More stuff about Taiwan!
For those of you who have never been to Taiwan, I wish to point some things out! 1. Garbage cans are hard to find in public most of the time. This is due to Taiwan's strong stance on recycling usually has a trash truck that plays a friendly (and rather repetitive) melody to signal you to bring your trash out to them. They run many hours of the day, daily. I hear there is a fee for disposing some recyclable materials as rubbish. 1-B. Oh yeah, Guns are illegal here. Knives are a grey area in legality. In some cases they are illegal, in some cases you better have a damn good reason (self defense ironically is NOT one of them) Even then, it is up to the cop to decide...so your best bet is don't have a knife on you!
2. Drink sizes for many well known American drinks are often smaller. Your favorite 1 litre bottle of Mountain Dew? You'll be hard pressed to find that here! Same goes for the big boy cans of monster and rockstar. Rockstar is in red bull sized cans here.
3. Tea-Eggs: Broth-boiled eggs seem to be a common convenience store snack and while they may look unappetizing when you see them simmer a bit too long, they are actually not bad. Think of it like a soy sauce boiled egg, saving you the need to salt a hard boiled egg.
Also, In damn near every convenience store there is hot dogs as well.. typically like polish sausage or a hot dog with cheese bits in it.
4. Tea...glorious tea....soo MUCH tea.. You go to a convenience store.. or walk down the streets.. and you will find hundreds of varieties of tea. entire WALLS of tea in place of tons of soda. 5. Taipei 101 is ENORMOUS. One of the tallest buildings on earth. balanced with an 800 ton damper, it is built to resist some of the strongest winds and earthquakes.
While the top ten floors are reserved for a top end private club/communication equipment/dampers, there is a mall attached to the base...and it may look tiny by comparrison.. but I have walked around in it and it is a rather large 4 story tall mall, complete with it's own supermarket.
How big you ask? Here are a few pics!
A majority of the stores in this mall are watch stores, cell phone stores, and designer clothing stores. In fact, asides from the food court.. that's all this mall consist of. If you want to look sharp and have a taste for fashion... this is your mall! A fashion designers dream. The food court was pretty awesome and had these chandeliers!
HOWEVER...there is one place completely different....a coral shop!
Yeah, this place is loaded with coral art that you can buy!
Some are insanely elaborate! here.. let's put more light on that!
Some are elegant!
Some are even lifelike!
Red coral!
Cinderella, your white coral accented with gold chariot (coach) awaits!
Check this necklace out! Its about $36,000+ USD (forgot to write down the price) The issue isn't the price... the issue is that no matter how many shots i took.. my camera could not capture its almost magical double-polish! Like...seriously.. You have no idea! The camera i had could NOT capture it no matter what filter I used! Think about this picture.. see that amazing gloss? Now add an iridescent secondary layer of gloss.. like a soap bubble! WHY my camera could not capture this almost makes me think that if there was a magic stone in the world.. it would be this red coral necklace.
Attempt 2
I took nearly 2 dozen photos and used 6 different filters to no avail. Just imagine the glossiest thing you can imagine, then add a second clear coat that has somewhat iridescent properties but only slightly above the base gloss..just enough to be noticed. You have to see it in person! At that price, I don't think it is going anywhere! 6. Public floors are astonishingly "clean" Take a look at the train station... Look at that nice floor!
COUNTLESS people travel this place between 5:am to 12:30am and yet it looks so shiny! Some places in the world could learn from these guys! 7. The tiny town of Toufen! I live there! Some pics of my area!
This temple is like a few steps away from my place! (I'm behind it)
I dated a rather nice girl in Taichung and she heard I liked chocolate...she said her friend gave this to her and she gave it to me...
I am by no means a little guy.. I'm 6'1" and around 260lbs (think a slightly chubby linebacker) and this has GOT to be the most enormous chocolate bar I have ever seen!
It nearly eclipses my surface pro (which i had to clean up afterwards D: ) and my hand!
Remember koala yummies? yeah they still got those here!
You like Sturgis? How about a scooter variant? This is just an isolated example and i could take pictures of place that have ten times this amount!
Some pics in Miaoli
one thing that REALLY messes with my mind is red and blue LEDs. Typically reserved for Cop in the US... they are on little traffic zones in parts of Taiwan as if saying "This is a speed zone, cops are watching" And it makes me always think somebody is in trouble because usually the only time you see red and blue flashing lights is when a cop pulls over somebody! I won't even get started on some places in taiwan and how traffic lights/crosswalks work. Let's just say the rules are somewhat different here and it may explain why some Americans think Asians can't drive. Then again, with the way people drive around here, you have to adapt a different method of driving!
That's all for now! ~Cyrus/Dan~