No Wrap-Up?

Apparently I never wrote a concluding email about Nagoya. That’s too bad because I had a good time there. Things I still remember…

• There was an awesome 800 Yen store. This is like a dollar store. I only bought a few random Japanese things but had fun looking at them for hours. I got the idea to go there from my flight attendant.

• The colors of Nike clothes in Japan are crazy fluorescent. I had fun picking up a few more random pairs of Dunks. I also got some pretty funny shirts (see Joel and BALLS).

• The train in from the airport is insanely fast. It goes at least 150 mph. For all I know, it could have been 250 mph (that whole metric conversion thing still baffles me).

• Since I rode the train in from the airport I decided to check some of my luggage at an airport holding place so that I wouldn’t have to lug it all with me. This was a brilliant plan until I bought too much shopping and needed to buy another bag to carry all my stuff back to the airport. It’s a good thing I’m a Premier Exec, otherwise it would have cost me a fortune to check all my luggage with United.

• I visited the Nagoya Castle. It is known best for its gold dolphins that adorn the roof. The gardens are very nicely manicured as well.

• When I first sat on the toilet in my hotel room I freaked out a little bit. It was REALLY warm. I quickly remembered that I was now in Japan… the land of the premium service toilet… the seat was set to “warm” on the 80 button remote control located on the wall to the right of the seat. Ahhh, the Japanese, what will they think of next?

• I had a good laugh coming through customs on my way back in to the US. The guy asked me the typical questions, including, “Was your trip for business or pleasure?” I said, “A little of both”. He then intently looked at my paperwork and looked at me. And looked at my paperwork and looked at me. This process continued at least three more times. He was a rather buff, intimidating, military type looking guy. Finally he asked me what I did. I told him I was an entrepreneur. He then asked the name of my company. I told him, “Dontcha Remember”. He looked up and glared at me. He then said very sternly, “I don’t. I see a lot of faces every day.” I grinned a little bit, which I don’t think he appreciated and then said, “no… the name of the business is Dontcha Remember”. He looked at me again like he wasn’t amused, then the light bulb went off. He grinned ever so slightly and welcomed me home.

Overall it was a really great trip. Reliving it now makes me long for another adventure… need to get on that… anybody want to go somewhere?

Katy

I'll See You Soon!

Hey All!

So I am writing to you from the first place I wrote… the Nagoya airport.
I had an action packed 20 hours in Japan but don’t have time to write
about it now. I must go board my flight. I’ll send one last concluding
email to wrap things up when I get stateside.

Katy :~>

WARNING: This is REALLY long so save it until you have time

I am currently sitting in the Silver Kris lounge in the Taipei airport. The phrase “time flies when you are having fun” is really, really, true. I think I have only shared with you guys the positives of this trip. There have been a few negatives but overall the time went EXTREMELY fast, so it MUST have been overwhelmingly positive.

If you are wondering what negatives I am referring to, they primarily have to do with Yi-Chen occasionally driving me crazy. For instance, I had never noticed how slowly she moves. I know that I am generally a fast walker but she is REALLY slow. I had a million and one things to do on my agenda and early on it became glaringly clear that they just weren’t going to happen. One thing that I had been telling Yi-Chen for months that I wanted to do was attend a Taiwanese baseball game. I however had NO ability to determine where and when because all of the schedules are written in Mandarin. She told me early on that we would attend a game on Tuesday night. I asked if she knew where this was and she assured me that she did. I asked her about this game at least once a day from Saturday up to Tuesday morning. On Tuesday afternoon when I asked her what time we needed to leave for the game she told me that she read the schedule wrong and the game was being played in the South of Taiwan. While Taiwan is not that big of an island it would have still been a three-hour train ride each way. Needless to say I never made it to my baseball game and I am really sad about that. There are a few other things that I wanted to get to and didn’t… but as I am sure my dad will say… I can always come back.

Before I continue with a few more generalizations I want to give you all a recap of the last two days, which I have failed to write about.

Tuesday 5/29/07

This was our first day back in Taipei after our three-day excursion around the east coast of Taiwan. On the bus tour there were many cool things that I wanted to stop and look at… but obviously I couldn’t because I was on a bus with 20 other people. In particular, there were two basketball hoops where I REALLY wanted to take a picture. As most of you know I like to collect pictures of hoops from around the world. Yi-Chen doesn’t understand this interest at all. It took me a good two hours of negotiations on the train to convince her of the importance of this to me and to why she should drive me the hour to find them. Her main argument was that she didn’t want to waste her time. Finally, she conceded and we agreed that she would pick me up at 8am to go on our adventure.

When Yi-Chen showed up on Tuesday morning she was not in a good mood. About 30 minutes into our drive she said this…
YS - “I am in a bad mood because I think my period is coming. What do you call this?”
KP – “PMS”
YS – “Yah, I want to be at home doing nothing… that’s what you should do when your period is coming and you have PMS.”
KP – “Do you mean you’d rather be watching Taiwanese soap operas? Because you claimed you didn’t want to drive me here because it was a waste of your time. Sitting at home doing nothing is the ultimate waste of time.”
YS – “Uhh (insert a little annoyed laughter)… I don’t know Katy… I just don’t really like adventure… I like security.”

Or it was something very similar to that.

I missed the enthusiasm to go out and experience stuff that I have shared during travel with most of you on this list serve. Yi-Chen said more than once that she doesn’t enjoy adventures and that makes me sad… even with that sentiment I managed to have quit a few adventures and I think that in the end Yi-Chen enjoyed them. It was funny though on the way to the airport this morning (Thursday) she said that we did A LOT and that she prefers a more leisurely vacation style.

Back to Tuesday…

I managed to get some really cool hoop pictures. I look forward to showing them to you all. After our trip out to the east coast shore we went to downtown Taipei. Our first stop was Taipei 101. For those of you that don’t know this is the highest building in the world. I convinced Yi-Chen to go to the top and boy was it cool. The elevator is so fast it is crazy. I believe it goes 600m a minute at the fastest point. Basically the ride to the top (384m) is about 40 seconds long. We were fortunate that the time we went to the top was probably the most clear hour that I was in Taiwan. You could see what seemed like forever. I really enjoyed it.

The next stop was the crafting area of Taipei. I was looking for fabrics and stickers for my mom. I was surprisingly unsuccessful. The fabrics were shockingly expensive (more pricey than Wal-Mart) and the stickers were all super cutesy and not Americanized at all. I imagine if you new EXACTLY where to go that there must be a place to find these things but Yi-Chen didn’t know where.

At this point Yi-Chen decided that she wanted to eat dinner at her house but understood that I likely would not want to do this. So we agreed that I would stay downtown until 9:30 where we would meet at a specified subway station. Yi-Chen and I picked up two subway maps, in Korean and Spanish because there weren’t any English maps to be found, and she marked them up for me with where we would meet and places that I should visit. I wanted to see Taipei’s big night market so that’s where I went first.

The Shinji Night Market is very similar to those I had previously visited in China. There are all kinds of supremely nastily cooked foods. Octopus on a stick was probably my favorite that I saw this time. There are endless vendors pushing all kinds of knocked off merchandise. The quality of this knocked of merchandise however didn’t seem to be nearly as good as those I saw in Beijing and Shanghai. The fellow I am sitting next to on the plane was telling me how more and more companies are doing their massive production in other Asian countries that have even cheaper labor than Taiwan. This may be why the merchandise seems to be more free flowing in Mainland China. I am VERY SORRY to report to Robin that I didn’t see any Burberry or Coach knockoff products that were remotely close to passing as real. Maybe we’ll find some in New York when you come to the shore this summer! :~> hint, hint…

The best part of the night market was that I finally found my proliferation of Nike merchandise. It’s really weird how stores distribute in Asia. There are literally 50 sporting goods stores located within 20 blocks of each other. Each store has slightly different prices (even if it is the same chain) and many have different types of merchandise. You all can only imagine how much fun I had. How many pairs of shoes do you think I bought? As Brittney Murphy says, “I’ll never tell”. I will say, however, if I buy anything else… and I do mean anything in Japan, then I will need to buy a new bag. I have three carry-ons as it is! Yes, this is against the rules, and no, no one cares. One of the bags is a shopping bag filled with food I don’t want to crush but still…

During all of my frenetic Nike and craft shopping I didn’t eat anything (from like 3:30 to 8:45). My sugar was good but at 8:45 I realized I was STARVING. I didn’t want to eat any street food, one because it looked gross, and two because I didn’t want to get the runs… so I headed for the first place I saw… McDonalds. What a wonderful experience. I finally found a Taiwanese person (not named Yi-Chen) who spoke pretty good English, the bathroom featured a western toilet and was clean (a rarity in Taipei). The best part however was the cheeseburger that I ate. I don’t know if Taiwan beef is special or if I was just really hungry but it was AMAZING! They also had Coke Zero on the fountain which was lovely. I had a thirty-two ounce soda with ICE. Heaven can’t be much better than that. The McD’s was connected to an entertainment area… for fun I wondered around in there and I found a mechanical bull. There was a Taiwanese male, probably in his late teens riding it… it was HILARIOUS. This guy really thought he was cowboy. I have pictures of this and will obviously show you all when I get home.

I ended up spending (no I’m not going to say how much money) all of my 5 hours without Yi-Chen in Shinji. When 9:10 rolled around I headed back to the subway with Korean and Spanish maps to meet Yi-Chen. I arrived to my station at 9:28 and headed to an exit. Yi-Chen called me (I borrowed Ling’s cell phone) to ask where I was right as I was exiting the station. She said that she didn’t see me (I didn’t see here either). I told her the name of my station and that I was by the “Hi-Life” (a local convenience store) next to exit 6. She said that she was at different station. And that she would come and get me. I went in the Hi-Life bought a Coke and waited on a pile-on by the street.

As I was waiting for Yi-Chen I had a great time watching the people ride their scooters. It is crazy how prolific scooters are in this society and how people ride them. I saw more than one woman dressed to the nines come out of the subway and hop on their boyfriend/husband’s scooter. They sit with their legs crossed hanging off to one side. I can’t believe they don’t fall off with the way they drive and take corners. I also saw lots of families on scooters. Sometimes you will see as many as four people on one regular sized scooter. From back to front there is an adult, kid, adult and kid. Usually the kid in the front is standing and the other three are sitting. You will also often see the parents wearing helmets and not the kids. I think this is weird. I would have thought it more likely to be the other way around. I don’t have any really good scooter pictures but we may be able to pick out a few of these things in the pictures of other stuff… because they truly are everywhere.

About 20 minutes after I talked to Yi-Chen she and Ling pulled up. Yi-Chen jumped out of the car and gave me a big hug. She was worried that she lost me. Evidently there are a lot of Hi-Life’s around the subway station and Yi-Chen couldn’t find me. She called me again but I didn’t answer the phone. Unbeknownst to me the phone battery died. Based on the car ride back to the hotel Yi-Chen really was worried that she lost me. I think this is because here Grandpa gave her a terrible time because she left me in downtown Taipei by myself. He was worried for my safety. The funny thing is that I wasn’t even the slightest bit worried for my safety or that Yi-Chen would find me. I was actually excited because it gave me the ability to move at my own pace without having to worrying about moving too fast (in general) or too slow (in the Nike stores) for Yi-Chen. Overall Tuesday was a very good day. It provided lots of good memories and merchandise with which to remember my trip to Taiwan.

Wednesday 5/30/07

I wore Yi-Chen out the previous 5 days so she decided that she wanted to start the day a little later. We agreed to meet at 9:30 (when did you ever think I would say 9:30 was later ;~) At around 9:30 my phone rang and it was Ling. She was in the lobby to get me. I met her and surprisingly there was no Yi-Chen. She was out doing something with her mom and grandma, so Ling was picking me up to take me back to her house. We had a nice ride and had fun practicing English. Evidently I am not as cool as Dad but I’m okay in Ling’s eyes.

It took Yi-Chen forever to get back to the house. I don’t know how long forever is but I do know that it felt like a long time. Since I couldn’t really communicate with Grandpa I decided to free the Su dog that no one likes. The Su’s have four Maltese’s. One is Ling and Yi-Chen’s (Shinju) that lives on the second floor. The other three live downstairs in the main hall in cages. Two share a cage (Lottery and ?) and then there is Mimi. Mimi lives in her own cage and no one likes her. Evidently they think she is dumb because she doesn’t go CRAZY when strangers enter the house. I liked that about Mimi. I took her out and played with her the whole time we waited for Yi-Chen. Grandpa told me that I should take her back to the States with me. I would have considered this if not for the whole customs thing… and the mom kicking me out of the house thing ;~>

Eventually Yi-Chen returned and Ling, Yi-Chen, Grandma and I went to the local grocery market. This was lots of fun. It would best be described as a Taiwanese Fred Meyer. It had a little bit of everything, with a heavy concentration on food, but not as big as Wal-Mart or Target. I bought all kinds of fun food there. If they don’t make me give up my third carry on tomorrow, then you all will be able to try it Thursday. We waited in line and checked out. I paid for my stuff and Yi-Chen proceeded to try and steel my receipt. I didn’t let here have the Visa slip but I eventually gave her the rest of it. I asked her why she wanted it so much and she said they were going to write it off as a business expense. I asked her how the heck that works, when it clearly says that I paid for it but she just shook her head and says that it does. I questioned her more about this since she is CPA for Heaven’s sake! She said that was accepted ethical behavior in Taiwan and I just laughed. On the way out of the store Yi-Chen and Grandma decided that they needed to go back and buy more toilet paper. This was hilarious because they had already purchased an entire cart full (dad would like these people). Ling and I went ahead and loaded the car. I asked her why they needed more and she said that if they bought one more today, then they got a free lotion or something. I didn’t understand this because it was just a lotion and they would have to get in line again and find it and on and on. But the Taiwanese love their free products. I won’t write it now but remember to ask me about 7-11’s and Hello Kitty.

After the grocery store we went to lunch. Yi-Chen told me to go upstairs and get a table in the place we were eating… she would bring the food. On the way up the stairs I looked down and saw two dead cockroaches above the kitchen. My lunch tasted really good after that. I really had to go to the bathroom but I decided it wasn’t worth the potential risk of what I might find. We ate pretty fast and then we were off to my potential gravy separator factory.

I’m not sure if the factory was what I was expecting. It was pretty ghetto but so is most of Taiwan. The bottom line is that the price is cheaper here but it may not be cheaper enough to make it worth the headache of doing business overseas. I plan to go and see the place Tim Stokes found in Corvallis after I return home and a final decision can be made about this. I can give more detail about this but I won’t take the time now.

After the factory we took Grandma and Ling back to their house. Yi-Chen and I then when back to Taipei for my last night in town. We started out the evening together in the part of town where all the young people hang out. I can’t remember the name. Yi-Chen wanted to buy some Hello-Kitty boxers. This area again had a similar feeling to that of a night market… but it was a little more permanent, and little nicer. Something I have failed to mention until now is the absolute PROLIFERATION of grab machines in Taipei. They are EVERYWHERE and so are their bounties (Ling’s car has all kinds of little animals hanging from the windshield and dashboard). I must admit Yi-Chen and I had some fun playing them. I do have a picture of these, so you all can see how grab machine crazy the culture is. At around 6ish Yi-Chen went off to meet some of her Taiwanese friends for dinner. I was invited to go but I decided that I would rather shop more. I went in a bunch of random little places and picked up all kinds of gifts for both now and later (some of my Christmas shopping is done already…)

Yi-Chen and I had made plans to meet back at the subway where we started at 9:30. She called me at around 9:05 got five words out of her mouth and then the phone battery went dead again. Yi-Chen is not very detail oriented with things like charging phones, which is scary since as an auditor detail is her business. Anywho… I would have liked more time to shop but since I couldn’t call her to finish our conversation I hoped that she would just stick to the original plan. By coincidence we ended up riding the same train back to our original station. My playtime in Taiwan was over. As I write this last line my plane is starting to descend into Nagoya. I am off for one last day of adventure. I miss you all and will send this when I can.

Katy

SOOOO Tired

It’s amazing how tired you can get from shopping.

I have a ton to say about the last two days but no energy to write it.
I have to go to the airport at 6:30 tomorrow morning and it is
already 1am. I am spending the next day and half in Japan (Nagoya)
and then I will be home Friday.

I will do my best to write out the travel blog on the plane
tomorrow… but for now I must sleep.

Katy

Taroko National Park

So now it is Monday the 28th. I am again on a train. This time Yi-Chen and I are heading from Hualien to Taipei. I will be returning to the hotel I stayed in on the first two nights for the remainder of my time in Taipei.

I had a great day today. We spent the majority of our time in Taroko National Park. This place is truly something that cannot be put into words. You all will have to see the pictures to truly appreciate the beauty of God’s work. The canyons in this place are unreal. I hope that my pictures will be able to do it some justice but I fear that they may not because it is extremely difficult to capture the massive changes in elevation.

Yi-Chen just told me for the 1000 time on this trip that her dog is cute. It is the screen saver on her phone and every time she opens it, which is often, she tells me this. I have met this dog and it has a severe case of “shortman” syndrome. I would not call it cute but I digress.

We had some fun looking for basketball hoops today. I am little disappointed that our chauffeur didn’t have the adventurous spirit of Ron Tyree. There was one GREAT hoop with a factory behind it but it was on the factory’s property. It looked to me like we could have taken a road down to it but Yi-Chen refused to push the point for me and I couldn’t get it across myself. Oh well, I have a few others that are pretty cool and hope to get more.

I am sure that there is more to be said but my brain isn’t interested in cooperating. I will have however give you a short list of things that I already miss from the US.

1. No surprise here… Western toilets.
2. Men (and women for that matter) that pluck and or shave their mole hair. I kid you not that I have seen at least 5 guys with mole hairs exceeding 6 inches.
3. ICE. People seem to not use ice here. This is hard to understand because it is like a billion degrees outside.
4. Water pressure… I believe that I have clogged at least 10 toilets because I can’t seem to remember that you are not supposed to flush the toilet paper. Try to remember this sometime… it’s impossible.
5. Mexican and Italian food, Egg Beaters and real dessert. I have seen a single Mexican restaurant. The one piece of pizza I saw had corn as a topping. You can’t find skim milk, so there is no way in hell that you can find Egg Beaters. Yesterday Yi-Chen took me to have “the best Chinese Ice Cream”. I told her to order me her favorite. She brought me back something with kidney beans… seriously.
6. Towels that are bigger than wash clothes. Two nights ago that was the only type of towel the hotel provided. This is exponentially more annoying than having a small towel at home because you can’t get dry with the humidity as it is.
7. The THURSDAY NIGHT CREW! Nough said…

That last point reminds me… I want everyone (hope this is okay mom) to come over on Thursday the 7th for Taiwan night. I am bringing home all kinds of goodies for you to try. Hopefully mom will cook up some Asian food (pot stickers, fried egg rice, teriyaki chicken and cabbage maybe). D-Nelly you of course have to approve of this idea because it is your birthday week. If you want to wait to the next week for Taiwan night we can but I am afraid much of my food will go bad.


Katy

Taiwanese Soap Operas

Hello Everybody.

I am currently riding on a train from Ilan to Hualien. It is supposed to be a two-hour train ride. The trains seem to run on time here so we should arrive at Hualien at around 4:30pm. One of Yi-Chen’s dad’s friends is going to pick us up and take us to our hotel. Hopefully they will have the Internet because then I will be able to send this to you.

This morning we woke up and Yi-Chen was driving me crazy because she was too hooked on Taiwanese soap operas to find out what the plan was for the day. It’s funny when you are totally helpless in a foreign country. I REALLY wanted to know the plan and I had no way of figuring it out except to wait for Yi-Chen. Eventually when I said I was leaving to go get on the Internet, Yi-Chen gave in and came with me.

Our first stop with the tour group was at the Taiwanese liquor factory. There are some funny things about this place. The most popular brand of beer in Taiwan seems to be “Taiwan Beer”… it is made by the government. The government is also the leading producer of cigarettes in Taiwan. Imagine the lawsuits that would result from that in the States!

Next we went to a visitor’s center where the curriculum was based on shrimp, crabs and fish. I can’t think of the name of it now but it is on some of my photos. Our first activity at the center was fishing. We learned to fish with net traps. I caught FOUR fish! It was totally old school and fun. It made me feel like I was on Lost or was a Survivor all-star or something. Yi-Chen didn’t get in the water but I had fun chasing the fish over to her and she managed to catch a few that way.

There was a wedding going on at the center in the area where we were eating. That was an interesting thing to watch. This will be best described in pictures. You and I beat the pants of this shindig mom. I think that we should become wedding planners in Taiwan. Yi-Chen claims this is a lucrative business and if this event was an example of the competition, then we are golden.

This evening we just messed around in Hualien. We had some friends of Yi-Chen’s dad pick us up at the train station and then show us around town. We went to a cool lookout over the Pacific Ocean. Yi-Chen told me that I swim home because mom was probably missing me. I did a quick calculation and decided that swimming six thousand miles was probably not the best option for me ;~>

We went to dinner in a fun little place for the locals. We had some really good stir fry noodles and pork and some egg flower soup. The whole meal for both Yi-Chen and I cost a whopping six dollars. It was probably my favorite meal of the trip. This is funny because two nights ago Yi-Chen’s dad bought us fish that cost $180US dollars per kilo. That fish couldn’t hold a candle to tonight’s six-dollar dinner.

There is no Internet connection in the house we are staying in tonight, so you won’t get this until tomorrow. I will send it when I get the chance.

I hope everyone is well.

Katy :~>

Have You Ever Seen So Many Moose Knuckles?

Well hello everybody…

I am currently sitting on the most pimped tour bus I have ever seen. It puts greyhound to shame. The seats are very wide and have like five message settings. Because we are in Taiwan the video system is equipped with karaoke and no I am not kidding. Fortunately, no one has wanted to sing this early in the mourning. Instead they are playing a DVD of Mission Impossible. It is playing with English audio and Chinese subtitles. We are currently headed to a town called Ilan. It is in the northeastern part of Taiwan. The drive is quite pretty. There are huge mountains directly next to the shoreline that make for some hairy turns but breathtaking views. I haven’t had too many opportunities to take good pictures of this but I imagine that we will when we stop.

It seems to be cooler today but Yi-Chen claims that it is because the sun is still behind the clouds. She may be right but it probably also has something to do with the fact that it is only 7 in morning. I obviously won’t be able to send this while on the bus so insert a pause here. I will continue this email when more noteworthy events occur.

The next stop on the bus tour was some temple celebrating some god. I know that sounds vague and like I am disinterested but there are so many gods in the Daoism that I find myself having a lot of trouble remembering who, what, where, when and why. Yi-Chen just reminded me that this temple featured the “god of alcoholism.” There is a little something lost in translation here. But it may be best summed up with this anecdote. As we approached the temple there was a monk out in front doing his thing. “His thing” consisted of being very drunk and tying a bunch of fire crackers to his back and then setting them off. You think I am joking but I am not. It was crazy and the guy looked sincerely out of it. Yi-Chen says that the guy likely will heel very quickly from his fire cracker injuries and that his drunkenness will stop at the drop of a hat. I obviously don’t believe this because the guy looked absolutely trashed. Yi-Chen assured me that this also was not an act, the guy really was as drunk as he looked.

Walking around these temples and witnessing this religion makes me so thankful that I was born in the US and know Jesus Christ. So much of the ritualistic behavior seems counterintuitive to how a relationship with ones god should be. For instance, there is this dice like game that you have to play to determine if you are allowed to talk to the god of the temple you are in. If you succeed in getting him to grant you time, then you find his answer by pulling a sheet out of a box. It’s kind of like using an advent game as the basis of your life. I just can’t imagine this. I love the fact that I can talk to my Lord whenever I want and know that He hears me. I pray that some day these people find that too.

The next temple we visited was in honor of the god of the sea. This was a very popular temple because we were in a port town named Suaou. The main feature in the temple was a very large gold statue of this god. Yi-Chen decided that we should steel it and use the proceeds for our own pleasure. Didn’t sound like a bad idea to me. We ran into logistical problems, however, when we realized the statue weighed like 1000 pounds. So we decided it would just be better if we went to lunch.

For lunch we went with our group to some prearranged “gourmet” meal. I’m thinking that the non-adventurous eaters in this crowd would have been very unhappy. Bailey, in particular would have suffered because there was not a single meal without an animal byproduct. Most of the things I ate were good, the only problem was that there was a definite expectation to try everything. Therefore, I have had lots of new foods, most of which I hope to never have again. One in particular Yi-Chen said was bamboo, this I thought sounded interesting, so I willingly tried it. My description would be that it tasted like many of the bathrooms over here smell. Lovely I know… turns out Yi-Chen was wrong… this particular item was actually the small intestine of a very large fish. This of course didn’t surprise me since I thought it tasted like a restroom.

Speaking of rest rooms I don’t think that I will ever get used to squat toilets. I made it through my entire trip in China with dad without ever using a squat toilet. I have not been so fortunate here. I think the difference is that dad and I primarily visited tourist attractions and with Yi-Chen we are going where the locals go. The locals don’t go in western toilets. Oh well… I’m getting better at it.

This afternoon we went to Dongshan River Park and the National Center for Traditional Art. It was a little slow paced but interesting enough. We saw some traditional dances and amazing bamboo carvings. We also went on a river boat ride which was wonderfully timed because it was hot as heck outside.

While I am thinking of them I want to note some of the random fun facts of Taiwan:

1. There are still way less ex-pats than I expected. I am the only white person we have seen today.

2. Cops drive with their lights on at all times. If they are in an emergency or pulling someone over, then they use their sirens.

3. Taiwanese people seem to not wear sunglasses. It was very bright out this afternoon and I saw maybe three pairs.

4. Ling (Yi-Chen’s sister) and 95% of Taiwanese women use umbrellas rain or shine… literally.

5. Manners, at least as we would think of them, don’t exist here. Men and women burp loudly here without so much as a reaction (tell your mom Ilsa). Nose picking is the norm (as well as crotch picking). And these things say nothing about the food slurping. I didn’t know it was possible to slurp things that aren’t liquid but evidently it is. Joel you wouldn’t even have to hum to hide your farts because no one cares.

6. DRINKING… it is amazing how much the people drink here. At lunch there were at least 20 toasts. I don’t know how they do it and it is not just the men. The one woman who was at our table probably outdrank the guys. If that is required to do business here, then my business may have to stay on shore.

7. I have never seen so many moose knuckles in my life. I think the reason that most Asian people are short is because they restrict blood flow to certain parts of their anatomy because of the height of their pants. $50 bucks says that no one has ever seen a plumber’s crack here.


I think that two pages is plenty for you all to wake up to. Yi-Chen has a short message below that she typed while we were on the bus.

I hope everyone is well and I will write again soon.

Katy

“Hi! John and Leslie,

This is yichen saying hi to you….Hope you doing well. Visit me next time.”


I can’t help but just add one more quick thing about tonight’s dinner… Karaoke is seriously EVERYWHERE… Yi-Chen’s dad was belting out the songs… HILARIOUS… Ling sang too… I have video (not great quality) that gets the point across. I really wish you all could be here to experience it with me. Maybe next time… and Dad there better be a next time and you better be here or Ling and Yi-Chen won’t forgive you. Ling says she misses you and that she misses mom’s corn pudding. Yi-Chen says that she will visit you in the summer mom and she expects you to make her pudding.


Till Tomorrow,
Katy

The World's Bravest Man

Hey Y’all…

It’s nearly 1am here and I am pretty tired. I got going early as this morning and we went all day. It was really hot here today, so Yi-Chen decided that we should give up on our agricultural pursuits and the peach picking plan. Instead we visited two factories (her dad’s and one of their friends). While Robin and Danelle are thinking that sounds like the most boring day ever, it was actually really fun and interesting. Yi-Chen’s was slightly more ghetto than I was expecting and the hi-tech factory we went to was way nicer than I anticipated. I have pictures of some of this that you all can see when I get home.

After the factories we went to Yi-Chen’s house. It was totally different than 99.9999999 percent of American homes. They have two dining room tables, the one they usually use and then the one that seats 20 people! (It makes your measly 14 person table look weak mom). The best part about this table is that it has the biggest lazy susan I have ever seen. The house also has a very pretty view looking over a valley and some mountains. Taiwan really is a beautiful place. The vast variety of altitudes make for some pretty cool backdrops to every day life.

The place we went for lunch was super ghetto and super good. I thought Yi-Chen may have been lost when she was leading me there. You go behind this street vendor’s spread and head down a very steep set of stairs. At the bottom of the stairs there are like 20 women working in a totally open kitchen making sushi. When you turn around and look under the stairs you see tables that probably seat 20. I believe that I was the only whitey to visit this establishment this week, month, year and maybe even ever. I have been completely surprised by how few white people I have seen. In all of our adventures today I only saw 4 others and we even spent a little time in downtown Taipei.

I think that the highlight of the day had to be this evening’s karaoke experience. It is so foreign and so hard to describe that I really don’t even know where to begin. Yi-Chen and I met up with five of her friends from high school at “Party World”. This place had to be like 100,000 sq feet. It was huge! The layout is similar to a hotel. The first floor has a large lobby type area with a bar and karaoke. The subsequent floors look hotel hallways. Like in a hotel, you sign in and get assigned a room. An escort takes you to your room and fills out your time card. Inside there is a large couch that could probably seat 10 but worked nicely for the seven of us. There is a large (probably 42”) plasma screen, some seriously loud speakers, two microphones and a computer to select the songs. The walls have two phones with direct lines to wait service for drinks and food. I had some Chinese dumplings that were very good. Once the singing started the party was on. It is amazing the seriousness with which these girls sing. I couldn’t help but laugh more than a few times and the WHOLE time I was wishing that you were there Bailey. The English library wasn’t huge but B you would be happy to know that they had A Whole New World and Beauty and the Beast, among other Disney favorites. Yi-Chen is a surprisingly good singer in Chinese but her English singing leaves something to be desired… or maybe that was me messing up how those sounded ;~> There is so much more to say about the karaoke but I will let the pictures and video… oh yes I have video… do the explaining.

The teaser photo of today is from this morning. I forgot to mention that we went to a temple with incredibly ornate and amazing architecture. We spent a little time wondering around the surrounding area of the temple and I happened to see the world’s BRAVEST man. If you don’t get it, then I will tell you the story sometime.

We are off at 6:30am (I know I may die) tomorrow morning to a new part of Taiwan. I don’t know how my Internet connectivity will be but I will do my best to write again before I return to Taipei in three days.


Katy :~>

Golf Courses Are Pretty

Good morning everybody! It’s 9am and I am down at breakfast enjoying an amazing view. It turns out the golf course isn’t hard to find at all… it’s right outside my window. In the dark of last night I couldn’t see it but the course is directly behind the pool on all three sides. This is backed up by some pretty cool looking totally lush green mountains. It’s overcast and apparently pretty hot because when I left my room and went out into the hall a heat wave it me. Fortunately the AC in my room works great.

The food of this breakfast leaves something to be desired. It is described as “western” but I think they are talking about Japan or something. There are lots of soups and noodles and pork flakes (I’ll stick with my Frosted Flakes thanks ;~) I think that I am going to be very happy that I brought enough Luna bars to feed a small army.

Today’s agenda should be fun. Yi-Chen and I are going to spend the morning messing around in her town and seeing some ancient temples they have. In the afternoon she tells me that we are going to go Peach picking. Evidently it is “peach” season and that is the thing to do right now. We’ll see how that goes. The most exciting thing about today is the evening. We are going to go into downtown Taipei with Ling and some of her friends to sing karaoke. I fully expect this to be one of the most entertaining things that I have ever seen. I’ll let you all know how it goes.

Katy :~>

Tiger Woods Played Here?

I have safely arrived in Taiwan. My flight from Nagoya was nice. I had an empty seat next to me, so the man of my dreams still hasn’t been found, but the extra space was enjoyable. The service was excellent… which reminds me… I want Joel to know that in 14 hours of flying time I only consumed two cans of diet soda. The rest of the time I drank water. You should be proud.

I arrived in Taiwan about 30 minutes early. Customs was a breeze and my bag was the second one off the plane. Fortunately, Yi-Chen had checked ual.com so I only had to wait around for 10 minutes or so. We went straight out the airport doors to Ling waiting in the car. Surprisingly Ling is an excellent driver. I only feared for my life and those of the wild animals on the streets (mostly cats and dogs) twice in the hour or so that we drove around tonight.

The airport is kind of out in the boonies, so I haven’t seen Taipei yet. We came straight out to the Su’s town which is called Dashi. Yi-Chen guesses that 100K people live here but it backs up closely to other towns with 100K people… so it feels bigger… yet totally unlike anything you would find anywhere I have ever been in the US. The roads are generally very small and many of the buildings show their age. This is interesting because it comes in contrast to the bright Chinese characters and signs that we all associate with Asian cities. We are planning to see some temples and wander around the town more tomorrow.

My hotel is very nice… I was slightly nervous because Yi-Chen booked my accommodations for me. By Asian standards I would describe my room as HUGE… which means it is probably average US size. I have a very nice balcony with a pretty view of the pool. There is supposedly a golf course around somewhere (on the hotel grounds) that was good enough to attract Tiger Woods attention. I have no plans to play it but hope to go and see it. The best part of all this is that my room comes with free breakfast and I am only paying half of what I had originally planned to pay when I was booked at the Sheraton. (More shopping money mom!)

It is now 9:45pm and I am getting very tired. This is great because I anticipate having no downtime because of jet lag. I hope you all enjoy this when you get up (or when you read it Jason since you are already up).

Have a great day.

Katy :~>

Nagoya is Hot

Hello my friends and family…

Since some of you are counting on me for vicarious thrills (dad) this week I thought I would start it off right by updating you all on my adventure thus far. If you’d like to be removed from these mailings then just let me know.

So far today has been an adventure. I started off on a little less than an hours sleep. I left the house with dad at 4:15am to catch my flight to San Fran. While sitting on the plane I was tapped by an old friend who was boarding and we made arrangements to talk in San Fran after arrival. The flight itself was fine. I wanted to sleep but couldn’t. After arriving at SFO I spent the first hour listening to what this friend has been up to for the last 2 years. This was interesting/crazy/sad… I won’t bore you all with the details now but you can ask me to fill you in later if you’d like.

After an additional three hours in SFO I tried to board my flight to Nagoya… this is when I knew I was really tired. Instead of trying to board my flight I attempted to get on the one to Norita, evidently I REALLY wanted to sit in 15H. When the boarding pass reader rejected me the lady looked at my ticket smiled and sent me to my proper gate (just so you know Joel I don’t think that I have EVER done this before). Not to fear my correct flight wasn’t boarding for another 10 minutes. Dad would be proud that I was second one on board. I put my bags above my seat (8A is a bulkhead for those of you that aren’t dad) and waited to see the arrival of my seat mate. Boy was that entertaining. I still haven’t figured out if the 60ish year old 5’2” Asian guy was Japanese or Chinese but his outfit was AWESOME! He had on some beautiful, poop brown, supere tight polyester plaid pants with a black and white pinstripe sport coat. This was topped off with the largest brown fanny pack you have ever seen and some beautiful florescent cartoon colored socks. As soon as I realized that I wouldn’t be meeting my future husband on his flight I was out. I don’t remember takeoff… I woke up at some point and flipped on my map. It said that we had been in the air for 2:49. I was starving and promptly fed some of the best airline food I have ever had. It was short rib steak with half a twice baked baked potato… I shouldn’t havehad the cheesecake but it was caramel and I did (it was a really small airline style piece ;~). After this I watched “Freedom Writers”. I enjoyed it. Then I slept for another five or so hours, ate a fruit plate and landed in Nagoya.

I have never been to this airport before but I am enjoying it. It is extremely clean and has some of the most entertaining signage one has ever seen. The workers are mpeccably clean and matching. There also seem to be at least two to do every one man’s job. While I wouldn’t want to pay for this (I suppose I kind of am), it certainly makes for wonderful service.

The “club” in this airport is not United branded but I think just a made up whatever for all of the Star Alliance members to share. I am attaching a picture as to why I would rate it in my top five of all time (Bali will be hard to beat dad… that view was GREAT). I am however sitting in a very comfy chair overlooking the plane I just flew 6000 miles on and an amazingly expansive body of water. I’m not sure what body because I don’t know what direction I am facing.

I hope I didn’t bore you all to death. I have about another hour until my flight to Taipei departs. I want to go and explore the airport some but I promise to at least try and write again soon.

Love to all and let me know if any of you want me to bring home anything specific from Asia!

Katy :~>

PS Mom… don’t worry… I haven’t eaten what is in the picture… yet ;~>