Tag: Southeast Asia

Taiwan – Hidden Lion & Gem

Taiwan is not what you may think. This place is an incredible infusion of old ways and progressive living, lined with national parks, vibrant night markets and more.

Delta’s flights, which we connected in Seattle with a manageable layover with 3 separate Skyclub visits en route. I was lucky enough to be sitting behind a Michigan grad from Ann Arbor flying to China with his folks and we split the $40 internet fee to watch UM / OU (even though they announced that internet wasn’t available for the flight, this feed came through with regular manual refreshes).

Once we finally figured out our Arrival Cards and how to get out of the airport, we were eager to get to our hotel, the Miramar Gardens Taipei for some rest and adjustment to the 13 hour time difference. Luckily, Uber served Taiwan and we had about an hour ride to get to the Zhongshang District in the heart of the city. We found this to be a very nice, comfortable, convenient choice and cool neighborhood to explore. Highlight was the “Japanese Style” spa (read: had to sign-off on being naked to utilize the hot and cold tubs, steam & sauna rooms, etc. It was a very relaxing and soothing experience. The outdoor pool area with lounges was also very relaxing and appreciated, as was the bidet with all kinds of settings (we got quite used to having these regularly).

Taiwan is known for having a leading amount of convenience stores and the trip to my nearby 7-11 turned out interestingly. We brought a lot of snacks but I wanted to supplement a few meal with finds from there and what I got was not what I expected upon picking. Instead of cheese, I got an egg product another weird protein product that was like tofu, beef gizzards, sparkling wine in a can with bobas (they also invented Boba/Bubble Tea), crab flavored corn nut like and other chip-like things.

Another local staple is beef noodles and I tried it nearby and enjoyed the pho-like dish (although wasn’t willing to wait outside this famous noodle house and found another I could get served quickly). The Liaoning Street Market was a short walk away and fun to walk the streets seeing what the locals were dishing out and feeding folks. Visiting the night markets is a must in Taipei as they’re buzzing with energy and interesting vendor finds. We also checked out Raoshe, which was much bigger and more action-packed. Nextdoor was a fabulous 300 year old temple with a ton of intricate special details in the design.

We opted for a few photos out front and not the ride up what was the world’s tallest building in Taipei 101. Notably, Taipei despite being a top population dense city also felt green and sustainable with lots of parks.

The biggest highlights came via our private Viator custom tour, of which we had the best, most engaging guide in “Nicolas” (after Cage, who along with other Hollywood movie stars taught him his great English)., who left a career in business for the flexibility and change of pace in providing special tours. Despite his Lakers hat (sensitive subject with me historically), Nicolas connected well with both of us – he loved his baseball (following Taiwanese stars especially), the NBA and playing badminton regularly.

He taught us a lot about the culture while taking us to the Houtong “Cat Village”, an old coal mining town turned tourist attraction with community cats and related local ties. He also took us to Yangmingshan National Park, a mountainous volcanic forest with geysers and hot springs that fed right down into the north side of Taipei. One hot spring pool had a small temple to honor the ghosts of residents with no families. Volcano Island appeared off the rocky north shores of the island. We saw a big Formosan Rock (or Taiwanese) Macaque on a fence near the road, several skinks and an egret. For $34, we had an upscale 90 minute private spa soak room with a hot and cold tub piping mineral water.

Taiwan has a number of other national parks including Turtle Island, named after it’s appearance of a partially submerged turtle. It’s temperate semi-tropical climate make it a very comfortable place and its easy to see how why it’s a surging place for expats.

Lions are a key symbol for Taiwan, known for warding off spirits, being brave and courageous and lucky. We had good luck exploring this special place and think you would too.

First Asia Trip: Holistic Reflections

Travel adventures across Southeast Asia: introduction to our journeys.

Not too long ago, I set a goal of visiting a new country yearly and other new places along with it if going abroad isn’t in the cards. When I caught a flash deal via SLC’s newest international direct flight to Seoul for around $700-something, I jumped on it…that is until another flash deal for 36k Skymiles (Delta “Main”) popped up and I made the switch. I can’t even get to Chicago for that, no brainer! The timing was off-peak in September once school and fall slate begins (would prefer summer but I follow the deal!).

I talked to my world traveling friends about potential itineraries and reached out to the family travel agent that helped us with a Viking cruise for tour options and prices. I realized that we had to whittle down our list significantly and that the tours were a whole lot more for an area that I thought was supposed to be more on the affordable side.

We opted to visit countries that Alli, my wife, hadn’t yet and to save the China, Hong Kong, Thailand and Vietnam and opted for southeast Asia. I took the top recommendations and tours and started reverse engineering, looking for as many direct flights as possible, adding tours via Viator, tracking and booking flights and hotels in centralized, accessible areas via Expedia (which had the highest Rakuten rebate %). We did choose to keep one tour that had a lot of components in Borneo, having to pre-pay to hold it as spots and date availability was limited and we planned around that in the middle of the two book-end flights. Doing so allowed savings of ~50% from the tour packages.

I’m going to reflect on each stop separately, but what resulted was an amazing trek of adventures prioritizing visiting exotic animals in their mostly native locales while still possible. It was designed to be a combination of cities, cultures, tours and downtime for personal activity choices.

We purposely didn’t try to come off as Americans, yet didn’t hide it when it came up in conversation and had a lot to dispel in a tense global political situation to say the least. In fact, there was a shooting involving a political zealot in Utah while we were there, which put us on the map in the wrong way. Hard to ignore the flare-ups happening despite our wishes of international immersion…

Not surprisingly, we ran into a ton of Brits as we visited many former British colonies. They always seems have a nearly unlimited amount of “holiday” time for vacations and a dry sense of humor about things. Often, there was just enough English and signs able to be picked up to get around and some accents were tough to work with.

All-in-all, it turned out to be 10 flights, 4 separate islands, 1 peninsula and ~ 3 days between places. The airports were cleaner, more efficient and effective to navigate through. Each new country required an Arrival Card submitted beforehand in place of needing visas. Weight more often than number of bags was the limitation (usually ~25 kilos per international flight). Once for a domestic flight we had to pay for more baggage. We tightly rolled and bagged clothes and should have opted for doing laundry vs. bringing enough to last as we had some bags breaking down and it always took awhile to re-pack.

It helped to convert cash into native currencies at my bank before going. We found that bigger businesses took credit cards but “mom and pops” shops were cash only. This happens to be the low point for the $ in a long time, but most places were still affordable at ranges.

Unforgettable memories resulted from a trip of a lifetime celebrating an anniversary and birthdays – stay tuned for the individual location breakdowns!