Chuto Plaza Hotel Taoyuan

This was a busy week filled with new adventures....

Tuesday:
On Tuesday I went to take my test for my scooter license. Many foreigners here drive without a license, I did for the first 3 months, but I decided it was time to try my luck at the test. There a a health check, a written part and a driving portion to the test. There was a group of 6 of us that went with one of the Chinese teachers to help with translation. We first had the health check this involved ...

... signal and horn. People must've thought I was some deranged psycho who was honking at people for no reason and turning her signals on to mess with them. I had one last trip to make and of course it started to rain. I was pretty wet and unhappy by the time I got to the dorm (where I would be spending the night) and then had to head back out into the rain to order pizza at Pizza Hut. I got there, placed the order and then drove to Carrefour to try and ...

... the whole bathroom flooded. That and there were no real hostel staff around at any time. Overall...not a good place to stay. When my 3 friends arrived on Saturday...we went to the fancy hotel in Kaohsiung (Splendor) and got a room for only a bit more than what we would've paid at the hostel. This room was super posh and the bathroom was fantastic. Definitely one of the best places I have stayed in. Kaohsiung struck me as a very VERY quiet town with not a ...

... minutes searching for the ONE character I need...LOL). ÎÒ²» ÊÇ ÃÀ+ø ÈË ÎÒ ÊÇÒ»°ë ¼ÓÄôó ÈË, Ò»°ë °ÍÎ÷ ÈË. Äã ÄØ? The sentence above reads: "I am not American. I am half Canadian and half Brazilian. And you"? I can easily say some 50 words in Chinese...if not more. I can read and write about 30 or so. Those numbers are increasing daily and I can make quite a few sentences (using the words I already know) as well as order drinks and food ...

... Munich), but isn't the Caucasus mountains beautiful? Just wondering when Intrepid or G.A.P. will start offering tours to this region... 5. Central Asia: Also moved up two notches. Most of them are also former USSR republics like the Caucasus. Uzbekistan is the country I want to visit the most since I want to see some ancient silk road cities like Bukhara and Samarkand; I also want to see the magnificent Tian-Shan (Sky Mountain) in Kyrgystan and the home of ...

... in the heat. There is also a tangle of lanes and alleys between these streets. There is the MTR and an extensive bus system, but not all have English signage with their destination numbers and we do not have the time here to investigate them deeply. Where there are English translations it can be ambiguous, as some are direct translations of the Chinese characters and others are phonetic interpretations! The city tour covered the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial, the National Palace Museum ...

... park with a building and garden with hot water pools. The place is really beautiful, at least at the early time without any people. I look over the fence to see the facilities. A man tells me that they will only open at 9:00 am ( till 20:30 pm). He also confirms that they do not have a place to stay for the night. I won't have time to enjoy the hot spring, so I leave and continue my walk up to Taiping Shan. The first few cars and buses go up. They honk ...

Well this day i went to the game show. They where relly excited about games and suprisingly enough most of the venders could tell me about their products in english. I also got a tee-shirt from one of the people showing off hellsgate london, unfortunatly he spoke no english, what i didn't realize until ...

... tomorrow night to apply for a visa there, so that means I will miss two days of classes here. Any prayers for safe travel and that getting my visa will go smoothly would be much appreciated. I'm excited though just to see another Asian city. THE SOUNDS (at the moment) Just one last thing, but apparently the wireless internet in our apartment is not working, which is unfortunate since now I can't use my laptop to check my email, nor as often. I'm right now in an internet cafe ...