2023PhilippinesTaiwan

Ringo is my hero. Nothing to do with music. I saw a YouTube video of his 83rd birthday party in Beverly Hills. He looks 50. The scuttlebutt is that he is a vegan and that that is the proximate cause of his youthful appearance. (Hair coloring looked like another factor to me.)      I leave this island tomorrow morning, set for a long trip up the east coast of Taiwan. I have to get to Taipei which should be easy. There’s no high speed rail on that coast so I’ll need to resort to long bus rides along mountainous terrain.  I skipped most of the tourist stops and set myself the task of trying out every accessible beach on Lamey. Most of the littoral here is rocky but there are a few places where you an gambol down to a patch of sand that gives you an opening to swim in the cool waters of the Pacific. I found four such places.  Secret Beach Beauty Beach: tricky coral outcroppings make it slightly hazardous to get to the open ocean, but a nice place. Rated B+ Venice Be...

  Beauty Beach.       The place of many names: Xiao Liuqiu; Pingtung County; Lamey Island….there are more. We lie about 12 kilometers southwest of the Taiwan Mainland, about a 15 minute ferry ride. I left Tainan by city bus, 30 minutes to the High Speed Rail station. After a short ride on HSR I boarded the bus for the ferry terminal, this a one hour, comfortable jaunt south. The ferry dropped me at the little port area that is packed with places renting scooters. I decided to walk, 24 minutes in the heat to my hostel in the middle of the island. That tells you how small this place is.  I found my digs with no trouble but when I got here there was no one to contact. My host wasn’t around but there were about a dozen elderly Chinese women who spoke no English. The grounds of this funky place are apparently also the headquarters of one of the myriad diving organizations on the island. As I passed their ‘office’ (just a flat concrete surface surrounded by surf ...

Headed South Cheapskate that I am, I searched Airbnb for a place to spend a couple nights for under $25/night. I found such a place —a single room in someone's fifth floor apartment (no elevator) in the southern city of Tainan. My ultimate destination is further south on the island of Liu Qui off the southern coast of Taiwan, but it seemed sensible to check out this city, just to……check it out.  I took the high speed train south (Google says it goes at 285 to 300 kms/hour)  Google says these trains travel at a few kms/hr slower than the ones I took in Spain. The service is as efficient and clean as you would expect from anything in this efficient and clean nation (hah, take that Xi Jin Ping). Wouldn't it be grand if California joined Taiwan in the 21st century? The train skirted the city center so I boarded a pleasant local train for the trip into town. Twenty-two minutes later I was at the next step in my Google itinerary, but my perpetual stupidity reared its head again here...

Impressions of Taipei You are unlikely to be greatly disturbed in Taipei. Crime seems nonexistent. Places to eat are so abundant they seem overbearing at times. There is just enough English to allow a Westerner to survive with minimal bumps in the road. There is a Starbucks on every corner…..seemingly. There are neighborhoods where teens and young adults carouse in clubs, bars, and comfortable places to linger over a meal.  Yet this isn't a place where strangers will come away with great memories. Concerts and plays are scarce if thatś your hope. Beaches are distant (but accessible by public transit). And there is the overbearing presence of the heat. For reasons I can't fathom there is no liberating fog in Taiwan though Taipei is only a few kilometers from the ocean. And the wind…..it is almost entirely absent unless you hie yourself to  the surrounding mountains. Thus Google routinely reports ¨36 degrees, feels like 46¨ (thatś 115 degrees to the English world).  My bigg...

  Blog 07-08-23 Tainan Taipei and environs My first day in Taipei, Monday, I booked a four hour bicycle tour of the city. It’s a strategy I like to employ to get a quick feel for any metropolis. What turned out to be different this time was that the Chinese characters on all the store fronts denied me the ability to create dependable memories of places I passed. When the trip was over I was not much more comfortable with Taipei than I was before the trip. What I should have done was to consult my Google Maps frequently throughout the journey thus orienting  myself to the area around my hostel (which was only a few blocks from the bike shot that served as the starting point for the tour).  The tour leader was a petite, athletic young asian woman about 30 years old. There were supposed to be four other folks on the trip, all part of the same family, but the elderly parents who formed half the group bowed out. It was hot, about 95 degrees. The parents apparently didn’t reli...

  Blog 07-08-23 Tainan Princesa City to Taipei I hugged Roy, my caretaker at The Village House, and hopped on a tricycle for the quick trip to the airport. The weather was the same as it had been for three weeks, mid 80’s, humid, with occasional showers. This day the sun held on. I fumbled for my phone as I entered the terminal (no tickee no planey). I needn't have worried about time as the plane was delayed, ultimately, three hours. “We regret that Air Asia flight 267 will be delayed because the plane will arrive late.”  The flight was uneventful and we landed at Manila Airport at 10pm. I could look forward to seven hours of waiting here before boarding my flight to Taipei. I noticed three connected, metallic seats unoccupied not far from the security check in that I’d need to traverse later in the morning. I lay my backpack across the seats and stretched out across the remaining open area, and tried to reat. I dared not sleep lest I miss my flight. I assumed the place would ...