Taiwan 2010

First of all, let me just say that Taiwan exceeded all my expectations. My first 'visit' to Taiwan was way back in August of 2010, when i stopped over on a layover coming back from Cambodia. We had a ridiculous eight hour wait that day so we went out to explore the city and it was alright. I mean, the food was alright, it was clean, it was modern, nothing really stood out. It was a place I didn't think I would go back to visit. Saw it once, was done with that.

Fast forward six months later, and obviously God has a good sense of humor, because during the holidays, I find myself in Taiwan again. This was the last place I expected to be for Christmas 2010. Life plays funny tricks on us sometimes yeah?

Anyways, without further ado. The trip blog.

Taipei 101
We spent a couple days in Taipei and saw some of the famous places. Taipei 101 was one of those places. T101 is one of the tallest buildings in the world, it's a combined shopping mall with commercial buildings, restaurants and who knows what else. Honestly, this place was a little underwhelming. I mean, it's basically just a fancy shopping mall, nothing special about it. We went in for a couple hours, ate some food and then went back out. There is an elevator you can take to go to the top floor, but there was a long line for that (we heard a couple hour wait) and the cost for that was $20 (US) just to ride an elevator. So we took a pass on it. Anyways, here are some pictures.







World Flora Expo
In a little bit of good timing, the World Flora Expo coincided with our visit to Taipei. The Flora expo is basically one humongous flower show. And we are talking huge. You need to take buses to get from one area of the park to the other area. This show happens every couple years and takes place in different countries. This year it happened to be in Taiwan, and wince we were in Taiwan we decided to go see it.



I have to admit, it was pretty cool. I mean if you had bad allergies, I would not recommend you going, but it was nice to see all the flower fields and all the exhibits. Like these.



We spent about half a day there. My only complaint was again, the crowds. This place was soooo crowded. And there were really long lines to get into the exhibits. (Couple hour wait, which we took a pass on) But it was worth the $10 US to get in.





Maokong Gondola
The third place we went to in Taiwan was the Maokong Gondola . And there we took the gondola ride into the mountainous region of Taiwan. I think one of the surprising things about Taiwan is how green and how hilly it was. For some reason, I always thought that Taiwan was just a flat island. But it's not. There are actually lots of trees and mountains in Taiwan. Here are some pictures from the gondola.





It was like a 45 minute ride from the base of the mountain to the top. We really put our trust into Taiwanese technology this time. The ride was a little nervous, but pretty enjoyable. The sites were pretty amazing. We got one of the special gondolas with a glass bottom so you can see the ground as we go up the hill.



We passed by many different and interesting sites. Not just trees, but fields and buildings as well. When we got to the top, we were greeted by a food court and a thunderstorm. Unfortunately for us, we did not have any umbrellas so we were not able to explore much up there. Evidently there was some kind of tea gardens that we could have went into if it was not raining. But we had no rain gear, so we just road the gondola back down.





So that¡¯s Taipei. From Taipei we took the rails to Taichung, the other city that we would spend most of our time in. This is a good time to talk about the public transportation system in Taiwan. Throughout our entire trip, we used public transit like 90% of the time. We took almost all forms of it. Bullet train, normal train, bus, taxi. It¡¯s pretty amazing how efficient and easy to use their rails system is. After one day, I felt confident enough that need by, I could probably get from one place to another without much trouble.

Seeing the Taiwan rails system make me realize how crappy the Bay Area rails system is. BART sucks. For example, in Taiwan, I could pay $1 (US) to go the distance of Fremont to San Francisco. The trains were clean and spacious and quiet. And they come very often. At home, I would have to wait 15 mins for a train, get on it, deal with the possibly of getting mugged, possibly sit in a disease infected seat (if I get a seat at all) and then ride it, possibly sitting next to someone who smells really bad. And it would cost like $5. Yes, I am bitter. Here are some pictures from the Taiwan bullet train ride.





Taichung
Our next destination was Taichung, where we would spend about a week in. Amy put it elegantly, if Taipei is San Francisco then Taichung would be the equivalent to San Jose. It had the same things as Taipei but lacking just a little bit of the glitz. Regardless, it was cool place, lots of malls, lots of parks and lots of good eats. It was not as crowded as Taipei was.

We stayed near downtown and the above is a picture of some of the parks nearby. I really don't know what else to show you about Taichung... So here are some random pictures.







The Food
Lastly, i will wrap up this Taiwan update with talk about... THE FOOD. Everyone who goes there always come back bragging about how good the food is. I was always skeptical... But then I came, I saw, I tasted... and damn, the food is pretty good there. It seemed wherever we went, the night market, the mall, the supermarket, downtown, down the street everywhere the food was so good. I will end this update with pictures of some of the food we ate.

Treasures From The Heart

Sometimes in the midst of chaos spawns the most beautiful things. The church 2010 Christmas project this year was pretty odd. The original plan was to put together some shoeboxes and send them over to an organization in Cambodia. The idea was to disseminated instructions to the smallgroups and then have the smallgroups lead the effort. Right from the start, the project was very confusing, as the instructions weren't very clear, the and vision behind it was not very clear. To make matters worse two weeks before Christmas, the project direction changed completely. Because no one knew what to give the Cambodian families (toys? clothes? Nintendo DS?) the whole shoebox idea was scrapped, and instead the groups would just collect money and send it to Cambodia for the purpose of buying water filters. This change was decided with two weeks before Christmas and the whole thing was hectic and confusing. Regardless, we all got it done and the gifts were sent over. So our church sent the money and the cards to TFTH and went on with our own lives. We celebrated Christmas, rang in the new years. I went to Taiwan. We all pretty much forgot about the project... Until this week when the head of the organization sent us photos (more correctly, they facebooked it) of the families with their new filters and cards. When I saw those pictures, I was kind of stunned. I cannot explain why. And I still don't know why. It was like I couldn't believe it. A project that, that I will bet, became an afterthought after it was done, heck probably was an afterthought AS it was being done, will actually change lives. (I don't know about other people in our church, so maybe I'm just speaking for myself, but for this project, I just threw some money in the pot and was done with it). Seeing the actual faces of the people that got our gifts kind of blew me away. One of the themes for Christmas this year at our church was "entering the story." The premise was that when Jesus came down from heaven he "entered our story", and made us part of it. And us, as Christians, our duty was to "enter the story" for other people. The people we choosed were the Cambodians. And I guess I never really understood what it meant to enter that story, until I saw these pictures. **** Treasures From My Heart is a grassroots organization in Cambodia that works with one of the most marginalized group of people in the world, women with aids. They rescue these victims and they provide housing and skills training. They are relatively small, and support about 11 families. We ran into them entirely by God's chance last year. Some of our group was shopping in the Russian Market minding our own business when we started talking to the a lady who was standing there. After some conversation, we found out she was one of the founders of TFTH (which had a shop in the market). One thing led to another, and we ended up meeting with her and her husband before we left Cambodia and promised we would do what we could to help. She and her husband, very nice , very humble, very loving people. Thanks to the world of facebook we were able to stay intouch even after we left Cambodia. For more information about the group, see these links. Treasures From The Heart More Pictures

Welcome Our World

Well, the hits keep on coming. I wrote about change in my last post of 2010, since then, another big change has happened...



After 15 great years. 165K+ miles. Many road trips. Many traffic jams. Many good times... it is time to say goodbye to a mainstay in my life.. Goodbye green Honda Accord. It was a good car.. NO, it was a great car. My first ever car that my dad bought me way back in highschool. I kept it through my college years. And kept it through my working years. If I had my way, i would have kept the car forever. Or at least to 200K miles (which was my goal), but alas it was not to be. It's not that I kept my car in bad condition. I took care of it. Changed it's oil whenever it needed it. Took it in for tuneups. But the last year just saw a flurry of problems with it. First, the power window failed. One day, i just rolled down the window.... And it never came up again. Ever. It just stayed down. I eventually force it up, and taped down the button so I would not roll it down accidentally... until one day my mom drove my car and accidentally rolled it down. I drove my Accord with the window down (taped up) for about week, in cold weather (I damn well froze that week...) After that I paid the mechanic $500 to fix the problem. And he did! The windows worked for about 1 month before it died again. I am convinced fixing that window is now more trouble than it's worth.

That was the first sign of trouble. It was also easy to work around. The second was that everytime i drove the car, it makes some wierd clicking noise that sounded really bad. You know that Smoke Monster in Lost when it appears? It's kind of like that sound. It took another $500 for the mechanic to fix this.. only to have it come back again two months later. Sigh.

The list of problems continued, The key stopped working. I started noticing that my key wouldn't work anymore. To open a car door would take some wiggling and jiggling the key in there for a few seconds before the door finaly opened. And then some more wiggling and jiggling to actually start the car. We eventually bought a new key from Honda for $50 and that solved the problem temporarily... oh yeah, and my keyless entry failed about two years ago, hence i use the key..

And then last December was the straw that broke the camels back.. My heater started dying. It would refuse to work some days and some days work just fine. I just don't understand. And recently, it's latest trick is that it flat our refuses to start. I need to jam the key in there a couple times before the engine starts. Good times.

Hence, it was time to say goodbye Honda Accord... And hello Honda Civic!!



I took this baby home Saturday. After some mad negotiating skills, conducted mainly by my bro (who needed a new car as well), we were able to land two Honda Civics for a relatively good price. New Honda Civic... you have big shoes to fill and I hope you fill it well. Anything less than 10years 150K will be unacceptable. I'm hoping I can get 200K out of this car...

I also want to remind everyone to please be patriotic and stick an American flag on your bumper. Country First!!!!