任是无情也动人

*is ded*

10 hour flight, stupid different baggage rules for US flights, then 1 hour BART...I managed to lose track of the bag of duty free food gift items stuff we bought at the Nanjing and Taipei airports, so Mom's not happy with me. T_T

Ugh. Only bright spot is I didn't get sick this time, the first time ever for a trip to China. Gonna crash.

Nothing happened yesterday. Today we head back to the U.S. Unfortunately, there is a 9 hour layover in Taiwan. So I'm wasting some time at the transfer station.

On the ride over from Nanjing on the Airbus, I got a chance to watch "Green Lantern." Yeah, it was about as underwhelming as expected. For a character that is basically billed as a "space-cop", there is precious little scenes that are space related or heavy sci-fi. Pretty much all of the scenes of Oa were covered in the trailers, and "Iron Man” had more high-tech than this movie.

My complaints of DC's incompetence at characterization still stands. I'd hate to think that the average movie-verse DCU earthling is so bad that the likes of movie-Hal would be the best choice for courage for the GL ring. Then again, none of the other DC movies have exactly turned out any paragons of virtue either. Give me Marvel, at least when it comes to the movies, I guess.

Continuing onward the trip...

Yesterday we rounded the southern tip of Taiwan, visiting some various capes, was made to climb another hill & tower, and then went through a small cave (in the claustrophobic sense). Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera to two of the sites (including the cave), but oh well.

Today was spent heading back up along the eastern side of Taiwan, beachfront roads pretty much the entire way, and stopping at various points of interest.

All in all, nothing too spectacular.

Hotels these two days were ok, but not as good as the first couple.

Tomorrow will take us back to Taipei by the evening. And the day after that, our flight to the mainland is scheduled for 8:30 (meaning getting up at a godawful 5:30 AM).

Checked out early in the morning, and the tour started the way to 日月潭 (Sun Moon Lake?), stopping at several sites on the way.

I have to admit I spent almost the entire driving time listening to my Zen player over those wonderful noiseless earbuds. It's not cuz I know what the tour guide is saying. It's just... let's just say our current tour guide really needs English lessons. And dictation lessons. It's not that he's not understandable, but it's apparent he's not quick with the vocabulary and takes forever to choke out a word. The way he talks just makes me cringe, constantly. And no, his Chinese is not any better, for the exact same reasons, even though I think his a native speaker (I certainly *hope* he's a native speaker). So for the sake of my sanity, I tuned him out. Besides, it's not like I couldn't wiki the stuff he was talking about if I really needed to know anyway. The spots we visited were... eh, underwhelming, I guess. (Let us all cut Taiwan some slack for not having the sheer history and size of the mainland and thus just aren't able to compete either in natural nor man-made wonders.)

The first non-rest stop we made was a small market-town for lunch. I feel sorry for many of the non-Asians on our tour, cuz the only recognizable western chow there was a 7-Eleven store. As an aside, I noticed that Taiwan doesn't have the same brand permeations that the mainland does. Sure, I see McDonalds and KFC around, but not one on every block, and no more than I see places like Burger King, Starbucks, or Pizzahut. On the other hand, the most common western brand that I do see every few blocks is 7-Eleven. Huh. Also, I noticed that unlike the mainland counterparts, the western brands don't translate their store/brand names. McDonald's is just “McDonalds”, not “麦当劳”, etc. Anyway, back to the tour... I didn't see anything really palatable, and wasn't really that hungry, so I ate two sticks of barbequed wild pig meat, and an ice cream cone (it was muggy hot and we were heading into the tropic zone...damn Tropic of Cancer).

Second main stop was at this temple to Xuan Zhang (Tripitaka). We had to hike up to the pagoda. In the muggy heat. Ugh. I refused to climb the steps of the pagoda after that. I'm sure there's nice scenery from the topic, but I've never been nature-girl.

Third stop was this Peacock Park. Why called that? Cuz they keep peacocks there, apparently. Unfortunately, none of them spread their tails for my camera, what with it not being mating season. There were also pens with some other colorful birds, peasants and others that I have no ideat what of. Did take some pics for those bird watchers out there...

Fourth and last stop was another temple, this one to Confucious and Guan Yu. Odd couple. Took a few pics, but honestly, it's nothing that I haven't seen before, and IMO doesn't even compare to the temple to Confucius in Pinyao, which is like out in the boonies.

Finally, we ended up at our hotel. Fleur de Chine is the name (huh, familiar theme?), a five star place, very much in the Japanese style what with the robes that are provided, the wooden stool and bucket thing in the shower, and a frickin' onsen in each room. Apparently, the place taps the lake and an underground hot spring for the onsen. Neat. Also, apparently internet is free here. Awesome. Need to catch up on all my internet needs...

Our first guided tour was a 3 hour of the city, hitting various major attractions...

1. Chiang Kai'shek (how the heck do you spell his name under the Wade-Giles system again?) Memorial was first. We saw the changing of the guards thing at 9 AM. Poor guys. Shiny metal helmets in the muggy subtropical heat (getting worse throughout the day) for hours must suck. Then we went under the memorial where they displayed various historical stuff. I took photos of the shiny medals things. Unfortunately, our guide was rushing us through the exhibit, so I'm not sure what/where the medals are from, but I'm sure I'll get that info once I sort through my photos. Oh, and there was also an Egyptian exhibition there too (we didn't go in), which gave me a WTH moment.

2. Quick drive by of some major goverment cities, cuz apparently traffic control don't allow people to park anywhere close for photos, apparently.

2.5. Stopped by a handicraft/tea shop, purely for advertising purposes. A waste of time, but whatever.

(Then! Suddenly! It started to rain. Hard.)

3. Martyr's Memorial was next. Pretty much a memorial to all soldiers since the start of the Nationalists. It's about what you expect... buildings with rooms that have walls full of names.

(Then! Suddenly! The rain stopped and the sun came out. The muggy heat immediately returned, and you'd never knew that it'd rained except for the wet ground.)

4. Some...temple...forget the name. Apparently dedicated to the local earth diety (tu di). And to Guan Ying.

5. National Palace Museum again. We were only guided through the main attractions and the special exhibition though, quickly. Only about an hour spent there total. All I can think is that my aunt would've been appaled. :P I did like the special exhibition on carvings though - I don't recall seeing it at all yesterday, so I guess it was only for tours or something.

Since I won't have any photos of the museum, I guess I should go over some of the "main attractions" of the museum since our guide took special care to point it out...

* Jade Cabbage - Carved from a single piece of jade, white on the bottom, green at the top. Two grasshoppers (crickets?) are carved into the cabbage leaves, representing fertility.

* Pork Skin - Carved from jade (nephrite?) of all things. Brown colored thing that looks just a layer of pork skin. (Foreigners might not get the resemblance, but since pork skin is a common delicacy for Chinese, it's readily recognizable.)

* Small boat carved from a single piece of walnut (shell?). Magnifying glass shows 8 people carved onto the boat as well as intricate designs on the boat itself.

* A layered (dodecahedron?) something-hedral ball of 17 layers one inside another, each an independent layer but all carved out of one block of ivory.

There were other awesome carvings of rhino horn, bamboo, wood, and ivory too. Nice. We also bought some souvenirs from the shop to give to family/coworkers.

Then it's back to the hotel. I noted further on the way back that while there's a decent amount of cars and pedestrians on the streets, there's virtually no bicycles like normal Chinese cities. Instead, their presence is replaced by a large amount of motor bikes everywhere you look. Interesting...

We left home late Thursday night to catch a 1:00 AM flight. Took BART, and somewhere around the two transfers and whatnot, something ripped my jeans. While this isn't much of an issue on the plane since the whole trip is nighttime, it looked so bad when we arrived in Taipei that I had to change in the airport bathroom. Bleh.

The flight itself was ok. The plane had individual touchscreens at the back of every seat. So unlike the American plane I took last year (forget which airline specifically), there was no sharing screens and you could select whatever you want. The inflight movies available for selection were actually fairly new too. So I got to see X-Men First Class and Super 8 after all without having to pay theater tickets. (I'll review the movies separately.)

After watching the two movies I decided to get some sleep cuz we're supposed to be arriving in Taipei in the morning, meaning it'll be a while before I get to actually sleep. Unfortunately, it was kinda hard to sleep on the flight, and I kept dozing off for awhile and then jerking awake when we hit some patch of turbulence. I think in that respect, the airline I had last year was better. I remember my uncle saying that US airline's pilots are the best cuz their Air Force trained or something. Oh well, I guess the pros and cons all balance out.

We arrived at Taipei at something like 5:30-6ish, just around sunrise. The moment we stepped outside the airport, we were hit by a wave of suffocating humidity. Gah. So glad I did decide to bring along a pair of shorts after all rather than listen to my mom rave about how it'll get so cold. Also, on the bright side, at least it wasn't a wave of suffocating smog and humidity as it would've been on the mainland. In fact, driving to our hotels, I note that most of the buildings tend to be...well...cleaner than the buildings in China. I wonder how much of that is due to the lack of soot, smog, and acid rain? :-P

The tour we schduled with doesn't actually begin until Sunday, so we actually have the first day of arrival free to do whatever. After some thought, we went to the National Palace Museum. I was hoping to get some nice pics to match the stuff from last year. Unfortunately, the darn place does not allow photography at all and in fact made people check in any recording equipment at the door. What the hell? So yeah, I saw some nice pieces. Unfortunately, I doubt I'll remember any of it by the time we leave the island.

We ate lunch at a place next to the museum. The noodles were ok; the thin noodle soop with milkfish was actually good. Taiwanese traditional dim sum, on the other hand tastes...weird...yeah; let's just say it's an acquired taste.

Finally, we came back to the hotel because my feet was hurting and I was starting to fall asleep on my feet. I'll probably take a short nap (not too long that would make it hard to switch around my diurnal cycle) and then I think my mom is planning to get together with some of our distant relatives in Taipei tonight. More later...