Tag Archive for 'taipei'

Circumference

Published by Kevin & Cathy on October 23, 2007 in Around Taiwan Trip, General, Taiwan and Video.   259 views 1 Comment

We leave tomorrow for our around-island trip of awesomeness. (you do know Taiwan is an island, right?)

We start by heading down the east coast towards Hualien. The next morning we drive through the Taroko gorge (pronounced tie-roo-guh) before staying at a five star resort in the heart of the gorge. The next couple nights we’ll spend in the southern part of the island visiting hot spring resorts and beaching, before visiting Cathy’s uncle in the South.

The rest of the trip, we’ll figure out as we go, but the most interesting part of the trip by far will be the rock-sissors-paper match between Kevin and Cathy to see who gets the to use the wide-angle lens in the gorge. (We’ll post the play-by-play)

We leave you with a clip of the trip semi-planning-session at Cathy’s aunt’s house, where everybody had more than enough to say about where to go and what to do.

“bla bla bla bla bla bla bla…. that would be where.”

(bla bla bla = Cathy trying to explain what sailing is, because she doesn’t know the actual word, and asking where to find sailing.)

GPS, online!

Published by Kevin & Cathy on October 22, 2007 in General and Taiwan.   1,114 views 2 Comments

Well, we got our GPS logger figured out!

DG-100 Data Logger
Our Globalsat DG-100 Data Logger records our GPS position every 10 seconds as we walk around Taipei (or bus, or train).

After a few days, we can download the data, map it and link it with the photos we’ve taken so we know exactly where we took them.

Google Maps ScreenshotWe’re still getting the hang of it, but you can see a Google Maps Log of our travels over the past few days!

In other news, we’ve started planning our “Around-Taiwan” tour of the whole island. We’ve booked a few hotels, and figured out our first couple days. We’ll spend about a week starting down the east coast, to Taroko National Park and down to the south part of Taiwan, where we’ll be staying at a 5-star hotsprings resort. We’ll figure the rest of the trip out on the way, but we’ll visit with Cathy’s uncle for a few days in the south before returning up the west coast back to Taipei.

5 million scooters?

Published by Kevin & Cathy on October 20, 2007 in General, Taiwan and Video.   231 views 0 Comments

Rumor has it that Taipei has 5 million scooters riding around every day. (By rumor, I mean, Cathy’s dad said that.)

This is the intersection right by the MRT station where we get off all the time. It’s on he ping east road. (和平東路)

It’s all about the people

Published by Kevin & Cathy on October 20, 2007 in General, Taiwan and Video.   246 views 0 Comments

Taiwan is filled with people. Everywhere. All the time.

We visited the morning market. Think of it as a night market, but in the morning, and with more groceries. It is called 菜市場. (The direct translation would be grocery / vegetable market).

If you think this is crazy, just wait till we post a video of the night market.

One of our favorite transportation in Taipei is the MRT (捷運). It’s an amazing skytrain system that works with a magical RFID card that tracks your trips and you can put more money on it as you wish. (you can also use the card in various parking lots and street parking). It’s called the easy card. We have spent $1000 NT (approximately $30+ CDN) in the last week. It is considerably cheap as we traveled all over Taipei every single day.

The video is taken in one of the bigger stations - Zhongxiao fuxing (忠孝復興). It’s where we switch from the MuZha line to the Banqiao (Banciao) /Nangang Line.

Kevin & Cathy’s first post in Taipei, Taiwan.

Published by Kevin & Cathy on October 18, 2007 in General, Taiwan and Video.   314 views 4 Comments

Okay- So!

We have been in Taipei, Taiwan for a week. It has been a blast. (for those of you who are geographically challenged, here is a map of Taiwan.)

We recorded a first “hello” video for people who might be missing us. (or people who we think should be missing us) You can see it at the end of this post.

We arrived in 28 degree and 80% humidity weather. It has cooled off since. We now enjoy the occasional refreshing breeze. (when it’s not pouring rain)

Places we visited: (and many more)

Taipei 101. Dan Shui (淡水) - The fisherman’s wharf, and the market, and Hong Mao Cheng (紅毛城). The Grand Hotel (圓山大飯店). Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall (國立國父紀念館).

When we find time/internet, we promise that we will introduce all these places in detail. (But don’t hold us to it.)

We have been enjoying very awesome food (cheap too!!), and we are now ninjas on public transit (N.O.P.T.). We even manage to find ourselves some free wireless internet places.

We also bought a GPS logger directly from the distributor here in Taiwan. (It ended up costing almost half of what it would’ve / should’ve cost in Vancouver). We are still having difficulties downloading the data into our prestigious (stubborn) Macs… But I am sure we’ll soon figure out a way to do so.

Many more pictures and videos to come. (We are struggling with the lack of internet at home and the slowness of free internet elsewhere.)

We’re still setting up our blogging & youtubing & GPS tracking- etc, but we’ll be up and running soon, for now we’re a little slow getting off the blocks…

So for now, cheers.