Settling down in Taipei again

I’m posting my first note after 2 weeks from my arrival to Taipei because there were so many things happening recently. During this time I tried to put myself back onto the track where I was before I left Taiwan on the 1st of January to go back to the UK. I would say that the time between my leaving and returning to Taiwan (mainly January) was a nice winter holiday but most importantly a useful lesson… whenever you come to the decision to leave a nice place behind for a while always think twice whether you really want to do so! I managed to correct my mistake by an extraordinary and quite lucky turn. Anyway I’m very glad that I can be here again! (for some people I caused a little shock with my surprising return…I'm sorry for them) ;)

So firstly I’d like to share what I’m going to do in NTU (in academic terms). Of course I continue the Mandarin course with the same class but from now on we are on the 2nd level!!! (I think I can be proud that I passed the 1^st level by 85%, right?) My business courses will be ‘International Business Strategy’, ‘Operations Management’ and my third course is ‘The Political Economy of Southeast Asia’ –which takes place in the Social Science campus which is away from the main one, but I will write about it later.

I live in a different dorm than last term; it’s called Guo Qing International Student Dormitory just at the opposite side of campus. This one has better social life than Prince House because there isn't any separation of girls from boys which makes it a friendlier place. However, it’s not as comfortable as Prince House was and the rooms here are for 2 persons. But I’m very lucky that I’ve got a really cool roommate form Poland, his name is Adam. He studies Finance and starting Mandarin as well. By the way there are 3 other Polish students came with him, so I guess the Taiwanese exchange is getting popular in Poland as well. Apparently, we have a very common cultural heritage because the Polish Żubrówka (you should be familiar this vodka already if you have ever met with Polish people) is excellent with my Hungarian Pick szalámi (similar but better than sausage)! Also this accommodation is free for me as I’m from Sussex… :) so I can save a lot of money which is quite important regarding my travelling plans in the summer…

Other important news is that I got back my good old scooter which is a pleasant gift for my stay in Taiwan again from a local friend. So I’m getting from A to B in the fastest possible way in Taipei! Although, I have to get used to the crazy driving habits again. In Taipei there is no respect for others on the roads, if you can’t assimilate to their driving style you fall…pure survival…! :)

In Jioufen, day 2 - smothered in fog

Next day we got back to Jioufen because I felt that the mission is not completed if we don’t climb the mountain which has one of the most amazing views to the ocean. I was happy not to see too many tourists, but on the other side we had to face to a nasty fact: it was extremely foggy! You can see on the pictures that the within sight was not more than 10 meters. But of course it didn’t discourage us from climbing the mountain I spotted yesterday. So it was basically a serious stair climbing tour as the path is all the way up built out with stones. But climbing 300 m’s (from the level of 300 up to about 600 m’s high) in 90% humidity is not an easy job. At the first resting place I developed a new martial arts –just to warm up – which utilise the bamboo as a serious weapon. We climbed almost the whole way in fog but as we were about to reach the summit we got some sunshine and from the summit we could see some of the mountains and how the clouds passed through the ridges. So somehow our effort against the elements was honoured what made us happy.

Pictures >>> Picasa

Su-ao the fisher village

As my father had some rest, next day we took a trip to the East cost. After a long drive (mostly in tubes under the mountains) we reached a very nice fisher village called Su-ao. The main attractions are the Buddhist temple – where some local ceremony was held – and the fisher harbour. When the small groups of local fishers arrived by their boats, they unloaded the catch right away for sale on the fish market. Each group has a place on the market where the family members conduct the selling. The fish offer is always fresh and so various, I have never seen these kind of fishes before. The atmosphere of the busy market called forth a lunch on the port side. The food was very delicious of course except the small purple polyps what was impossible to chew and I just had some feeling that it may not be the best to eat these animals with their very dark purple liquid what I associate with poison… My father thought that the only thing why it is not so delicious that we eat it in a wrong way… I guess he will say this for many Taiwanese foods. :)
Later we left the village to find a nice beach on the southern way. We reached a small bay where a river joins to the sea. The beach side was shingly but the waves were nice for a bath. The landscape around the bay and also the life of the fisher village gave a typical picture of Taiwan for my father who is getting to like this place…

Here are some pictures about this trip:
http://picasaweb.google.com/tamasintaiwan

My father is visiting me!

My father (Paul) has come to visit me on the 18th of October for 2 weeks. He has been always interested about Taiwan and my stay here gave a good opportunity to combine a business trip with my visitation.

An extraordinary weekend in Kenting...

The 10th of October was a day what we had been waiting for such a long time not just because this is the national holiday of Taiwan, but because finally we got the chance to go to Kenting and spend an awesome weekend at the tropical southern part of Taiwan. We felt that we deserved this trip after so many typhoons hit the island during the last few weekends.

Pictures about the tirp are in the Kenting folder:
http://picasaweb.google.com/tamasintaiwan

Day 1: getting used to the southern lifestyle…

Me, Andreas and Maciej (A Polish “bratnaki” who studies finance for one semester in NTU, came from Warsaw btw.) left Taipei at 6:00 am on Friday by the good old Golf. It was a very nice sunny day without any cloud on the sky. It was around 26-27C in the capital but 31-32C in our destination. I really don’t understand why people has problem with autumn :P…coz I love it! :) We drove on the highways all way long, but it still took more than 6 hours to get to Kenting. Again, Taiwanese drivers are so unbelievable…even if there are 3 or 4 lines on the highway they occupy all of them by driving with the same speed. The other thing is that Kenting is one of the most popular destinations on the national holiaday…so that’s why a 300 km’s way took this much of time…

This fact became even more obvious when we couldn’t find any room in the city… But it was so hot and sunny that we couldn’t stand to go to the beach right away instead of looking for more places. The beach here is absolutely fantastic. I can not compare it to any other…it’s just simply exotic! After we admired the beautiful sunset we started to look for some accommodation…but nowhere was any free room in the city…there was no way back…we moved down on the coastline a few km’s till we luckily found 3 free rooms in a local family’s “motel” like house. They were really kind persons. The son of the grandma took us into the city by his small pick-up track. We were standing on the flat of the car attracting heavy attention among the crowd as we “marched” into the centre of Kenting. Randomly some guys felt free to join us so than the truck become a bit overloaded…:)
They were really funny guys who also liked that suddenly they became the centre of the attention too. As we arrived to the centre, our first way was to have some dinner with them. It was nice to get to know other Taiwanese students outside from Taipei. Some of them do military service through 1 year. This is very strict in Taiwan and the guys have to take it very seriously. After the delicious local food all of us went to the beach where most of the people come to enjoy the sound of the sea and the moonlight with some beers and good company around the fire… Just like we did! It was an awesome time we spent there with these Taiwanese guys. When they left the three of us still felt enough power to rock the night in a local club…I think we managed it… :)

Day 2: at the Pacific Ocean

On Saurday to gain our energy back to 100% after the short sleep we had the breakfast in the accommodation what the grandma prepared from fresh seafood in just a few minutes…it was really delicious! We decided to go to the south-eastern side to check out the beaches there. Eluanbi, the island’s southern village has a nice Lighthouse where we had to get off to have a close-up view for the coral reef and the rocky beach from the cliff. The wind is so extremely strong on at the edge of the cliff that it could throw us off balance! But it was worth to have that amazing view for the Pacific coastline. We drove forward to find a sandy beach. We arrived to a little village where we saw a vendor selling hermit crabs (look at the pictures). These cute animals caught my and Andreas’ fancy to buy some as house pet…:) Andreas has 2 (Gordon and Jerry) and I bought 3 (I still haven’t named them..) After we played enough with them :) we went out to the beach which was full of surfers. Here the waves are really good for surfing…we rent a body board which was still cool to ride a bit on the waves. But the real ride just came after with quads! …and it was not just around a circle, but through hills and bushes…cool staff.
Our main aim was to try the scuba diving during this weekend. In the afternoon it was too late to do that so we scheduled it for Sunday. Instead we went to the Sihjhongsi hot spring…we were relaxing for a few hours before we came back to Kenting to have a Saturday nigh’s party…in the club we met so many foreigners who “tried” to go for local girls… we had to show them how Europeans hit the floor…:)