Taipei

Last month I took a little trip to Taipei. I had a 4 day weekend at work, so I wanted to take advantage of the little vacation time I have and go visit my friend John who lives there. He used to live in Busan and has now been in Taiwan for several months, learning Chinese at a University.

Anyway it was a 3 hour train to Seoul, 1 hour bus to the airport, and 2 1/2 hour flight, 1 hour time difference. Taiwan is more tropical than Korea. Everyday I was there it was in the high 70s to low 80s and partly cloudy. I went on a Saturday and came back Tuesday. Didn't have much time for sightseeing, unfortunately, so only a few pictures...

The green building is the 101, which is currently the world's tallest building at 508 meters. My only real sightseeing day was Monday, so I went to the tower. Unfortunately it was rainy the whole day, and visibility from the top of the tower was poor and I couldn't go to the top floor, so I just went through the first few floors. Floors 1-4 are filled with top end retailers of clothes, accessories, jewelry, etc; beautiful building.

Taipei reminded me a lot of Japan; similar grid layout of the streets, densely populated. I also found people to be more polite than in Korea. People would wait to give you right of way, in cars and on scooters and bicycles. In Korea, they just go first and don't always look, either expecting you to stop or the idea of "if I don't see you, then you're not there". Actually the driving in Korea is pretty bad; I might have mentioned about this before. Changing lanes with no signal, drifting between lanes at will. The mentality here is expect that everyone on the road is a bad driver and act accordingly.

The subway in Taipei was clean and quiet. Also less staring than in Korea, which was a nice change. It seems in some ways Japan's colonialism had more effect in Taiwan than in South Korea. I didn't get down to too many details with the locals in Taipei, but generally the older Koreans hate Japan because of the colonialist atrocities (comfort women etc) and Japan erased this period from their history books and will not apologize. One one website I read about that talks about hatred against GIs stationed in Seoul, sometimes admitting guilt about something here leads the the accuser to hurl more punishment at the accused; you were wrong and now I hit you more. Totally backwards from the western view.

Overall I found Taipei very nice and enjoyable; would love to visit again. I enquired about the English teaching there, but Korea still pays the best. Four days is only a honeymoon period though; not enough time to get a well-rounded impression.

Cherry Blossoms

Well obviously this post is a month overdue, but anyway here's some pics of the cherry blossoms in Busan near my home. They are lined up all along the main thoroughfare from the center of the city to my area, which is north of the center of Busan. Also running along the subway line, which travels part of its length above the streets, is a river/drainage system below street level. I sometimes go walking or jogging along this path. You can see in one of the pics there is some construction; it seems they are narrowing the river but I haven't found out why. One unfortunate part of the design is that it can smell bad on windless days, or after periods of no rain. Then when it does rain, the sewage all gets washed down. I got caught in a rainstorm once and ended up running through sewage being washed down :-(

Also I have a picture of my building. Its the tallest building around, but my view is from the fourth floor, in the dark brown part of the building. I've included a view from my window, what I get to see everyday. The blossoms are gone, replaced with full green trees. Unfortunately my windows will never be fully clean; the double window design prohibits the self-initiative to secure a clear view. Another post coming soon... I promise!