Monday, August 4, 2008

Taiwan photos

Life has just been too busy to blog! Not so much because Kentaro is now living in Shizuoka - he was around so little before that in practical terms it makes almost no difference to our daily lives (although of course we miss him lots) - but because since April I've been teaching a university class in translation in addition to a tutorial group for postgraduates in scientific English, and the preparation and marking time have taken away every spare minute I had (and there weren't many of those to start with). So apologies to those faithful family members and friends who have been checking in periodically, only to find nothing new since March. We are still here and still well, and the boys are growing up apace.

Kentaro actually has two weeks' proper holiday in his new job, one week in summer and one in winter, which is a fantastic change. We used his summer vacation time to take a family trip to Taiwan, somewhere we'd never been before. Despite a typhoon that covered literally the whole island for the first three days and put paid to a planned trip to the east coast, it was a great trip. Below are a few photos to give you a taste.



We flew EVA Air, which has Hello Kitty as its logo. It felt a bit surreal to fly on a plane with a pink kitten on the side, but it was a good flight and the crew were very friendly.






The day after we arrived we went up Taipei 101, currently the tallest tower in the world. It's due to be overtaken by a skyscraper in Dubai next year, but at least we went up while it still holds the record!









The view from the top.











The boys enjoyed writing postcards at the top of the tower.












Lunch in the food court. The boys were still having a bit of a hard time adjusting, and insisted on familiar food - sushi for Kei, McDonalds for Dan. Kentaro and I were already enjoying Taiwanese chicken and rice.






Kei took this photo of us in holiday mood outside Taipei 101.







The typhoon was approaching and the wind was already pretty strong, so we headed to the National Taiwan Science Education Center, where the boys had great fun with all the hands-on exhibits, a 3D movie (Dan's favorite part of the entire trip), and an entire floor of bouncy-castle-type large inflatable structures. I wish I'd taken some photos of those, as they were so much fun.




The next day the typhoon hit. We had been due to go to Hualien, on the east coast, but all the trains were cancelled that morning. The hotel receptionist told us that services were due to be restored that afternoon, so we checked out, left our luggage at the main station, and went to see the new Pixar movie WALL-E in an almost deserted cinema. When we got back to the station, though, it turned out the afternoon trains had been cancelled too, so back we went to the hotel. The staff were highly apologetic and gave us a better room for the same price, with a huge jacuzzi in the bathroom that made a nice end to a frustrating day.

By the Tuesday the worst of the typhoon was past, but the weather was still cloudy and wet. We headed out on a day trip to Jinguashi and Jiufen, two old gold-mining towns on the north coast about an hour out of Taipei.


The landscape was green and mountainous, very similar to Japan's but with more tropical vegetation.



Jinguashi was the more interesting place of the two. The town has been turned into a "Gold Ecological Park," with the old mining buildings (dating from the Japanese colonial period) restored and one of the tunnels converted into a recreation of the mining process for tourists. Kei was especially excited to be able to touch a huge bar of gold in the Gold Museum.





We were a bit too tired to really enjoy Jiufen. It's a tourist town, with a covered arcade lined with food and souvenir shops and some steep steps that were the inspiration for the landscape in the animated film "Spirited Away." In this photo the boys are eating real crisps - a whole potato sliced thinly, stuck on a single stick, deep-fried, and dusted with curry powder.





The next morning we paid a quick visit to the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall. It's an imposing building, set in a big park that gave the boys plenty of space to run around. They enjoyed standing to attention next to the guards, and watching the marching and rifle-twirling that accompanied the changeover to a new pair.














































Then we flew out to Penghu, a small archipelago of islands off Taiwan's west coast. We stayed in a guesthouse near the beach, one of four run by a wonderful young couple called Maco and Anna (you can see their Web site here). Our room was actually in their home, which they share with Maco's parents as well as his brother, sister-in-law and little niece. They were all unbelievably friendly and warm, offering us advice and practical help at every turn. In the photo, Maco is next to Kei; his sister-in-law and niece are next to Kentaro, and his mother and father are on the right.


















The islands are low and scrubby, covered by grass, aloe, and cactus. The beaches are lovely, with fine coral sand and hardly any people.

























We borrowed life-jackets for the boys, as the surf was still strong after the typhoon.





















This, believe it or not, is a single banyan tree. It's 300 years old, and the roots growing down from its branches have developed into more than 100 pillars. We tried to find the original trunk, but it was impossible to tell which it was.
The stalls around the temple behind the tree sell cactus-fruit sorbet, which is surprisingly delicious with a sour-sweet taste reminiscent of blackberries.



Sunset from the seawall at Makung, the main town on the island.







The town has an old ferry that has been turned into a shop for souvenirs and marine products, with navigation equipment on the bridge that kids can pretend to operate. The boys loved being ferry captains for an evening!






Maco took us snorkeling on our last morning. The water was very clear, and we saw many small, brightly colored fish. We swam out to look at the coral reef about 30 meters offshore, but Maco said much of the coral is dying - whether because of the unseasonably cold previous winter, global warming, or some other reason, he's not sure.




Maco and Anna took us to the airport to say goodbye. They had already become such good friends that Kei cried when we left.