Last year we welcomed the coming of 2008 at Zojoji Temple, at the foot of the Tokyo Tower in Japan. Thousands of balloons were released into the sky at the stroke of midnight, with Tokyo Tower lit up proudly in the background. It was a spectacular way to welcome the new year!
Well, this year we welcomed 2009 at the foot of Taipei 101 in the heart of Taipei, Taiwan. At the stroke of midnight, fireworks shot from the 4 corners of the tallest building in the world. …

Saturday - Kenting - 墾丁

Kenting is small, sunny surfing town on the southern-most point of the island. White sandy beaches, beautiful rolling waves, high wind and SUN. Its the end of October and its hotter than it’s ever been in Vancouver in July. We stayed in a small, funky, down-to-earth hostel called a-wu的民宿 above a little restaurant on the south bay (南灣) strip, overlooking the ocean and the beach. We stayed in Kenting for two nights, giving us just enough time to relax and wind down. (Both of us have …

Ni Hao!
We haven’t had much luck finding reliable internet lately, so we’ve been quite behind in posting. Or rather, we have been having too much fun traveling that we are ignoring our blog.
Most buildings here are built with steel, concrete & plaster, so hotel wireless is often flakey. It takes us hours just to search for hostels & get directions to the next town so there’s usually no time left for blogging.
We have been on the road in Taiwan, on our around-island trip, for a week now. Although …

Our trip around Taiwan started on Wednesday. We were fortunate enough to get our hands on a car from Cathy’s dad’s company. It’s a Corolla just like Cathy’s old car, but much cooler equipped with a GPS system. (and automatic side mirror closing device)
We started driving from Taipei down the number 5 highway (commonly known as the “Snow Mountain Express Highway” - 雪山隧道). We started our trip with couple LOOOOONG tunnels and a slightly confusing GPS-miscommunication-induced detour at PingLing (坪林). It took us about an hour to get from Taipei …

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 …