Santos Taipei

... on the right as you enter and the usual temple crowd with people holding way too much incence than was necessary. I took a quick walk around to see what was good and took some photos. I sat in the courtyard looking at everyone praying and it was quite a relaxing moment ... temples seem to have that effect on me, no matter how busy it is I'm always at ease. After that, I decided to make use of my tripod that I bought and set it up in the front to take a ...

... shops around it. Mike managed to haggle a price at a dept store [very quickly actually]. We ate at a Japanese style place. Later we headed to the Brass Monkey where we bumped into Ada, who happens to be a friend of a friend [Robert] from Chiayi whom I'd met over Christmas.

... passed very close the previous week.  The area was very much an excursion area: lots of tourist traps, of which the most interesting was the Yeliu peninsula, where erosion by wind and water has created extraordinary rock shapes, such as the Queen's Head rock. Returning to the city, I went to what was recently overtaken as the highest building in the world (by one in Dubai), Taipei 101, which refers to the number of floor above ground.  As, unlike in Chicago or New York, it ...

... stayed a few feet away from the windows for the rest of the tour. From one side of the building we could see this parking lot that only had scooters in it. With being such a tall building, they had to design something to counteract the force of the wind from making the building move. We were told that many tall buildings have a stabilization device, but it's not open to the public. This building uses a huge steel ...

There's only one flight per day from San Francisco to Taipei on China Air (the airline I used since they have a partnership with Delta). It left at 1:30 a.m. so I was at the airport at 11:00 to allow myself plenty of time. My housemate Janet was kind enough to drive me there and see me off. The ...

... LOL. We stopped by this seafood restaurant and took pictures of all the super fresh (as in...still alive) seafood they had on display. We made our way into the park and just started marveling at the rock formations and the shapes that erosion had left behind. It was pretty impressive actually. While April, Meghan and 'Joanna' (our Taiwanese tour guide) took pictures in one corner...I walked over to another corner and encountered a Korean couple on vacation (I assumed). The woman was into ...

... New Zealand have a lot in common geographically as they are both islands that were formed by volcanic eruptions in the oceans. Another thing they have in common is that they both have a lot of Chinese people! After visiting this national park, Ruby took me to have lunch at a restaurant famous for its exquisite steamed, soup-filled dumplings. It was a delicious meal! As the restaurant was located in the Sogo Department Store, I took the opportunity to do some shopping. I found a ...

... an English name, and her Chinese name is impossible for me to say) went to Alishan, another mountain a few hours away earlier this week to see them there too. The trees were pretty - nice big clumps of light pink flowers everywhere, with a couple of dark pink trees too. The light pink flowers are the same type that you see in Japan, and the darker ones are more Taiwanese (so I've been told). The temple itself was really impressive ...

... to have people coming with a cargo aircraft. Nevertheless, he picked us up and drove us to our hotel. It took about 2 hours since there were traffic jams on the highway... Can you imagine that on a Sunday night ? Then after check in and quick stop in the room, we went to eat