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!