in Mainland China. However, the museum’s collection doesn’t really has too much to do with Taiwan as the entire collection was shipped from China (Forbidden City, Beijing) during the retreat of Chiang Kai-shek to Taiwan in 1949 and it represents a comprehensive overview about the original and traditional Chinese cultural art back to 5000 years.
We were quite lucky by arriving at 3 as an English guide tour just started than. To be honest, the museum tour would have been quite boring without the piloting of our Chinese-history expert who presented the most famous and impressive pieces form all the dynasties of the Chinese history. Most of them are price less, but there are some Chinese (the material/porcelán) which is measured up to $11.6 million by some experts!

After the long trip in the museum, we were starting to look for some place to have dinner. We were just driving up to the northern part of Taipei fallowing the map towards a nice restaurant (from the guide book), but actually we realised that the map is a piece of s..t and travelling through Taipei is more complicated than we expected. (Roads disappear or just make a curve suddenly when it should be strait according to the map…etc) Finally we found a ‘restaurant’ sign…”ok check it out!” We were so hungry, so it wasn’t really matter what kind of food they have. To reach the building actually we had to hike up on a slope. The restaurant was owned by a nice old couple who welcomed us as some kind of migrants as we were the only customers around the cottage’s stile house. The menu was not a proper one as we (actually Andreas with his ‘almost perfect’ Chinese) just discussed with the lady what and how she is going to prepare for us…But finally we got a very delicious dinner (mushroom and chicken soup with special vegetables, rice and excellent Chinese tea) and the view for Taipei from our table was simply amazing!

pictures in the museum's folder:
http://picasaweb.google.com/tamasintaiwan

I've started my 2nd year!

On this week the courses has started in each collage. My one is the Management one, wherein I belong to the Business Administration Department. I take 3 courses; Accounting for Managerial Decisions, International Marketing Management and Information Management. These are more-less similar to those what I would study at Sussex during the autumn period. The method of teaching is a bit different from the English one as teachers prefer to give all the course lectures on one day. So this means I have 3 lectures for each of my courses on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and that’s it! I like it very much!:)
From the 29th of September I will start the Chinese class as well by having 2 hours in the morning from Monday till Friday. This will give me more than 120 hours of Mandarin which, I hope will be enough to acquire the basics…or at least to give me motivation to carry on later. We will see!

Yeah...and what about sport? Oh well...check out the pictures about our tremendous sport complex...you can get everything there... Now I obtained my pass for both gym and swimming facilities which valid for a half year! (It was only 1550 NTD/26 GBP/33 EUR/8000 HUF for the two one) …wow! :) So I plan to go there at least 3 times a week…and in the meantime I decided to learn some traditional Chinese martial art…what about Kung-fu? Sounds great! It has some connection to Karate Wado-ryu what I do for 8 years now back home. Also I curious about the use of sword in harmony with the movements of the body!
My lovely volunteer student, Anna has already found a local Kung-fu association…the registration is in process! :)
In my spare time, which means if I’m not in hurry to my classes…or to meet up friends to go out to some club at nights (usually Wednesday>Ladies night! or on ‘Saturday night fever’ as usual…:))… I enjoy the sights of this beautiful campus (I made a folder about NTU in my google pics album). It’s really awesome place for students….full of nice restaurants, cafeterias, shops all affordable for the poor local and exchange student’s pocket all day long. The size of the whole campus is around 1.5 of the size of Sussex’ s campus (where I lived for the 1st year) so it’s big..very big. Almost every student’s has a bike except me…ok I’m not so sad as I will get one tomorrow! Anyway, to have a bike here is crucial to get from one place to an other in human time…
There are lots of places under the palms to study or just relax during the hot sunny hours with some cool juice enjoying the company of funny local students…these green places remember me that I’m in the tropical zone actually….it also makes me happy even if this weather is way too hot. Anyway, my suggestion for others is to lie on the grass in the shadows of palm trees and just forget about everything...:)

Check out more pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/tamasintaiwan

Dinner with Anna's family

I've got an invitation from Anna to visit her family and have a dinner together at their home. There were no question that I will be there. They live in a suburban district of Taipei which is also lively at nights but somehow the streets had a different impression on me than the ones around the campus. It's so relaxing to walk through them...
Anna’s parents and her brother are also very nice people. I was lucky to meet with her father as he works for a Taiwanese engineering company in China so he spend most of his time far from his family. Anna’s mother is a teacher at a local school and also an excellent chef! The dinner was an amazing representation of the delicious Chinese cousin. The tasty mushroom with pasta and pork was a very good mixture with all the variously prepared vegetables. One interesting thing about the Chinese eating habits is that the soup is always after the main menu.
Later we ate some Taiwanese dessert fruits while we had a nice chat. I think with this dinner at Anne’s home I gained an insight into the warm hospitality of the Taiwanese people. Thank you very much for this evening!

Taipei 101

On the first day I went to the Taipei 101 with Anna. I thought the best way to start exploring a city is to go to the highest point. I think I managed it as the Taipei 101 is the tallest building in the world with its 509 meters high. The elevator is also a Guinness record: the fastest one! It took only 36 sec to go to the top floor...And than: WOW!! The view from there is so amazing! We had a look around on the city and I just realised how big is Taipei...it’s massive, there are so many mountains
around and there is also a winding river with lots of bridges.
I bought some postcards and send them from the top...yeah, for the lucky ones back home...
After a while we went back to the campus to have lunch. This was the first proper food since I’m here...typical Chinese food: beef soup with noodles...”I have to get used to it” :) no...it was really delicious!!
Than I had a siesta on the grass somewhere in the campus to enjoy the hot Taiwanese sun....and to try to set in the
local time! :)

Some more picture:

http://picasaweb.google.com/tamasintaiwan

My journey to Taiwan

My plane left Vienna at the 5th of September at 9.30am to bring me to Taipei. It was a long and tiring journey with one stop at Abu Dhabi to refuel the hungry tank after 5 hours.
I saw the palm islands from the sky and most of the big constructions around the city ...that's an absolutely crazy world! (I have to come back here at some point :) After buying some emirates dates we carried on toward the east. It took about 8 more hours of flight during the night to get to Taipei finally. My volunteer student (Anna) had been already waiting for me with one of her friend (Teddy) and they brought me to my accommodation. It's called Prince House, a completely new building situated very close to the university campus. When I finished the dorm registration I got my keys...jupeee!! The room is very nice, it has a bathroom and a fridge as well. But the brand new rooms have also some drawbacks: there were no mattress or bedding on the bed....nice, isn’t it? I was so exhausted at that point, but as I didn’t have to much choice...we went to a super market to do a big shopping! In the meantime Anna had to left to go to her German class ! (That’s also amazing! Although the presence of Germans is obvious...) So I did the shopping with Teddy’s help. The prices seems to be quite interesting...the transportation or renting a scooter is very reasonable in Taipei but all the small things in a shop are so unreal...why is it that the milk costs 3 or 4 times more than in Europe? Strange things...but I have to get used to it! –as Teddy told me when I was nattering...: )
Anyway, my first impression on Taiwanese people is very positive. They are amazingly helpful even if their English is poor.
On the way back we dropped in a mobile shop to buy a sim card. After packing out in my room and had something (homemade sausage) to eat I was sleeping ...and sleeping...and sleeping as a child until the next morning!