Well our Taiwanese trip has come and gone and Christmas has come and gone and, although I’ve written 1000 blog posts in my head, I have neglected to put them down on this virtual paper! And the longer I leave something, the worse it gets. Work has been WILD, all that catching up, and I also have just over 500 photographs to edit and organise!
Taiwan was fabulous. As a Westerner, I’ve always been nervous about going to the East, different language, different culture, different everything. Weird-looking food, squat toilets, lack of communication…… And surely I would fade away if I had to eat everything with chop sticks? Well, no! It certainly helps having family that have been there for a while to ease you into things, but the Taiwanese are very polite people and, for want of a better word, gentle. They are extremely orderly and everything works – from the huge flow of taxis, scooters and bicycles, to the crowds on the elevators in the Metro Rail system. No-one loses their cool. The streets are safe, night and day. And NO LITTER!
Taipei and Taichung are fabulously exciting. You can be on an enormous multi-laned street one minute, looking up at huge modern skyscrapers, then turn the corner and find yourself in a tiny twisting lane the next – and colour everywhere, a street photographers dream.
And should you tire of the city excitement, there are many beautiful places within striking distance. We cycled along a river, had a boat ride on Sun Moon lake, explored Taroko Gorge and saw beautiful temples in the swirling mists on Alishan Mountain.
