travel planning

**trick**

My original plan was to head to Kending from Kaohsiung, but a glance at the maps suggested this might make the day really rushed. The manager of the hostel instead suggested a small “cultural bus tour” of the Hamasen area instead, which the tourist centre at the station failed to suggest to me. At only $30 TWD (about $1 AUD) for the day of travel, this seemed like a great deal.

And so I headed to Sizihwan MRT station to check it out. I found the bus stop, and a bus sitting there with its door closed. I was just about to knock on the window to try and figure it out when a girl came over to me and asked if I wanted to do the cultural tour. She turned out to be one of the leaders, and set me up with a map and a pineapple cake (famous in the Kaohsuing area).

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what I saw on the tour. We went to the old train station (the area used to export incredible amounts of bananas to Japan, and the railway was used extensively for this) as well as some old buildings (including the old Japanese consulate), the ferry terminal, the university and a few more. Despite not understanding much of what was going on, it was fun to hurdle around the streets in the bus, and see what was going on down in the back streets.

A "Gulliver's Travels"-esque giant sized teddy bear at the modern art museum...

A "Gulliver's Travels"-esque giant sized teddy bear at the modern art museum...

The ticket allows you to get off on and on the bus, so at the arts centre I did exactly that. Wandered around the centre for a bit, which had some pretty funky modern displays. Back out on the street, behind the arts centre I found a long bicycle lane way which had the strangest statues, man and woman couples, each set painted crazy colors and patterns. Following that for a while, I noticed a big warehouse with an admission ticket window and plenty of young people lining up. No idea what to expect, I paid my admission and entered…

Behind the art museum is this amazing collection of huge larger-than-life colourful statues

Behind the art museum is this amazing collection of huge larger-than-life colourful statues

It was an interactive art exhibition, called “trick pictures”. Large murals had been painted onto the walls and floors, with an interactive spot for a person to jump in and take a photo. For example, there was a surfboard painted half on the floor and half on the wall, with crashing waves on the wall behind. By standing in the right spot and having your photo taken, it almost appeared as if you were surfing. There were probably over a hundred pictures, all with instructions on how to best take a photo, and stacks of people having a great time!

You can see the 3D-ness of this photo - the painting goes from the wall down to the floor, this kid was taking advantage of the situation!

You can see the 3D-ness of this photo - the painting goes from the wall down to the floor, this kid was taking advantage of the situation!

Caught a whopper! Next to the girl is a little sign explaining just how to take the best photo.

Caught a whopper! Next to the girl is a little sign explaining just how to take the best photo.

I’ve bought my train tickets (encountered my first and only Taiwanese person who was not a kind and patient soul at the booking counter – grrr!) and I’m off to Green Island tomorrow 🙂

Taxiiiiiiii

My trip to Taiwan has been a momentous one for my traveling credentials – for the first time ever, I have travelled with only carryon luggage (that’s for a 3 country trip!). It’s also the first time I have travelled without a planned itinerary – in the past I have booked all or most of my hotels, and known how I was getting from a to b. Not so on this trip! I had a rough idea of some places that sounded interesting, and I booked the first nights accommodation, but the rest was up in the air when I boarded my flight to Taipei.

A quick layover in Hong Kong was extended when my next plane was delayed, and the gate changed from one end of the airport to the other. But no matter, we were soon up in the air again. Arrival into Taipei was surprising – coming out of the arrivals hall I was greater by a mass of faces, and not one pushing and screaming “taxiiiiiii”. Much of my trip was like this – you hear the Chinese being spoken and see the signs everywhere, but then notice that no, people aren’t trying to get you to buy their products or no, people aren’t trying to scam you, a bit hard to get used to!

At the airport I quickly and easily organised a sim card and a bus to town. My hotel was easy to find and easy to check into. Exhausted from travel, I wandered around till I found an ATM that would accept my MasterCard (luckily I had bought some TWD in Melbourne). Grabbed some 7/11 food for dinner (an amusing mix of Japanese and Chinese konbini foods) and crashed for the night.

Escalators in Taipei

Escalators in Taipei

At this stage I was still considering just getting a tour package, and have someone organise my travels for me, so the next day I set off for one of the travel agents in town. Navigating the metro was simple (similar reusable token system as Bangkok), and using google maps on my phone (best invention ever!) I quickly found the travel agent. I was able to organise a tour for that night to see one of the markets and do Mongolian BBQ, but unfortunately there was only one tour running that week. It wasn’t really what I wanted to do, so I left it for now.

I wandered around the town for the rest of the day, until the taxi picked me up for my night tour. We went and collected another girl for the tour before meeting up with the “big bus”. A total of 6 on the bus, we had 2 Australians, 2 Japanese, a French and an Italian in our group. Most had been in Taiwan for a few days at least and were all due to fly out in a day or so. Our first stop was Mongolian barbeque – once again proving that Mongolian/Korean BBQ has very different meanings in different parts of the world. Here, we lined up and chose our choice of thin (raw) meats, vegetables and sauces. Into a bowl they went, and then were handed to the chefs, who fried them up on the spot for us. There was also a selection of salads, fruits and drinks. The middle of the table had a bubbling pot of water that was available to be used for shabu-shabu style food as well. The restaurant appeared to be catering purely towards bus groups, and the food was just mediocre, but the experience was amazing!

Pork for all!

Pork for all!

Our next stop was the Snake Alley street market, culminating in the Long Shan Temple. To be honest, if I had of realised the street market we were going to was Snake Alley, I probably wouldn’t have done the tour. Snake Alley is known for its shops selling snake blood – they cut and bleed the snake in front of you, and then you can do a shot of this lovely concoction. HOWEVER I saw none of this – we arrived in the middle of a huge street festival, celebrating the goddess of the sea. There were people everywhere, and men dressed in scary devil costumes. Our poor guide was terrified he would lose us (he said when he has a group of 20 or 30 it is horrible), but we had a brilliant time, weaving in and out of the procession. We beat them to the temple and had a quick look around before attempting to find our bus again.

Taipei Longshan Temple, all lit up for the street festival

Taipei Longshan Temple, all lit up for the street festival

The last stop was Taipei 101. It was a clear night, and the view from the top was flat out amazing. When it was built, it broke all sorts of records – check out Wikipedia for more info. The Italian guy and I attempted to get a photo of each other in front of the mascot – trying to get in between the mainland tourists was challenging – mum had to take a photo with son, son had to take a photo with dad, dad had to take a photo with daughter, daughter had to take a photo with aunty, grandma had to take a separate photo with everyone! The Italian guys hasn’t been to China, so was a bit bewildered by it all. On the other hand, I got a photo with grandma!

Whilst we were up Taipei 101, I rang around and tried to book a tour to Kenting for the following day, but I was laughed at and told everything was full, so I’ve decided to catch a train and do it myself. My tour mates were very apprehensive about this (they had all done 3 or more of the tours), which in turn made me a little apprehensive, but with no other options, that’s what I’ll be doing tomorrow!

Just call me Travel Agent Bobbi!

Asia ~ Japan ~ Fukuoka & Beppu

Once again, blogs have been few and far between, whoops. It’s been a month of accomplishments with my Japanese – I can now do many things in Japanese that I never before had the ability or courage to do: order pizza delivery over the phone, direct a taxi driver to my apartment, make travel arrangements with a travel agent and more. Most of these things are activities I never even had the opportunity to do in English, in Australia – I live in the sticks, so getting a taxi home, or getting pizza delivered has never been an option. I’m finally beginning to really function over here!

Gyoza at the gyoza restaurant in Hakata

Gyoza at the gyoza restaurant in Hakata

My friend Jen from home has been visiting me for the past two weeks, and it’s been a blast. I’ve taken her around to do plenty of things around Kyushu, including clubbing in Fukuoka (stumbling home at 7am after spending all night at “Happy Cock”, all you can drink for 2000 yen, who can go past that?!), horse races in Saga (where you go not to watch the races in Saga, but to bet on the races in Kyoto!), temples in Dazaifu (students are starting to cram, the temple was packed!), a home party drinking cocktails and eating oden in Kurume (and laughing the night away with crazy cousins!), bali style onsens in Chikushi (Jen’s first onsen!), sand onsens, hostels and “hell valley” in Beppu (natural bubbling colourful pits of sulphur water, reminiscent of what hell may look like), souvenir shopping at the many 100-yen shops in Fukuoka (and then finding a post office that will accept the 100-odd kg of souvenirs that Jen bought!) and shopping and watching movies at Canal City in Fukuoka (New Moon has FINALLY come out in Japan!).

Students tying their fortunes up at Dazaifu

Students tying their fortunes up at Dazaifu

Matt’s headed off on his next adventure – he is now in Taiwan looking for a job, leaving me in Japan all on my own… Never fear, with my newfound pizza (and sushi, curry, hotpot, Korean, Indian etc etc) ordering abilities, I think I should survive. Throw in the attention of my host sister and cousin (I have an accessible apartment in the city, a big bonus on a Saturday night when trains stop at 11:30pm! This Saturday night is the first I haven’t been out till 7am, and it was only because Jen was leaving early Sunday that I was excused!) and my other Japanese friends.

At the Moomin cafe in canal city. If you're lucky, Mr Moomin himself will come and sit at your table to help you drink your gingerbread hot chocolate (which is easily the best hot chocolate I've ever had, and so it should be at $8 a cup).

At the Moomin cafe in canal city. If you're lucky, Mr Moomin himself will come and sit at your table to help you drink your gingerbread hot chocolate (which is easily the best hot chocolate I've ever had, and so it should be at $8 a cup).

Now it’s back to work, sorting out my parents itinerary for when they rock up in two weeks time. We’ll be hiring a car (eek!) and traveling a bit of Kyushu before heading to Kyoto & Osaka for a couple a days, and then heading to China on the ferry. Just call me Travel Agent Bobbi!

The flights are booked…

And once again the plans are being drawn up. I’m off to Japan late July, managed to get two-for-one flights to Japan, score! We’ll spend a night up on the Goldcoast before heading off to Osaka. Tentative plans at this stage to spend a year in Japan/Asia – if Japan proves too expensive, we’ll move onto Taiwan or Korea. Anyone else planning on being in the area?

Two Waiguoren. Two Umbrellas. And a helluva lot of lightning!

Asia ~ China ~ Beijing

So I’m in holiday mode. Not going-around-the-world holiday mode, not crazy-busy-study-chinese-in-shanghai holiday mode, not bead-show-in-perth holiday mode, just plain HOLIDAY MODE! As such, I have very little of interest to write about. Every day has been a lazy crazy china kind of day…

Much of last week for me was spent in bed – turns out my body went into shut down at the thought of either a) dodgy chinese water/food or b) dodgy chinese hot weather and packed busses. Either way, I had a nice case of food sickness/heat stroke and spent most of my waking hours attempting to keep down the various Western Foods (combination of McD’s and Subway) down. Not nice. Feeling much better now – the question is, did I learn my lesson? Probably not, the dodgy chinese street food is soooo yummy, and it’s hard to stay cool on a crowded bus in Beijing’s summer.

Street food

Street food

We have spent most of the last week attempting to get to the various visa offices in Beijing. First stop was the Chinese Embassy to get an extension on Matt’s visa – it expires about a week before we’re due to leave China. Day one consisted of us getting up at about 4pm and realising that, even with superpowers, we’d never make the visa office in time. Day two we got up at about 3pm and realised the same thing. Day three saw us up at about 12pm – we were on the streets and down to our local metro station by 3pm, to find out that it is closed. For the next two weeks. Nice. Bus to the right area got us there by 5pm. Day four – we gave up. We’ll get the visa later. Similar story to us getting our visa for Mongolia (we’ve decided to head there for a week sometime soon) – except the visa office is only open 9am to 11.30am, not really convenient given our current predicament at leaving the apartment before dark.

We’ve spent our afternoons wandering town once the sun goes down, and we’ve seen some interesting sights. The other night, on our perpetual search for the perfect supermarket, we stumbled across a large group of mainly older chinese women dancing in unison. Maybe dancing is the wrong word – they were moving there arms and shaking their hips to popular western and chinese songs, with the vigour of an aerobics lesson. We joined the men on the grass as these women continued their exercise class for over an hour… Who would have thought that watching chinese women do the nutbush would be so entertaining.

Dancing to the beat

Dancing to the beat

Today/tonight we finally ventured out of our apartment at 8pm, in search of food. Our search led us to Wangfujin, where we wandered and finally settled on Japanese, mmmmm. Unfortunately, our walk home was not so nice, when is started pouring rain. Not so bad, considering we both had umbrellas. And then the lightning started. There’s nothing quite like walking through a lightning storm with an umbrella to get the heart racing.

Hope the weather is being kind to you all… Catch me on msn 🙂

bobs