Random Taichung night photo.

Taichung Harbour Area

Only occasionally does the air in Taichung get clean enough to warrant taking pictures of the city. Today's heavy rain and strong winds seem to have washed the pollution away for a while, so I took a few random shots from my 24th floor rooftop.

Taiwan's English learning industry is HUGE. Go to any decent sized bookshop, and you'll see racks and racks filled with all kinds of English learning magazines. Most are accompanied with audio CDs and some even have DVDs. A friend of mine works for an English learning publishing company and managed to organise me a job being filmed lip syncing English dialogues with another foreigner, who you can see here. Hope she doesn't mind me posting this!

Here's a cliche'd photo of Taiwan. Rice paddy in the foreground and modern city buildings behind it.

And here are 2 of Taiwan's most famous mucicians, the lead singer for a band called 'Mayday' on the left and 'OO Bai' (which means 500). From what I can tell, OO Bai is kindof the Bono of Taiwan, with his shades and attitude. Corrections welcome!

I went to the 'Tai Kuh' Rock Festival/Concert thing the other day with a friend. It was an awesome experience to see some of the biggest names in Taiwanese music all playing one after another. There were about 30000 people there but they were all amazingly chilled and well behaved, and I didn't spot a single drunk person. Not one. Weird, by western standards, but I really like it. Actually, Taiwanese people are pretty mature and self controlled in general and know how to behave in a crowd. The band playing here is 'Wung Fu', who play kindof 60's/70's style rock with a Taiwanese flavour. They have an unusual dorky sound but are excellent musicians. Good enough for me to have one of their CDs.

Hin Tsong Ming! That means 'so smart' in Mandarin and it's what I thought about Taiwanese people when I saw the local city government using a forklift to pick up cars while they repainted the parking bay lines. I was a bit worried about the forklift tipping over though... I guess this also makes you less confident in the effectiveness of all those mail order steering locks!

I'm in Taiwan so I can post as many red black and white pictures as I want, even if they look mostly the same! This one was taken in the garden of my aparment complex during some light rain.

Just foolin' with soft focus and neon lights.

I went walking along Wen-Hsin Rd the other night with my mate Glen and on the way I spotted this sign reflected in a puddle of rain water.

An arbitrary photo of graffiti and a taxi.

And talking of electronics, this is another brilliant idea... a simple spinning row of LED's that flash on and off momentarily creates a low cost and effective circlular signboard.

The parade was followed by a huge caravan of busses, presumably carrying those who didn't want to follow on foot.

A roadside worshipper.

Here's a guy inside a lion costume

Yesterday, on my way home from riding around the neighborhood BMX track, I found myself in the middle of the biggest Taiwanese religios parade I have ever experienced. There were hundreds of people following these strange characters around the streets, clashing cymbals and lighting a ridiculous amount of fireworks. Here are some scary vampires.

With the infux of foreigners to Taiwan, and particularly Taichung, foreign restaurants are becoming more and more common. To draw in the customers, many have foreign sports channels playing inside. Unbelievably, there is even a pub in Taichung that has South Africa's own sports channels, Supersport. Here is one of the most historic moments in cricket history - the winning shot SA played to win what many have called 'the greatest one day international match in cricket history'. I was lucky enough to watch this live. It was one of the most exciting sporting moments I have ever experienced.

The most dangerous fruit in the world? Probably! These are durians, a type of fruit which I'm told actually comes from Thailand. You need gloves to handle them and a chainsaw (jokes, just a massive heavy knife) to open them and at then end of all that, they don't taste particularly amazing. They are also quite stinky, in a weird fresh fruit kind of way. Strange, some of the things that are popular in Taiwan!

Taiwan has some really interesting tea, in general; but this has to be the most bizarre I've ever seen. It tasted like watercolor paint! I'm sure it's good for you though...

I must appologise for the poor quality of this photo, it's really not a very good picture. Anyway, what is it? This is a scooter with 'training wheels' for disabled people or those who have to use crutches. It lets them be just as mobile as anyone. Actually, the work ethic in Taiwan can be summarised by taking a look at how many 'disabled' people have jobs and are prepared to work and how few beggers you generally see. Another lesson my home country of South Africa could learn from Taiwan...

Here's a picture I forgot to post a while back. It's a guy selling baloons at Taichung's lantern festival.

Here's a poorly taken photo of some Nissan employees doing their daily excercise/team building/company loyalty activities on the side of the road outside a car showroom. Is this a Japanese or general Asian thing? Comments are welcome!

The best fireworks I have ever seen. Really.

Check this out. Thanks to Grace for the link.

Mates and I played paintball for my birthday.

So what do I do in the mornings? Well, most days I wake up and head down to my local breakfast shop for some Pagen Dun Bing (Not sure if there's an English name for that) which is basically an egg and herb mixture, and a rasher of bacon all wrappped up in a kind of savoury pancake thing. This is the breakfast treat all Brittons wish they had invented. To get me out of my early morning stupor, I drink some Oolong tea (which probably has as much caffiene in it as coffee) and to occupy my mind I listen to a daily Bible study podcast on my iPod.

One of the things I'll always remember about Taiwan is the amount of LEDs on this island. One good use for all of them is the animated pedestrian crossing lights found in most major cities. When you can walk, there's an animated green walking man with an orange countdown timer, and when your time is running out, he starts to run. A very cool Taiwanese (I think...) invention.

Red sky lanterns and the moon.

Lantern festival at Taichung's main park was one of the best experiences I've had in Taiwan. There was such a great vibe, the moon was out and those lanterns are just awesome. If you ever get a chance to write new year's wishes on a lantern and watch it sail away, go for it.

Some great lanterns on display during lantern festival.