Singapore, Dec 9 and 10

Dec 9 - today was a travel day, starting off with the treat of seeing Angkor Wat from the air after our flight circled south to head for Singapore. We arrived in the afternoon a bit of time for roaming around in the rather heavy rain. Dinner at a Chinese food market that had a great variety of foods, though a bit crowded and noisy as the popular ones seem to be.

Dec 10 - Bird zoo--long MRT ride and then bus ride. Good but very wet visit. We skipped the simulated "Tropical Thunderstorm" show, since the real thing was happening. While the rain kept the birds down somewhat, it was still great. The bird zoo has huge walk-in atria filled with tropical vegetation, waterfalls, birds--and rain shelters and thunder and lightning.

The night zoo was even better, although still wet enough to keep some of the animals in their dens. Unlike the botanical garden (good, reasonably priced food), the night zoo food was so-so and expensive. The tram ride is good, partially because it goes places you can't walk, and partially because it is fairly dry. The bats were fantastic. The flying squirrels were good too--one brushed by Ann's head! The whole place is wonderfully atmospheric and the temperature was great. We took the last bus/MRT back--long( 1 hr versus 20 minutes) and not really worth it unless you are short on money or long on local color, but comfortable enough and it worked.

Small Internet victory after returning from the night zoo: I wired up a USB wifi adapter on on long cable around to the back wall of the hotel, with a wire creeping out one of our windows, sealed against air conditioning. The result appears to be a reliable Internet connection. To celebrate this newly robust Internet connection, I uploaded my picture to www.scroogeyourself.com. You are welcome to view it at your leisure here:
http://www.scroogeyourself.com/?id=1258251071

Tomorrow we do a few things in Singapore, then head for the airport at 2pm.

Siam Reap, Dec 5, 6, and 7

Angkor Wat - the centerpiece.

Siam Reap, Dec 4 through 8

We're now in Cambodia, having arrived on the 4th with no hitches. After a morning on our own at Angkor Wat temple, we hooked up with David Cardinal's group. We visited temples, starting at 4 or 5 am to catch the morning light, for the next several days.

Singapore, Dec 3, 2007

Singapore, Dec 3, 2007

Greetings folks. Another fine, busy Singapore day. We got up early, hit up Starbuck's for some early morning java, and hailed a cab for a pleasant 20 minute air-conditioned ride to the zoo (pronounced zoo-eh here). Suffice it to say, this is a blow-away excellent zoo. Right up there in the big leagues with San Diego.

A pair of cheetahs were among the early attractions. They had quite a large, grassy area to romp in, and the keepers had hidden raw bits of meat here and there in the grass, so there was plenty of prowling going on.

There were two baby chimps. This was the younger of the two, with its mom.

The orangutangs were free to roam overhead in the treetops, which were connected by climbing nets. There was a new baby, already starting to do some experimental climbing, 50 feet above ground, while mom watched casually.

This rather lumpish looking lizard, and two more just like him, were busy roaming around their enclosure rather happily. I'm guessing that the warm climate perks them up, and they are really much more lively than we typically see them in colder climates.
The tapirs were one of the last animals we saw - this is a baby, still with about half his stripes.

Evening was spent in Little India, chowing down in one of the food courts. In a few scant hours, we will be heading to the airport at 4am, for our flight to Siam Reap, Cambodia, the location of the Angkor Wat temple complex.

Take care.

Singapore ,Dec 2, 2007

Singapore, Dec 2, 2007

Our hotel is the New Seventh Storey - a plain but well-kept hotel with one of this manually operated elevators. Air conditioned, and enough of a stray WiFi signal to keep in the Internet. Heaven!

Visited the ATM, bought our nifty transportation tickets, and hopped the air conditioned double decker bus for the Botanical Gardens.

The botanical gardens are gigantic! Within the gardens is a section dedicated to just orchids, with thousands of varieties. I personally only saw a few hundred of them, so I don't know. They might be exaggerating...

These particular orchids were a very vivid purple color that instantly washes out on camera.

Some bona fide liverworts. They look similar to the Nov 30 ones from Takora Gorge.

We took a break, then went to the river that evening for a boat ride and a nice dinner of pepper crab. Tomorrow, it's the Singapore zoo!

Taipei and Singapore, Dec 1, 2007

Taipei, Dec 1, 2007

Heading for a temple in Taipei, we came across these fellows, all dressed up and happy to have their picture taken. Some sort of festival was in progress, more than likely related to the round flowery signs that we in other parts of the country that I mentioned earlier.

One of the larger temples was setting up several giant marching puppets for a parade, and they strutted around in front of the temple. Evidently this was a big deal since there were two satellite uplink trucks, and TV cameras from Tapei channel 7 and PSB. This was serious stuff, with no clapping or other applause. I got a bit of video of this, which shows how they swing their arms in time to the rather raucous live music.

I always wonder what little kids think of these things. This guy looks as if he is wondering a little if the giant puppets are real or not, though he was only a few feet from seeing the people put on the puppet gear.

A somewhat bemused little guy and his mom, also watching the puppet spectacle.

Sliced fruits and vegetables at a juice stand in the "Tourist Market".

This puppy knows his way around heavy equipment!

We finished up our last day in Taipei, hopped on the plane for Singapore, and took a cab to our hotel, very tired. Our first reaction: man is it warm!

November 30, 2007. Taroko Gorge and Taipei

November 30, 2007 Taroko Gorge and Taipei

Morning sees us by the river - this was taken from the "suspension bridge" leading to the temple. On the bridge we met two Americans who said they had seen Macaques not far from the hotel. He gave us what turned out to be accurate directions, including climbing a steep rocky face, studded with chains, to a bamboo grove. Well, now we know what we're going to do after breakfast!

It's after breakfast, and up the path to look for apes. Finally, I got one of these big boys I've been talking about to pose - there were actually several of them, and I took enough pictures to catch one of them looking great. These butterflies are the size of a small bird. They look even more like a bird while flying because only the front wings flap - the rear ones act as stabilizers.

Following instructions, we climbed a steep rocky staircase with chains, and came to a bamboo grove. Now we're looking around for macaques. Didn't find any. Oh well - the rest of the walk was great anyway.

We've been seeing these all over the place - large bee or hornet's nests made apparently of mud, generally with live leaf stems growing through them. This one is about 8 inches in diameter. They appear to be inactive, but I could not get Ann to poke one with a stick while I recorded events with the camera.

Some interesting plants, about a half inch in diameter. I'm calling them liverworts, type of plant that has no need for fads like vascular systems and flowers. These are clustered on the wet vertical rock faces next to the path.

Whoa - these are big, nasty looking wasps, about 2-1/2 inches long! The one on the left was busy laying eggs in the exposed wood of a tree, when the second, smaller wasp happened by. They seemed to commune a bit with their feelers (as shown here) then the small one took off. No aggressive behavior, so even the wasps are kinder and gentler in Taiwan. Interestingly, a several of butterflies clustered close to the wasp as it was laying.

When I look at the image above, I see a burnt out camp fire with a bit of beer foam running down one side. This image should really be about four feet wide. In reality, this is a large falls at the end of the day's second walk, called "Nine Turns Gorge". It follows a section the path of the old highway, now replaced by an adjacent tunnel. This view was the high point of the trip, not only for the view, but because we did see a macaque, after all, today, pointed out to us by a fellow tourist. It was feeding quietly in a tree on the opposite side of the gorge.

Next stop, Taipei. We head into town on the sleek new "leaning train", which is similar inside to the HST we took from Tainan to Taipei a few days ago.

After checking in at our hotel, we go for a short walk to the fashionable Ximen (West Gate) district, the preferred night time habitat of young and cool people, such as ourselves. We are in search of some steamed dumplings to take back to the room ...

and we find them here - tasty soup-filled dumplings from a nice little shop. The proprietor simply beams with integrity. Our dumplings are in the slightly darker container in the bottom right corner. This is at #30 Hankou Street Sec. 2. Like most of such places, they do mostly take-out, and sell in units of one steamer-tray, not individual dumplings. No language is needed: just smile, point, look at the price on the calculator, pay, eat and smile some more.

That's it for today. Signing off, dateline Taipei!

November 29, Taroko Gorge

Breakfast, followed by a walk in the butterfly filled garden of the hotel. These are big butterflies, including black ones as big as your hand. We did several hikes, including a repeat of yesterday's, this time with a shuttle ride to and from the trail head.

Saw these small plants on the side of the trail for this morning's hike. I believe they are small creeping ferns, plants that do very well, thank you, without any of the faddish vascular systems, seeds, and so forth that so-called modern plants are so proud of.

These are fairly common at this time of year. On our way up to the temple shown in yesterday's set of images, we found a medium sized insect, about the size of a bee, taking a rest from the gusty winds. It had a rather ornate black and gold velvet covered body and interesting opaque and transparent patterned wings. We've seen another variety that looks like a flying wooley bear caterpillar, only with clear wings.

A Hitchcockian view from the top of the "pagoda" at the top of the temple area. There are two sets of stairs, forming a double helix.

This was one of the few - okay the only - temple in Taiwan that required you to take off your shoes before entering. The temple itself is rather large and ornate, with three golden Buddhas (with swastikas). Outside, there is a large golden staue of Buddha. The red lanterns are similar to those on the bridge to our nearby temple.

A very lithe insect friend on the way down from the temple - a praying mantis, looking very smart, swaying gently back and forth.

Ann, the intrepid explorer, on a rather long and scary suspension bridge, just like the kind that always falls down at some point in the movies.

Delicate bracket fungi, with lots of colors, seen on our afternoon walk. This image may make it as a large format print.

A view back along the path we took, which shows as a light colored line in the upper right corner of the picture. The path is rather easy and level, thanks to the efforts, decades ago, of hundreds of men with hand tools.

November 28, Taroko Gorge

The web (bless the Internet) page for Taiwan's Weather bureau has been showing steady improvement in the weather in the eastern side of the island, so we decided to re-institute the plan to go to Taroko Gorge. A few hours later, we were about halfway down the eastern coast of Taiwan, in a town called Hualien.

They had an excellent tourist info office (the second we'd found BTW), and one of the staff called our hotel and arranged for the shuttle to come pick us up. While we waited for the hotel shuttle, we did a mini tour of the town and discovered a liquor store with a single malt Scotch selection that was more extensive than any I'd seen in California. I settled on a 12 yr Spey (NT $650, US $19).

The ride to our hotel took us north along the coast for a bit, then took a narrow well-paved road into the gorge. Beautiful. Cataracts and falls were everywhere from the fresh rain. The main river is an opaque gray color. At one point, pure blue water fed in from a tributary, creating a clean line of bi-colored water.

Our room overlooks a rushing river. I'm listening to the sound of the water while I type this blog. If you look carefully, you can see a small waterfall.

Just a few hundred meters down-river, a temple has its own suspension bridge.

Take care everyone. Feedback from you makes this more fun, so don't forget to leave comments!

November 27, The Night Market

November 27, The Night Market

Well, it rained, and kept on raining. Not hard, mind you, but enough to keep us firmly indoors. Which meant a nice breakfast at the hotel, and taking the metro and 304 bus for a third visit to the National Museum. No regrets there, as it takes several hours to cover each floor, and we had one floor left. We started off with a free guided tour, with a knowledgeable guide who spoke fluent English, and electronic headsets that let us hear every word she had to say.

The tour started off in a quiet room displaying 18th century emperor-style furniture. Two mythological animals, were depicted in the room. They looked like squat little foo dogs, and their role was to invisibly gather information from all over the world, rapidly and in hundreds of different languages, then appear and divulge all of this information to the emperor, were he deserving of it. Sounds a lot like the Internet, doesn't it? And they thought of this hundreds of years ago. Very interesting tour, and highly recommended.

As the rain tapered off, we headed for dinner at the Night Market, which turned out to be the most memorable thing that day.

A block from our hotel, just before we dive into the metro. Although we are far from the ritzy section of town, the street still has a Times Square feel to it. There's a live video screen, showing previews of western movies, and large illuminated signs featuring western personalities and products.

One transfer and 15 minutes later, here's what the night market looks like from the subway platform across the street. The cylindrical images are live TV, displayed on a rotating LED array. Although it is drizzling outside, the night market is packed.

Misdirected by an evil sign in the underground tunnel connecting the metro and market, we spend about 20 minutes the non-food section of the night market, wondering what happened. Oh well, we were getting hungry, but it was interesting anyway. Here there is everything from elegantly displayed tacky jewelry, pets, and clothing, to carney games. This place is huge.


Making our way back to the food area, we find a cavernous space, all filled with small booths offering various prepared dishes. It's a little intimidating because everything is swirling so fast, and there are any number of choices we can make. Very little English here, so we just wander around and just give the place a once over.

This one looks interesting, but woof! Dogs are not only allowed here, but they get to have their own seat! LOL.

The food here looks good, with a giant grill that everyone sits around, but look at all the empty seats ... so it can't be that great.

We turn to our tried and true method of picking a place to eat - find one that's crowded. This place was so packed we thought it would be impossible to get a seat. In 20 seconds, the waitress had us seated, and provided an English menu. We were set. We ordered shrimp rolls, "stinky tofu" (which we'd been making jokes about for the whole trip (Okay, I'd been making jokes to Ann, an audience of one.), and a couple of other items. The food was ready in a flash, almost before we'd ordered. Strangely, though, they do not serve tea or any other beverage, so ...

We go to another stand to order a freshly prepared mango smoothie, and I leaned that these fruit stands provide something we Americans don't normally get: heat sealed lids for drinks. These beat the pants off the white plastic lids we are all used to. The lid is a perfect seal, and you either punch a hole in with a sharp straw, to drink it right away, or take it home all nice and sealed for later.

So, that's the night market. Highly recommended.

Oh, and the stinky tofu was just fine.

November 26, Back to Taipei

November 26, and it's back to Taipei

Since a cyclone was headed in a straight line for the eastern coast of Taiwan, we decided to take a joy ride on the High Speed Train, modeled after Japan's bullet train. We took the taxi out to the special HST station, which has two tracks, one north, and the other south.

Joy! Our train zips quietly into the station, looking like a friendly yellow and white dolphin. It's just after 10 am, and we're about to head north, undoing our last several days of travel in a just couple of hours.

In the train, it's a lot like flying in a jet, only quieter, and with twice as much space. A scrolling readout displays station names and status messages, alternately in Chinese and English. Everything is sleek and wonderful. My GPS shows a top speed of just over 180 miles an hour.

Well, it's about 3:30 in the afternoon, and we've checked into our hotel in Taipei, cancelled our trip to Taroko Gorge (Typhoon, and 30 cm of rain there in the last 24 hours), had some extraordinary beef noodles, and taken the metro and bus, and are having a nice espresso back at the National Museum. It's raining, but when the door to the museum's cafe (shown here) slides open, warm air rushes in, belying the cold and misty looking rain.

It's too rainy to take the camera out, but we had a good finish to the day, including a trip to NOVA, a multi-story non-stop computer fair, where hardware of every description is for sale from dozens of vendors. Since my own Skype headset was starting to fail, I bought a bluetooth headset and dongle for a total of NT $1500, or US $45.

November 24-25, Tainan Days 2 and 3

Tainan Day 2, November 24, 2007




On our way to the park, we happened to notice a flower market, popped in and found quite a number of vendors selling flowers. The orchids were particularly cool.

This park contains a shrine dedicated to the seven concubines, who hanged themselves rather than surrender to the triumphant enemy of their master. There is also a tablet in the park dedicated to the master's eunuchs, who sacrificed themselves, supposedly, in a similar manner. It's all about loyalty, not buying it.

Tainan Day 3, November 25, 2007

Spent another nice day in Tainan. We're staying in the historic aka touristy section of the city, where there are lots of small restaurants and temples. The vast majority of Tainan resembles any western city.

Today we took the city bus (yes, there is one on weekends and holidays) out to the ocean to see Anping, the remnants of the 17th century Dutch fort there, and to check out more temples, which are numerous and each different from the other. The first image shows the old Dutch Fort originally built in the early 1600's, rebuilt by the Japanese in the late 1800's. At some point the tower was added, first as a lighthouse, and then converted to an observation tower. The fort is now purely a museum and tourist attraction.

This fort is an important symbol to the Taiwanese, because it is an example of Asians kicking Europeans out of their country. When the Ming dynasty fell to the next folks, the Manchu Qings, the Ming General retreated to Taiwan. He didn't have enough power to retake the mainland, but he did kick out the Dutch and is much acclaimed.


Curiosity item #1. I noticed tables set up to sell rather expensive liquor in the parks - always two rather professional looking gentlemen, and rather expensive liquor. About NT $2500 (US $75) for the glass bottle in the middle, which features a submerged eagle.

Here's another thing they have at their national parks and public areas: memory stamps. These are just stamps of the particular site being visited, that kids can use to create a souvenir of their visit. The National museum has quite a number of these stamps, each with a picture of a different artifact or style of pottery, cast bronze, or what have you. Very cool.


The largest temple we've seen, so far, on our trip is Kaitai Tianhou temple, located just outside of the old Dutch fort. It has stone columns three deep in front, instead of the usual single or double row of outside columns.

Here is a detail of the decorations on top of the temple, which are statues covered with glass and ceramic tiles. These are more extensive than most, and are the first ones we've seen that feature a person riding atop the dragon. Ride'em cowboy!

The economics of the temples, as near as I can figure, consist of people buying incense, or other symbolic offerings, such as those shown for sale above, imbuing them with well-wishes, and leaving them to be burned later by temple staff. The stacks of paper symbolize money, and the other items can be candy, fruit, even Pringle's potato chips. The money is burned in an ornate incinerator to one side of the temple - I have no idea what happens to the food and other items, but they are not apparently burned.

Most temples have high relief stone carvings in the columns and side walls. There are generally tigers depicted along the left side of the temple, in this case there were leopards in addition to the tigers.

This is a group of about a dozen women, clustered around a heap of freshly harvested oysters, for which the town of Anping is renowned. After getting a look at this black heap of scrunge, I did not feel like eating oysters ever again. That feeling lasted for at least half an hour, when we had a wonderful oyster "omelette" for lunch.

Unlike the bustling Kaitai Tianhou temple across the street, this smaller temple had just one visitor while we were there. This picture shows what I call the "administrative sidebar" of the temple, where the financial and other support tasks are carried out.

Walking along, exploring the streets and alleys of Anping, we came across what looked like tan pea pods sitting out on tables. Turned out they were seaweed, drying in the sun.

Another small and crowded alley-way discovery - small cakes, made of ice-cream cone like material, in the shape of different animals and objects. These are full 3d objects, molded in two halves, about 5 inches long. Nothing like a tray of gun cookies as an ice breaker at parties.

This is the bottom of an old Oyster shell kiln, used to make mortar for the Dutch fort. Turns out that you can burn oyster shells, and get the same sort of lime that you get from burning limestone. Cool.

Some of the waterways used for growing oysters are just two blocks away from the busy alleys of Anping. You can walk along the top of a levee, with nice benches made of wood and stone, and look at the numerous water birds there, including egrets, great blue herons, avocets, and others. We may have seen the spoonbills that are famous here--but too far off to be sure. This is a great egret taking off.

The Tree House. This is a partly decayed wooden house, with Banyan tree roots holding it up and maintaining the shape of the roof, long since gone away.

Get set for some coolness. Above is a machine that makes puffed rice cakes. The vendor had this going with a crowd of people watching. The rice is loaded into a hollow space, about the size of a silver dollar, between two heated plates. The plates are pressed together, released, and BAM, out pops a full sized rice cake. The whole process takes about three seconds. Where can I rent one of these? [see video]

Above, the converted remains of a smaller Dutch emplacement, in the heart of old Tainan. This was a much smaller affair than the fort in Anping. Located miles away, there is still a rumor that the wells of the two fortifications are connected by tunnels!

And now, as dusk descends on Tainan, that's it for today. Tomorrow it's the bullet train back for another day in Taipei.