In Singapore!!!

Okay, I know everyone hears a lot about Singapore and its rapid development (it surely is rapid), but I am not sure if everyone hears about how peaceful and pretty it is here. I couldn't figure out the differences with Taipei besides the visual for a while (diversity and clean-freshly-painted buildings), until I realized that the noise is different. People aren't yelling at you, and cars don't run you over. And of course no hoards of scooters! We are only briefly here before our flight tomorrow and managed to see a great deal of this small country-city-state (or whatever it is that you want to call it). I cannot even describe the difference in diversity in Singapore or even Kuala Lumpur compared to Taipei. On the other hand, I feel like the culture is much more international and that Taipei is a much better place to learn Chinese. Enough with the comparisons, because I am not even sure that one could make an accurate comparison (even taking economic, historical and social variables into consideration). I have many updates to add, such as those from the rest of my trip in Korea, pictures from the bike trip, the Shitou school trip and most recently Malaysia & Singapore. Expect these updates in the next week. I have some pretty great stories (jungles included :)).

In Malaysia

I am currently in the very hot and humid Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I had arrived last night very late from Singapore after a very unusual 5 hour bus ride. The city is definitely much more diverse than Taipei, but on the other hand, I am not used to the high degree of Islamic influence, especially with regards to modesty in dress. What may be appropriate else where is not necessarily frowned upon here, but it is not condoned. I imagine that Kuala Lumpur will be better than the other areas we intend on heading to. We will be going to the Batu Caves tomorrow, and then Cameroon Island. After these, one of the oldest and unspoiled jungles in the world. I will provide better updates with my conenctivity is a bit better than it currently is.

Computer Issues

I have not been the best at posting some articles from before, because my computer is not cooperating. I believe I have a loose wire in the hinge or a bad LCD power inverter. Good thing Taiwan is the number one manufacturer/assembler of laptops in the world. I bought a hard drive to back up stuff, so once I have all the data backed up, I will take this baby apart with one of my friends who is an electrical engineer :). I have to angle the screen just right to get it to work, so it seems fixable, but just a pain. I would buy a new laptop here, but I am using more money to travel instead. Technology is cheap and easy to get. There is one of the biggest technology malls here in the world. 6 floors of whatever you could need, you could even set up a decent electrical laboratory with the parts here. Let me know if you need something, because we could figure something out. Mail is reliable and stuff is easy to get. For example, DDR1 ram for a laptop is only $25 for a 1GB chip. Oh well, I just need this laptop to make it through my last month of school :).

Pictures from the Mini-Huan Do and 220km Weekend Bike Trip

A close-up of our accomodation for the 3rd night :).


Those chairs were our beds for the night :). Nicest place yet.

The seawater hot spring pools near the water on Green Island as the sun was coming up on the horizon.

A picture with the gracious coast guard hosts :).

The prison where Chiang Kai-Shek sent all of his political opponents and prisoners during his governance.

Shadows on the rice patty just south of the Tropic of Cancer.

My trusty Giant bicycle for the 4 days :). She worked like a charm getting up to 54 km/hr.

The sunrise over the Jici Beach.

Travel Tips

I found a blog today on www.nytimes.com.  http://frugaltraveler.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/27/packing-the-right-credit-card/?em. The article covers the types of credit cards there are and what sort of fees are associated. They also discuss travel insurance, which is very important while traveling (you just never know). I thought that this article might be of use to anyone studying, traveling, or working abroad. Any tips of your own, please post a comment. I tried to do some research on these topics before leaving the U.S., but it is harder than you think to find credible information.

Crossing the Tropic of Cancer on Bicycle all the way to Green Island...

I had one of the best short trips ever with 4 of my friends. We biked from Hualian on the east coast down route 11 to Taitung over three days. We took the train to Hualian early in the morning, the ride took 3 hours to reach the city. Two of us rented bicycles from Giant through their stores. You can rent at one location and return to another, you just have to let them know where. I took a taxi from the station to the bike shop that was in Hotel Palisades. It was 1000 NTD for 4 days (which is about $32 USD). They supplied me with a tool with all of the allen wrenches and others I would need, an air pump, a lock, saddle bags, an odometer, and lights. I decided that it would be a good idea to purchase bicycle shorts (which was a wonderful decision, I don't think my arse would have been able to take it without them). 

The first day we biked only around 50 km, and ended up sleeping in Jici. One of our friend's bike broke down, he broke a Bering. I suppose you really get what you pay for when you get a bicycle. I would highly recommend that people have a nice bike when trying to bike up mountains. Jici has black sand beaches, and it was my first time ever seeing such beaches. We could not find food, and wanted to get off of the 2-lane highway as quick as we could. A small convenience store was selling soups and snacks, we purchased soup and other food to fill up for the night. The girl working had lived in Saudi Arabia for a couple years and 3 of the guys on the trip are from the Middle East, and spoke Arabic. At this point, my Chinese is pretty limited, but out of the group I was able to communicate pretty well. We are all actually in the same language course, but my language exchanges are really paying off. After our meal, we made our way to the beach and found a shelter. We carried our bikes up to the second level and set up camp. Two people did not have sleeping bags, which made it a cold night for them, but we managed to get some sleep in between the coast guards checks on the beach (they kept flashing a light down the beach to make sure no one was swimming). We watched the sun rise and spent a couple hours napping on the beach, then made our way down highway 11. 

Zao fan means breakfast, but when you ask in poor pronunciation to someone who has a very thick Taiwanese accent, they think you mean chou fan which means fried rice. You can probbaly figure out that we had fried rice for breakfast :). We were wondering why they didn't ask us what we wanted, I figured it was family style and they would bring us whatever they had for that day. By the end of the day we had met back up with our friend 10km or so north of the Tropic of Cancer. I crossed the Tropic of Cancer for the first time and on bicycle to boot! The weather was really hot and we took a long break around noon to stay out of the sun for a little while, including a trip to a bat cave. I was expecting a really spectacular cave, but it was a tiny tiny cave with a boat that took a whole 10 minutes to visit (we fell for a tourist trap, at least it was cooler in the cave). By night fall we were hungry again and ate at a restaurant that looked extremely popular in Changbin. The food was awesome, and another patron helped us order the food in Chinese (would have taken me 30 minutes to figure it out, there was of course no English menu). After the meal we decided to find a spot to camp for the night and headed down by the water. The coast guards stopped us and asked what we were doing. One spoke pretty decent English and I kept asking nali shui jiao? women keyi nali shui jiao? They kept saying hotels and that it was took late. I told them we needed just a small shelter like the one on the hill above their building, and they said they didn't know and we should go back to town. Then I pointed at the garage and said something like that, do you know where? They said that we could stay in their garage :). So of course we couldn't refuse. They even brought blankets for the two that did not have sleeping bags, water to wash up, and breakfast the next morning. It was completely awesome.

So this is the last day of our bicycling to Taitung. We had biked 50 km the first day, 70 km the second day, and Sunday we would end up biking just shy of 8o km. We got the idea around lunch that we would just bike the whole way to Taitung and try to make the ferry to Green Island. I figured that this would be my only real chance to make it to Green Island. So we really worked hard to get to Taitung at a decent hour. We reached the central part of town and were in a 7-Eleven at 3:10 pm when the manager told us that the last ferry was at 3:30 pm. So we decided to try and make it. The manager said that it was past the 2nd 7-Eleven, take a right and follow the road to the water. Little did we know that the 2nd 7-Eleven was 5 km down the road! People tend to use Family Marts and 7-Elevens as landmarks to give directions, it often ends up being the most accurate, you do not have problems with pronunciation of Chinese words. I was determined not to give up and biked the 5 km in 15 minutes after already biking 75 km that day in blazing heat. I was the first to arrive at the port and ran to the ticket counter saying please wait in Chinese, now my friends come here. We want to go Green Island. They waited and we managed to catch it. I was full of adrenalin and did not think we could make it, but I was not going to give up half way there. After the 1 hour long ferry ride we made it to Green Island.

Green Island was a prison from 1950 to the 1980s for Chiang Kai Shek's political prisoners. The island is in the middle of a warm current coming up from the Philippines and Micronesia. The remnants of volcanic activity is very apparent in all of the rocks and terrain. We ate dinner and went to the information center. We gave up on trying to camp through the information center, and decided we would be better off trying to figure it out later. We biked 6 km to one of the three hot seawater springs in the world. We paid the 200 NTD entrance and took a much needed shower after 3 days of biking. We spent a bit of time in the hot springs and I was quite tired and laid down. I woke up in the morning on the beach chair and my friends were sleeping on the ones next to me. They didn't kick us out, I was certain that they would. We literally spent 12 hours at a hot spring, hah. After relaxing for a bit of time and watching the sun rise sitting in a hot spring on the beach, we decided to bike the other way around the island. The first 3 km were all up hill, so hard in 30 degree Celsius weather. We ate again, saw the really pretty views of the island (reminds me of Capri off the coast of Naples), and headed back on the ferry to Taitung. Ricardo and I returned the bikes, caught a taxi and the 5:30 pm train to Taipei. Home by 11 pm. What a great trip :). Now I have to catch up a little on work, but I am happy that I did not have to miss any courses or school for the trip :). I will upload pictures in another post.

Updates

Ok, I know I am a bit behind in the entries about traveling and such, but I will come back to them. Since the last post on South Korea, I have been to Yehliu Park in the northern Taiwan, the Taoist Institute in a mountain in a Taiwanese suburb, the Shitou forest, Jioufen (Chioufen) outside Keelung, and in only a few hours I will be leaving for a 4 day bike trip.

Classes have also been a lot more busy these days. I have a goal to get every project and paper done by May 19th, so I will not have to worry about much during June. I had a presentation today that was 80% of my grade for a course. I had to speak for 40 minutes on a chapter from our textbook and add outside research. I was quite nervous and was even more nervous when the professor told me that the Graduate Economics Department would be coming to review the class (The Economic Transition of China) during my presentation. I wouldn't call it a review, it was more of a distraction. Basically ten older Taiwanese men came in wearing suits and talking very loudly. Another guy was running around taking pictures of my classmates and me while I was presenting. I was instructed to pretend they were not there. I think the presentation went well besides the 'momentary' disruption. My topic was township and village enterprises in China, which was very very interesting. This next week our professor signed us up for a two-day economic symposium with Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman as our keynote speaker. I am determined to shake his hand.

Well, I suppose this was not the most interesting update, but many will follow with tons of pictures. I hope everyone is doing well at home and had a very nice May Day. Happy Mother's Day to everyone!

"The Chinese Language, Ever Evolving"

I came across a NY Times blog today discussing how written Chinese has changed and is changing. I am sure a good percentage of people know that mainland China's system is based on simplified characters introduced in the 1950s to substantially increase literacy, and that Taiwan still uses the traditional system. The KMT were adamant in retaining important parts of Chinese culture, which included the written language. I find the traditional characters much easier to understand, because even if I do not know the character I can guess its meaning based off of context and if I know one of the radicals. I find this to be invaluable as a student, because it allows me to connect to the culture much faster while learning Chinese. I do not have many memorized and would be useless in mainland China. Check out the article below:
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/chinese-language-ever-evolving/

Biking Down the East Coast

This upcoming weekend a group of us are planning to bike quite a few kilometers starting in Hualian and working our way south. A couple of us are renting bicycles from the Giant store in Hualian. They do not really publicize the fact that they rent bikes for pretty cheap. We found out from another blog about biking in Taiwan (http://formosaguy.blogspot.com/2008/05/leave-your-bike-at-home.html). I am really excited, but this means I have a lot to accomplish before I leave this Friday. I will keep my head down this week either glued to my computer, notes or textbooks. Renting is about $35 USD for 4 days and $7 USD for each after that. Granted the prices are not the cheapest, but for us it would not pay to purchase a bike or ride the ones we already have. Mine is far too rusted, small and without any type of gears for biking up hills.

Trash in Taipei

Trash on the streets is almost nonexistent and people sweep up even leaves littered across the roads very frequently. I think the one thing I have not yet been able to adjust myself to is finding places to throw trash away. I wonder if this is a tactic to make people think about much waste they produce or to save money on providing free trash services. The most rational explanation is that people would throw their private trash bags and things in public trashcans if there were too many. I wonder if people walk or bike around all day with trash stashed in their bag, bike basket, and pockets...

This link is about Taipei and their waste policies: http://english.taipei.gov.tw/TCG/index.jsp?recordid=158

I could not find any indication of a city map of just the trash bins, I have been told one exists, because there are so few trash bins.

Seoul & The DMZ

  

(Camp Bonifas and the bus that guided us through the South Korean side of the DMZ.)

 

(the fake town North Korea built on the border and their giant flag. I was hoping that the flag would catch a gust of wind and flip to the side, but no luck!).

(Wearing the special UN badge).

(Guard standing in modified Taekwondo stance with body half exposed to North Korea. He is only half exposed so in the case of gunfire he can easily hide behind the building. I can't imagine standing like that for hours. It looks so incredibly strange).

(Technically in North Korea!)

  

In the largest city of South Korea, only 50 km from the communist North Korea under Kim Jong-Il, I spent one week visiting family. We flew with the Hong Konger Airline, Cathay Pacific, and made it a half an hour earlier than the original 2.5 project hours from Taipei. The South Korea airport is in Incheon and has been named one of the safest in the world with its ultra-modern design. The curved white roof of the terminal looks like an airplane hanger out of a H. G. Wells novel converted into a transportation hub.

After a comfortable 40 minute ride in a limousine bus to the Hamilton Hotel in Itaewon, we were nearly to Mel's apartment. Mel's apartment is gorgeous with light wood floors, sleek-modern furniture, spaceous with 4 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms, and nice views of the city from the large walls of windows. I couldn't believe how nice things could be after living in Guo Qing for the past couple months. She showed us our accomodation and we quickly headed to bed after a long day of travel.

Seoul is filled with lots to see, especially if you are a war-buff. The Korean war remains on many people's minds in the form of monuments, museums, news from North Korea, and newly built apartment complexes in every direction. There are city bus tours that allow you to get on and off at various stops around the city at a reasonable rate (approximately $10 USD for the entire day).

There are also tours to the DMZ (the Demilitarized Zone) which cost around $44 USD (you can sign up at the USO near the Samgakji subway station (they run Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday). Mel, Rachelle and I went on the DMZ tour and we would all highly recommend it. It was hard to fathom that relations between two countries so close to each other are still so incredibly tense. There were places we could and could not take pictures, but often we couldn't tell when the tour guide said we could or not. She was a bit confusing in English and shy. We changed buses at Camp Bonifas, and picked up Sgt. Walker, who gave the main part of the tour. We technically crossed the center line of the 4 km wide DMZ in the original negotiating room. There is a table down the center of the room indicating the location of the center line. When the original negotiations took place, each side was still sitting on their soil. North Korean and United Nations' guards watched us the whole entire time. Some moments were tense, even while posing with the U.N. guards (do not stand next to them in the wrong place or touch them, you'll get karate chopped, which is very scary! We almost had some first hand experience with this). The South Korean guards at the border are the most trained out of the entire military and are required to have a black belt in Taekwondo. While on guard they stand in a modified fighting stance with fists clenched to their sides.

Mel and I were being a tad bit goofy with our creative picture taking, and amid all of the tense protocols and seriousness, we were having loads of fun. We saw the 38th Parallel on many occasions, it was hard to miss. Often there were rusted posts that the North Koreans had put long ago with Korean and Chinese characters warning trespassers not to enter, and a giant wall installed by the Americans and South Koreans to prevent tanks going south on the other side. At one point you can see the 'battle of the flags' on either side of the border. South Korea was given a flag during the 1988 olympics and North Korea built an even higher pole with an even bigger flag. Their flag is rumored as the largest one in the world. There is apparently a fake town built by the North Koreans to entice people to cross back into North Korea. (I doubt many people have tried to defect from South Korea into the north). The opened the borders for a brief window after the Korean War to let people freely cross. 30,000 people went from North Korea to the South, and only 5,000 people went from South Korea to the north. I highly recommend the tour, because there are not too many places where you can see such vivid remnants of war safely.

I will have to do another blog post talking more about Seoul. But for now this is all I'll post on S. Korea.

Learning Chinese

I am thoroughly enjoying learning Chinese. I am a bit sad that it is already May. Time is almost up! I hope that I can find a way to study it when I get home through language exchanges or something of the sort. Although Chinese is a very difficult language for anyone with no previous experience, it is rewarding to study. I enjoy being able to ask for things at a restaurant or clarify something in Chinese when someone doesn't really speak English. I understand the grammar mistakes by native Chinese speakers when speaking English, because often it makes sense in Chinese. It's like when I speak Chinese I use English grammar. I would definitely recommend the CLD courses to anyone that is seriously considering the study abroad program to Taipei. 

Markets in Seoul

These are some pictures from the Insadong night market in Seoul. Even though half of the vendors and shops were closed, the market was very very pretty. It was a nice way to spend my last night in Seoul with Mel. A couple of the other pictures are from various street scenes taken while wandering around the city.