In the morning the GF, the Woodland Creature and I took the MRT down to Shilin for the first of our Chinese lessons. Shilin is in the next ring in towards Taipei, a proper city neighbourhood, with a mix of international shops/ department stores and small hip cafes on the other. We stopped first for […]
160 flights of stairs
Our flatmates were away to visit a friend so the GF and I returned to Yangminshan to tackle the stairs again. 1.6 kilometres, it turns out, equal about 160 flights of stairs if the iOS’s app is to be believed, though I’ve never really understood how it measures these things – surely changes in elevation […]
Tourism in the time of coronavirus
Yesterday we went to what is normally Taiwan’s busiest tourist site, the mountain village of Jiufen, formerly a declining gold mine site, which took off after a clever marketer realised that it is very similar to the setting of the Studio Ghibli film Spirited Away (or perhaps it did inspire the setting for the film, […]
Last sunny day
Yesterday, Saturday, was the last sunny day, with today and the next few days to be cold and rainy, It was also the first day of this year’s official sakura festival, so we decided to visit Chiang Kai-shek’s old summer home in Yangming park and called an Uber (along the way we saw a man […]
A man and his daemon
In the morning yesterday got an Uber and drove up and down narrow winding roads wrapped along the hills of Yangmingshan, with views over Taipei to one side and green hillsides to the other. There were trees in early bloom along the way, sakura and rhododendron, and wildflowers on grassy bits. We were behind a […]
Back at last
The GF arrived last night, after our longest time apart in years. It was lovely to see him, though there is the inevitable need to learn to live with someone else again – no more leaving the curtains drawn overnight as he doesn’t like light in the mornings. This afternoon I cancelled all my phone […]
Da’an town
Apologies for the tortured pun. As readers familiar with Taipei will gather, we (the Bodhisattva, Woodland Creature and I) went into town today, to one of the nice parts of the city. Started around Yongkang Street, which is a slightly touristy but nice street with plenty of tea shops and a startling number of umbrella […]
Strange times
As I started writing this, I looked up at the tall building, about 30 stories, under construction across from me, and watched a large plank of wood fall off the side. It took very long to fall. I opened reddit as usual for my quick browse of various country pages. On Nepal, a genuine question […]
East of the world
I am in Taiwan, and will be here for at least the next two months, perhaps longer. The rest of the journey was fairly smooth though it was notable how the density of masks skyrocketed – on the flight itself, there was only one small family without masks and they were European. The air of […]