Taiwan 2011

Sunday, September 11, 2011

September 11, 2011

Today we woke up, had breakfast, and went on a hike near our hotel. We were fascinated and somewhat grossed out by the spiders that we saw all around the hotel. They were (we think), the same type of small-dog-like spiders we saw in Kenting National Park. (Maybe they are a Taiwanese National Park-specific species (we hope!)). They are definitely the largest and scariest spiders we have ever seen (and we see a fair amount of them in our apartment). Katie had to coerce George to get close enough to provide some perspective for the size in the photo. (They still look way smaller than they actually are relative to George in the picture because he refused to snuggle up close enough…)

We then got some take-out lunch from the village before going to the Gorge hike. We got a rice dish and a noodle dish, but ended up avoiding the rice dish since it was loaded with liver…

The Gorge was spectacular. Our guidebook describes the gorge as “walking into a Chinese painting”. That is a perfect description. The water was such a pretty blue (it reminded Katie of the color of Lake Louise). Our pictures don’t do it justice, but we hope you can get an idea of what it’s like.

We had to catch our train back to Taipei, so we drove back to the Hualian train station, where we enjoyed Slurpees from the 7 eleven. The 2.5 hour ride brought us back to downtown Taipei, where we met up with PJ’s family for dinner at a Hot Pot restaurant. After too much food, we taxi’ed back to Nankang for our last night before our return to CA. We spent part of our evening watching the Sept 11 memorial ceremony. Tomorrow is the Moon Festival! (Another excuse for us to eat more mooncakes.)

September 10, 2011

This morning we woke up and met Dad’s friend from college, who he hasn’t seen in over 40 years! The friend was from Hualian and still lives there. He and his wife took us around the city to some spectacular vista points and then we went to lunch together before catching our whale watching boat. “Whale watching” wasn’t exactly what we did. We “dolphin watched”. There are ~5 different types of dolphins in the area, including Spinner dolphins and spotted dolphins. We listened to a short lecture about the different types before our excursion, but since Katie didn’t understand a single word of it and George wasn’t paying attention, we can’t be overly descriptive about them…

Our trip was 2 hours and we saw a pretty good show. The dolphins (which were Spinner Dolphins), were very active and did a lot of jumping and spinning in the out of the water. Mom and Katie took ~50 pictures between the two of them, but only got a handful with any glimpse of anything that could have possibly been a dolphin. Except for one, which is shown here:

After we made it back to land, we hopped in the car and drove to Taroko National Park, one of the most visited places in all of Taiwan. We stayed in a “hotel” run by one of the local tribes. The hotel was more like a camp with rather fancy cabins. After dinner, we watched a two hour performance given by the children of the tribes people. It was mostly music and dancing with some commentary that Katie didn’t understand and well, George was not paying very good attention to…

Tomorrow….the gorge!

September 9, 2011

We took the train to Hualian, which took ~2 hours. Once there, John and PJ had to rent two cars to hold the 8 of us, so we went from the train station to the car rental place. Once we had the cars, off we went to the beach to say hi to the Pacific Ocean. Unfortunately, we were a little too friendly with the water and all of us got drenched by some big waves. Oops! With our wet pants still on, we went to the Farglory hotel, an ahhhmazing hotel located on the top of a hill overlooking the city of Hualian on one side and the ocean on the other. The hotel was absolutely beautiful. We wish we could have spent more time in the pools, shops, and restaurants, but the next day we had to hurry off to get to the whale watching boat and then to Taroko National Park in time for dinner.

Cunningham rules still apply

Before the next wave got me

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Friday Sept 9, 2011

Yesterday we went to the National Palace Museum, a museum that is the home of the largest and finest collection of Chinese art. The collection is so large and the building is so small that most of the pieces aren’t on display at any given time. Katie’s favorite item was a jade napa cabbage. George liked the stone that looks like a piece of meat. (pictures of both at the bottom: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Palace_Museum)

PJ picked us up from the museum and gave us an insider’s view of the Shilin Night Market. She used to go here with her high school friends, so she knew the best foods for us to try. The market seemed like a cross between the Underground Market in SF and the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul. We got 1) stinky tofu (not all that stinky, really-Katie’s labmates told her it was going to be REALLY stinky), 2) fried shrimp rolls with a special “secret” sauce 3) seafood soup 4) oyster pancakes 5) these awesome kiwi, pineapple, orange, apple juice drinks. We were stuffed, but then had to try these warm pastry-like rollups.

This afternoon we take the tilting train to Hualian where we are planning to go whale watching (GW is EXCITED (except he forgets that he gets motion sickness…))

September 8, 2011 (Stinky tofu is not that stinky)

This morning we went to see the family burial site. We made offerings to the ancestors and dad translated the writing on the memorial. Then we said goodbye to the family in Pingtung and took the train back to Taipei where we’re currently writing this as the beautiful scenery flies by at over 100 mph.

In Taipei we’re going to the National Palace Museum and then to the night market for some cobra meat and stinky tofu with PJ and the girls. Friday we’re off to Hualian for a fun-filled family field trip!

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Today Da jiu picked us up and took us up north to the line designated as the Tropic of Cancer. There is a monument marking the spot. Then we went to Chiayi to see Dad’s old elementary and middle schools and have lunch. One of the best parts about Taiwan is the food. We haven’t had a bad meal and the prices are ridiculous. For example, this lunch was $12 for four people and we were stuffed. Chi bao le! GW and Da jiu also found us these gigantic pearl milk teas to drink with lunch. Sooo good! We can actually enjoy these in CA since they have been exported, but everything seems to taste better here. Especially liquids, since it’s ~100 degrees, with 100% humidity.

We drove through Kaohsiung, the 2^nd largest city in Taiwan (also a major port) and saw the school where mom and dad W met when they were teachers.

The whole family went shoe shopping and bought shoes before dinner with Da jiu and Da jiu ma and their son, Jingyi. So much good food! So little room!

To settle our stomachs and enjoy the neighborhood, we went for a walk after dinner. Just around the corner from grandma’s house is a track where a huge number of people were walking.

Tuesday, September 6th

Today Da jiu picked us up and took us to Kenting National Park in the southern most part of Taiwan (in fact we went to the southern most point in Kenting, too). We spent the day driving around the park, eating yummy food (mostly seafood) and walking around the Kenting Forest Recreation Area. Mom says the last time she was here was when she graduated from high school! Some of the neatest aspects of the park are the caves you can walk through and the coral rocks that are high up on the mountain. When Taiwan was formed, the rocks were deposited here, far above their natural place on the ocean floor. On the way out of the park, we passed a greenhouse with lots of plants inside. [Taiwan has ~4500 plants, and about a quarter of them aren’t found anywhere else. Apparently orchids are exported from Taiwan. Grandma has this amazing purple phalaenopsis. that we thought was fake because there were so many perfect blossoms.] But the thing that grabbed our attention was this spider that was hanging from the ceiling of the greenhouse. GW says it was bigger than most small dogs. We could have killed it, but we would have needed a rifle.

Monday September 5th

The next day we went to breakfast before John’s group meeting. GW was especially excited to think about C elegans crosses again—you can take George away from science but you can’t take science away from George….or something like that. We met up with Er yi (Second Aunt), cousin Brian, and Xiao jiu (Younger Uncle) for lunch (dumplings yum!) Before getting to the train station for the high speed train to Pingtung to see Grandma and Grandpa, Mom, San yi (Third Aunt), Da jiu (Older Uncle), and Da jui ma (Older Uncle’s Wife). The train was an amazingly fast 1.5 hours. (So this is how it would feel to go from SF to LA if California actually came through with the high speed rail…) Mom and Da Jiu picked us up from the station in Kaohsiung and took us to the house in Pingtung. On the way we stopped at this massive and super impressive Buddhist Temple (The Foguangshan). It is still being constructed, but it’s almost finished. When we got to Grandma’s, San yi made us a yummy dinner and we had some amazing longyans and dragon fruit for dessert. The fruit here is amazing. Some of the best mangos, pineapples, papayas we’ve ever had. We had these crazy beet-colored dragon fruits.

Saturday, Sept 3/Sunday Sept 4th

Today we go to Taipei, Taiwan (Ilha Formosa = “Beautiful Island”). Small bit of Wangingham trivia: one of the movies recommended for us to watch to get acquainted with Taiwan in the Lonely Planet Taiwan is called “Formosa Betrayed”. We actually saw James Van Der Beek filming this movie at the train station in Bangkok, Thailand three years ago. Still have not seen the movie.

We took the red eye to Taipei from SFO and got there at 5am Taiwan time on Sept 4^th (Happy 30^th birthday George! Shengri kuai le!) John picked us up from the airport and took us to Nankang. It was still too early to wake up the family, so we went out to breakfast on his street and then took a tour of his new lab at Academia Sinica. We woke up the girls and played with them for a few hours until it was nap time (ours and theirs). PJ and John woke us up for dinner, which was a special birthday treat—dinner at the top of Taipei 101! (this building looks kind of like bamboo and for 5 years held the record for the tallest building in the world.)

After dinner, the girls went home and the boys went to pick up dad from the airport.

Sunday, October 31, 2010

"This is not a Zoo"

We spent the next four days on Safari in a private game reserve called Sabi Sands, adjacent to Kruger National Park. Each day consisted of getting up at 5 am to go out on a morning game drive, eating and napping in the heat of the day, and going on a second game drive starting at 4 pm until sundown, which was around 8 pm. We had an amazing time and recommend this camp (Arathusa), and experience to everyone. As you can tell from the following photos, which were taken on a pocket, digital camera with mediocre zoom, we were able to get extremely close to the animals. In fact, at times the animals were so close we weren't allowed to take pictures (in case we scared them and they might topple our vehicle, eat us, or worse....). The pictures pretty much tell the story. Enjoy!