Taiwan Re-cap

I’ve been most delinquent in getting this posted – but in my defense there was a sick T that needed to be nursed back to health, plus a horrid summer cold that did me in for a few days. Not that those excuses hold much water, but they’re all I’ve got.

Here goes:

We left for Taiwan on Friday night – flight left LA at 1 a.m. Quite possibly the best flight I’ve ever been on in my life. Although the ambien might’ve had something to do with that as well. Managed to sleep for about 6-7 hours (I was actually asleep before the plane left the terminal) and then killed the rest of the time watching movies and talking to the guy next to me. He was on his way from Florida to Viet Nam to visit his family. Garnered some wisdom – when in Viet Nam, best place to exchange your cash is the black market.

Unlike in Anaheim when we arrived at the hotel, The Howard Plaza Hotel, our room was ready for us, plus we had a breakfast voucher for each of us for every day we were there. Nice accommodations. Even had a copy of “The Teachings of Buddha” in the nightstand along with the New Testament.

Being the adventurous sorts that we are we decided to walk from the hotel to the conference center so T could pick up her materials/etc. Uhm, not the smartest move on our parts. Let me describe the weather in Taipei City while we were there: temperature at 9 a.m. – 35 C (which converts to 95 F) and while I have no data on the humidity, I’ll put it this way, walking from the door of the hotel to the corner, a distance of maybe 100 yards you were drenched (soaked through t-shirt) in sweat. To say we were sweaty/smelly is not exaggerating in the least bit.

Oh – biggest thing that was hard to get used to? Being stared at. Worse for T, her being a tall woman, but still felt like everyone was looking at me at times.

Best Experience: Tuesday night we went to dinner with all the people in attendance that were associated with the University of Oregon (all of T’s lab mates). One of the current students in the lab is from Taipei. Her parents treated us all to a nice sit-down dinner. There were 12 of us, all seated around a large round table. Table had a giant lazy susan in the middle. The people from the restaurant came in and asked if there were any food preferences – T piped up, no beef. Next thing, food just starts appearing. You just rotated the lazy susan until you could get what you wanted. Not sure all of what I ate, but I do know that the shrimp were to die for!

Learned a Taiwanese and Japanese toast that night – gan bei (Taiwanese) and kampei (Japanese). Means the same thing in both languages: bottoms up! Lucky for me as we went around the table I’m not sure how many times toasting everyone individually with this, that in Asia they drink out of what we would consider juice glasses. Helped on the individual toasts but they did add up. Amongst the 12 of us we consumed 23 L of beer.

After dinner we went for a traditional Chinese foot massage – wow, was that nice. For $55 US T and I each received a 15 minute head/neck massage followed by a 45 minute foot/ankle/calf massage. To say it was relaxing doesn’t do it justice!

As you’ve seen in the pictures we took a tour of the northeast coast region, later that night we ventured out to one of the night markets. Only way to describe the night market is part flea market, part “taste of…” festival, and part black market. And we managed to get there and back on mass transit.

Last night there was spent at the National Palace Museum, gala put on by the conference. Had the chance to see some great artwork/pottery. I can honestly say I’ve seen Ming dynasty vases.

Flight home – ugh. Too long, too bumpy, not as good of seats as the flight over. Then we had to spend the night in LA before flying home on Saturday.

All in all…great experience. Once in a lifetime experience. As I/we wade through more pics, some more might show up on here.