Sun Moon Lake

On Tuesday, I took a tour to Sun Moon Lake in central Taiwan. The lake is found between a few mountains which gave it a really hazy backdrop. The whole area is relatively undeveloped and felt extremely calm and tranquil having just come from the madness of Taipei.


Nearby the lake is the Wen Wu Temple, which has a tower dedicated to Confucius and scholarly worship. After having visited approximately 3271 Buddhist temples in the last 6 months, it's nice to see Confucius getting some love, too.


Further along the lake's edge is the Cih-en Pagoda. After hiking for about 30 minutes, you can walk up 9 flights of stairs to the top of the pagoda. Once you are up there, you can bang a gong into an enormous bell. I think my ears are still ringing.


Last night, back in Taipei, I went to Snake Alley, where I'd heard you can see a show in which the snake feeds on live animals and people drink snake blood alcohol and all of this crazy stuff. All I saw was a guy swinging a snake around by the tail and flipping a poor turtle on its back and making it roll over about 65 times. Gotta say I was disappointed. I wanted to be shocked and appalled.


This morning, I went to the Beitou hot springs. If you've never been in a hot spring, just know they can be uncomfortably, painfully hot. Like human Hot Pot temperatures.


After I was fully cooked and got out of the springs, I went to the Shilin Residences, the former home of Chiang Kai-Shek. I guess the guy had a thing for gardens.

Location:MíngShèng St,Yuchih Township,Taiwan

Taipei

I arrived in Taipei yesterday after an inexplicable delay for an hour and a half in Hong Kong. But at least China Airlines' GFML didn't include a bun...that's your cue to start taking notes, Air China. Anyway, I started by exploring Ximending, a very trendy area in the Wanhua District from the Japenese era. The pedestrian streets are crowded with street performers, food stalls, graffiti, cinemas, and thousands of young Taiwanese.


At night I walked through 2-28 Peace Park, just a few blocks from my hotel. The park is a memorial for the 2-28 Rebellion. In 1947, the government had just made the sale of tobacco a gov't monopoly. On February 28th, a day after a widow was flogged by police for selling cigarettes on the street, angry protesters gathered outside of government buildings in Taipei. Military police began shooting into the streets and killed several Taiwanese citizens.


The next morning, I went to the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. You walk up a huge flight of stairs and then there's a statue of the man at the top...sort of like the Lincoln Memorial.


Next I went to the National Palace Museum, which features over 600,000 pieces of Chinese art, including some amazing ivory, bronze and jade carvings. Unfortunately no photos allowed inside. But here's a picture of the museum...


I went to Taipei 101 in the afternoon, a huge international financial centre that was the tallest building in the world when it first opened in 2004.



In addition to an 89th floor observatory, the building also features a gigantic shopping mall on its first 5 floors as well as the most impressive food court I have ever seen. There were easily 100 different restaurants with cuisines from around the world, and many, many gluten-free options. If I'm ever homeless, I am taking refuge in the Taipei 101 food court. Done and done.

Location:Lane 5, Section 1, ZhòngQìng South Rd,Jhongjheng District,Taiwan

Lan Kwai Fong & Kowloon

For my last full day in HK, I wandered around Lan Kwai Fong and Soho on Hong Kong Island for a while. Both of these areas are dizzying arrays of alleyways, each filled with stores and restaurants from around the world. Unfortunately I didn't have much luck finding gluten free Cantonese food, but there were Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, and Korean restaurants that all appeared to have gluten free options.


After lunch, I spent the rest of the day exploring Kowloon, which lies directly across the harbor from Hong Kong Island. The Yuen Po Street Bird Market was pretty entertaining, with some 40 different shops selling everything from exotic birds to bamboo-woven birdcages to live insects and larva as bird feed.


From there I walked to the Flower Market, an extensive strip of florists that was extremely crowded. Actually, all of Kowloon seemed to be overcrowded, which isn't surprising considering over 2 million people live on the tiny peninsula.


One of the flower shops was completely empty except for this dog. I'll just assume he's the owner.


After escaping the Flower Market, I found myself in the Goldfish Market, which is, (yup you guessed it) an entire street dedicated to selling exotic fish and aquarium tanks.


If you continue to walk down Nathan Street you reach the Temple Street Night Market, which is basically the same as the Beijing Silk Market, except outdoors, and selling potentially slightly less fake stuff. It's definitely going to be a culture shock to come home and not be able to haggle when buying everything.

Location:Yee Wo St,,Hong Kong

Macau

Yesterday, I took the hour-long ferry ride to Macau. The former Portuguese colony became a Special Administrative Region of China in 1999, and just like Hong Kong now features "one country, two systems". After standing in line for half the morning at immigration, we made our way to the Kun Iam statue, an odd bronze monument to the goddess of mercy. The statue is built on a man-made island and has a library in the basement.


Next, we walked along the Praia Grande to the A-Ma Temple, dedicated to the goddess of seafarers.


We ate a buffet lunch that left me somewhat glutened, despite my attempts to explain to the tour guide that Celiac disease is not the same as being a vegetarian. Oh well. After lunch, we went to the Macau Tower, a 338 meter tall building that features the highest bungee jump in the world.


For $3000 HKD you can take the uninsurable free fall. I saw one person do it and he looked scared shitless the entire time...I'd like to go bungee jumping, but I think I'll work my way up to this height.


Next we saw the ruins of the Church of St. Paul, a giant facade that was built in an attempt to help the illiterate understand the Passion of Christ.


But all of that history aside, Macau is known today mostly as a gambling mecca for the residents of Hong Kong. Gambling is the main source of revenue, and according to my tour guide, Macau surpassed Vegas in annual profits from gambling last year.


At the end of the day we were running out of time to catch the ferry back to HK when we finally made it into a casino. With only 12 minutes to gamble, I put $100 HKD on black and of course I won. It's a flawless betting strategy, really: 48 percent of the time, it works every time.

Location:Great George St,,Macau

Back On The Grid

Yesterday I flew from Beijing to Hong Kong, so I'm now officially back on the grid. I already knew that Facebook was blocked in China, but I also couldn't access my blog, YouTube, any torrent websites, etc. Pretty crazy that the government goes to such extremes to censor content. Since this was my third time to Beijing and I've spent over six months there in the past, and my blog was blocked anyway, I skipped out on documenting the touristy stuff. Instead I focused on another project...more on that in the coming months. In summary, to keep it short, I absolutely love Beijing: remembering how to speak Mandarin, seeing so many old friends for the first time in 2 years, making some amazing new ones, climbing the Great Wall for the fifth time, making a triumphant return to the debauchery that is the Westin Brunch, dirty bar street, etc., etc. Could not have asked for a better three weeks there. I already can't wait to go back...in 10 days.

But back to the here and now. For my first full day in HK, I took the tram up to the Victoria Peak Tower.

At the sky terrace, 396 meters above sea level, you have a 360 degree view of all of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. Unfortunately it was a little bit hazy so my pictures don't do the view justice.

After descending the Peak, I took the subway over to Tung Chung and then a 5.7 kilometer cable car journey to Ngong Ping.

The plateau is in the western hills of Lantau, Hong Kong's largest island. After walking through Ngong Ping village, you arrive at the Tian Tan Buddha, which is apparently the biggest seated Buddha in the world. I've been to the Grand Buddha at Leshan in China, which is the real biggest Buddha in the world, standing or sitting, but I guess now I can say I've got both. So there.

A little bit further down the road in Ngong Ping is the Po Lin Buddhist monastery. Here there is a huge bell that rings 108 times during the day to symbolize escape from "the 108 troubles of mankind". According to Jay-Z there are only 99 problems but he must have missed 9 in there somewhere.

Location:S Perimeter Rd,,Hong Kong

Silk Market

The Silk Market in Beijing is an enormous, 9 story warehouse filled with vendors selling basically everything. Tailored suits, shoes, electronics, jewelry, furniture, souvenirs, home decor, etc. If you want something, they probably have it. Masses of foreigners and locals flock here to buy "designer" products at ridiculously cheap prices.


Of course, everything is fake. Fake Polos, fake Louis Vuitton bags, fake Rolexes, fake North Face backpacks, fake iPhones, fake diamonds and pearls. Fake everything...the Chinese way.


If you're a foreigner, these vendors prey on you to rip you off. You have to do a lot of haggling in Mandarin in order to get a fair price. For example, I was buying a pair of fake Versace sunglasses. The saleslady wanted 1200 kuai (nearly $200) and I ended up paying 20 kuai ($3) for the shades.


Of course, all of this haggling is a hassle, and you often have to just walk away from the vendors. Sometimes they just get angry, but more often than not, they chase you down and agree to a decent price.


These signs hang everywhere in the market: "Protect intellectual property rights. Be law abiding vendors." It's more than a little bit ironic considering there's not a single real item being sold in the whole place. But that's China for you: legitimacy doesn't matter - it's all about the perception of legitimacy.

Location:Xizhaosi Xili,Beijing,China