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Thread: Xinying Sojourn

  1. #76
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    Last stop was the shop. The Taipei museum always had a great shop, better quality than the average gift shop. This shop sells, I amgine, the same products as the Taipei shop. I rather enjoyed wandering around. Things seem relatively expensive these days and there is nothing I need so that is what I bought. If I ever build a palace with large, bare walls this is the place I would come for some quality reproductions. These days you can of course shop from the comfort of your laptop:

    故宮精品網路商城 - www.npmshops.com

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    On the way out I saw one of those signs that makes you ask how, in the modern world, you can print a sign with a word that would not be in any computer's dictionary.

    Xinying Sojourn-npm15-jpg

    The journey home was memorable for the wrong reasons. Possibly the rudest bus driver ever, with the added bonus of a heavy right foot. Also an uncomfortable minibus rather than a full-sized coach. A young local family was waiting with me and they seemed less certain than I what bus options they had, so they asked the driver when he pulled up. He grunted and slammed the door then turned his engine off. At the scheduled time the driver opened the door and we all got on for a stop-start ride to Chiayi station, which is where the family got off. People were waiting there to get on but we must have been ahead of schedule because the driver again slammed the door shut and completely ignored them until a time he decided he was ready. People tried to check they had the right bus and he managed to ignore them all. Back in Xinying I got off at the city hall, there is no formal bus stop here, the Yellow9 just pulls up at the entrance. This is okay except that the route stops here in both directions, which could be confusing. As I got off there were people waiting to take that same route to Chiayi HSR and they were speaking to the driver whilst trying to lift up their suitcases. The only thing I heard him say was "No!" as he slammed the door, again, before driving away, leaving the bemused would-be passengers looking at each other.
    I added this tale just to be clear that, even though my general experience with Taiwanese people is that they are friendly and will often volunteer help without being asked, there are some right anti-social pricks out there, like every other society. On the plus side, there was no racism involved, he was equally rude to all. I left him with a cheery "Thank you", just to wind him up.

  3. #78
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    Quote Originally Posted by Shutree View Post
    I went on the bus one time. It felt a bit awkward. Maybe I wasn't on the best route, it didn't srop right outside.
    The bus I took stopped right outside the museum. On my return trip, I think the bus had just left, so the Japanese girl and I took a taxi to the nearest MRT station. We got to talk a bit while exploring the museum and took pics for each other.

    Re: the latest pics - interesting robot waiter! I think I've also seen a vlog (in HK?) with a robot waiter in the resto.

    Accdg to one of my Taiwanese friends, Taiwan is also experiencing a decline in population - fewer kids being born. Not as bad as Japan, but it's on the same path. Maybe we'll see more robot waiters in the near future. (S. Korea has the same problem re: their population.)

    Re: rudeness, I haven't experienced rude people in Taiwan, and I've been there several times. Most of them have been helpful & friendly.
    Last edited by katie23; 04-06-2023 at 08:02 AM. Reason: Typo

  4. #79
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    Quote Originally Posted by katie23 View Post
    Re: the latest pics - interesting robot waiter! I think I've also seen a vlog (in HK?) with a robot waiter in the resto.
    A bunch of them appeared during COVID. But their use is dropping again because of their limitations and the fact restaurants can get staff in again.

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    My final trip out was a two night stay in the mountains of Nantou, an area called Qingjing. My hosts drove up there and we stayed at a vegetarian hotel that I first visited some years back. The view is the same as before:

    Xinying Sojourn-mountain1-jpg

    Clean air up here, cooler too. Xinying is fairly clean for a town, although the nearest city to here, Taichung, has absolutely dreadful air quality due to the coal-fired power station there that is one of the most polluting power stations globally. Which makes this mountain area popular with people who want to get out of the city and I was surprised at the volume of traffic passing through the mountain road, lots of day trippers.

    There are things to do and see up here, I can state with authority that it is a lot better without a two-year old boy in the party. We made it to the Qingjing (sometimes Cingjing) Skywalk.

    Xinying Sojourn-mountain3-jpg

    There is a sheep farm here that we've all visited before, so no pics. There are also a good many hotels , including The Old England, which is not actually all that old. My hosts weren't for stopping, everything gets more difficult with young people in the car, so I borrowd an Internet picture.

    Xinying Sojourn-oldengland-jpg

    The cheapest room is about B15,000 per night, which I think includes dinner and breakfast.

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    My hotel was more economical. A lot more economical. It's run by a mother and her two daughters. Mother is a professional chef and the dinners were very good indeed. All vegetarian.

    Attachment 102578

    Attachment 102579

  7. #82
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    On the last morning before we left a couple of eagles came over. There was a swallow too, less impressed by their presence than I was.

    Attachment 102581

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    That was pretty much it. Next day I went to Chiayi HSR station and from there to Taoyuan and back to Bangkok.

    Attachment 102588

    The sting in the tail was the last leg from DMK to Udon Thani. I hadn't prebooked because I wasn't sure exactly what time I'd be there. The next flight to Udon Thani was fully booked, I wasn't expecting that. My only option, other than staying the night in town, which seemed like an option to me although the gf was unimpressed with that idea, was to wait a couple of hours for the flight after next. And a cool Baht 3,000 for the ticket. Not long ago you could get two people, return and change out of that.

  9. #84
    Thailand Expat DrWilly's Avatar
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    last few posts the pics are not showing.

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    Quote Originally Posted by katie23 View Post
    Accdg to one of my Taiwanese friends, Taiwan is also experiencing a decline in population - fewer kids being born.
    My friend says the same, although the official stats are that the population is more or less stable at the moment. There are fewer babies and people are living longer, so it is about the peak of the curve right now and will certainly start declining soon. Maybe it already is, the stats trail real life.
    My friend was a university lecturer overseas, when she returned to Taiwan it was impossible to find work because student numbers are decreasing and there are already too many university staff. In fact, too many universities. The effects of the changing demographic are already evident all through the education system. Whatever the stats say, the feeling on the ground is that the population is falling.
    This will have some impact on Taiwan over the years ahead. It doesn't seem likely that immigration will make up for the shortfall although there are already foreign workers in agriculture and manufacturing jobs. On a pre-Covid trip the Thai gf met an old friend of hers who is working in farming there.

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    Quote Originally Posted by DrWilly View Post
    last few posts the pics are not showing.
    Bugger. TD makes it really awkward to post pics. I cannot make it work at all from my phone, which is why this thread is after the event. It's really tiresome, the posts look fine as I post them, there's no clue that the pics are not showing until later. I'll try again.

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    Quote Originally Posted by DrWilly View Post
    But their use is dropping again because of their limitations and the fact restaurants can get staff in again.
    Like several things in the museum, the robot waiter was style over substance. I mean, someone has to cook the food then, instead of bringing it the few metres to your table they place it on the robot to cool down while they tell the robot where to go. The robot moves at a steady pace, it has no sense of urgency, then it stops out of reach so you have to stand up and walk over to collect the still cooling plate of food. Great for young people who value a selfie with the robot more than a plate of warm food. I thought it was bollox, TBH.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Shutree View Post
    My hotel was more economical. A lot more economical. It's run by a mother and her two daughters. Mother is a professional chef and the dinners were very good indeed. All vegetarian.

    Attachment 102578

    Attachment 102579

    Xinying Sojourn-dinner1-jpg

    Xinying Sojourn-dinner2-jpg

  14. #89
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    This is a right pain in the arse. Sometimes, not always, after selecting a pic to post, I double-click on the pic to enlarge it because TD is too dumb to auto-size it and I get the grey screen of death. At this point, no inputs work, the only course of action is to go back a page and lose anything you wrote that wasn't yet auto-saved.

    Xinying Sojourn-greyed-out-png

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    Quote Originally Posted by Shutree View Post
    On the last morning before we left a couple of eagles came over. There was a swallow too, less impressed by their presence than I was.

    Attachment 102581
    Third time lucky? Will I post a pic?

    Xinying Sojourn-eagles-jpg

  16. #91
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    Quote Originally Posted by Shutree View Post
    Third time lucky? Will I post a pic?
    Yes! Success.
    I have time this morning, I was woken a bit before 0500 by a massive thunderclap and apparently simultaneous lightning. This scared the two dogs who sleep outside and they started wailing, so being already awake I went out to spend time with them. Next job will be to go out in the rain and check the trees, that lightning must have hit something very close by. On the plus side, we still have electricity and Internet, which usually disappear in a thunderstorm. So I can have another bash at the last photo.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Shutree View Post
    That was pretty much it. Next day I went to Chiayi HSR station and from there to Taoyuan and back to Bangkok.

    Attachment 102588

    The sting in the tail was the last leg from DMK to Udon Thani. I hadn't prebooked because I wasn't sure exactly what time I'd be there. The next flight to Udon Thani was fully booked, I wasn't expecting that. My only option, other than staying the night in town, which seemed like an option to me although the gf was unimpressed with that idea, was to wait a couple of hours for the flight after next. And a cool Baht 3,000 for the ticket. Not long ago you could get two people, return and change out of that.
    Xinying Sojourn-trainhome-jpg

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    To elaborate on the gallery name:

    Xinying Sojourn-bug2-jpg

    The story goes that the emperor Qianlong (1711-1799) visited the famous West Lake in Hangzhou and dwelt on the stunning views. Whilst admiring the scene the emperor called to mind the words 風 (wind) and 月 (moon) and he put them together to form the descriptive phrase 風月 (feng yue), which is found in Chinese literature referring to wistful romance. (The phrase appears in Japanese too, although I'm not clear if it has the same meaning there.) So the emperor described the almost inexpressible beauty of the West Lake as 風月 (feng yue).

    The emperor didn’t stop there. He took the pictogram for ‘wind’ 風 and removed the surrounding strokes to leave only a different character, ‘insect’ 虫. Then he did the same with ‘moon’ 月 to leave only the character for ‘two’ 二. By the artifice of stripping away the enclosing strokes of the two characters he created an original image 虫二 (Bug 2) to express: beauty without boundaries.

    I think it is quite a good name for an art gallery. The emperor's idea was later chiselled in stone:

    Xinying Sojourn-bug2-jpeg

  19. #94
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    Quote Originally Posted by Shutree View Post
    My friend says the same, although the official stats are that the population is more or less stable at the moment.
    When I was there most families had two or three kids. One exception was a fellow I met who had seven daughters. He wanted a son in the most desperate way but his wife, I guess, figured his XY game wasn't happening, so no more kids for him.

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    @shutree - re: foreign workers in Taiwan. Accdg to the same Taiwanese friend, she said that there are lots of Filipino and Indonesian women who work as maids or caregivers for old people. I saw some of them pushing wheelchairs in a park in one of my travels. I think they were Indonesians since they wore the hijab & I didn't understand their language.

    There are also many Filipinos (male & female) who work in factories (usually electronics) in Tainan city. As I inderstand it, there are lots of electronics factories in/ near Tainan. When I was there, I happened to walk by a Catholic church and it was a Sunday afternoon. The church was overflowing with (I assume) Filipinos.

    One thing that struck me as an eccentricity among Taiwanese (or maybe Chinese in general?) is that it's easy for them to change their names. My Taiwanese friend said that one of her cousins changed her name because she (the cousin) felt that the old name wasn't bringing her good luck.

    In PH, it's tough to change the name. It's a long & expensive process, so if the name was mispelled in the birth certificate, the person just accepts the misspelling. Example, an acquaintance of mine has the name Michael, when she should have been called Michelle. It's a misspelling & everytime she introduces herself (and somebody asks), she has to explain why her name is so.

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    Quote Originally Posted by katie23 View Post
    I happened to walk by a Catholic church and it was a Sunday afternoon. The church was overflowing with (I assume) Filipinos.
    That reminds me, Katie, of my time living in Taipei, '85 to '86. All those years ago there was already a significant Filipino presence. I had a friend, a young English guy who worked for a big corporation. On Sundays he would go and hang around the Catholic church at chucking out time. He got to meet quite a few Filipinas this way.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Shutree View Post
    I have had great food in Taiwan. If I were going to tour with food as the top priority I'd take an omnivorous Chinese girlfriend. In fact, since you mention it, ....
    This sparked an idea. I need to go back to Taiwan, maybe I could take a guest. I spoke to Miss Shanghai, she reckons there is zero chance of her being able to travel to Taiwan now.
    This surprised me a bit, my last visit to the National Palace Museum in Taipei was a struggle with so many mainland tour groups swamping the place. I didn't know that one of Xi's great ideas is to cut off the flow of tourist remnimbi. I might ask her to research this a bit further, there was a Hainan Airlines plane parked up when I landed at Taoyuan and they still show direct flights from Shanghai, so it doesn't seem that difficult. Or maybe she doesn't want to go.

  23. #98
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    Couldn't you take Mrs Shu

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    Quote Originally Posted by malmomike77 View Post
    Couldn't you take Mrs Shu
    I say, that's a bit radical. Miss Shanghai has prior rights in the mistress stakes. Now that I'm not married, can I still have a mistress?

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    ^I believe the current term now is "friends with benefits" or hook-ups. I think the Thai term is gik or mia noi? (btw, what's the difference between the two?)

    Since you're not married, I think Ms Shu is your partner and Ms Shanghai would be the FWB. At least, I think those are the PC terms nowadays.

    Which reminds me, @shutree - your friend from the 80s - was he able to hook up with Filipino ladies during his time there in Taiwan? I didn't know that there were Filipino workers in Taiwan in the 80s. I know about Saudi & Middle East; I thought Taiwan & other countries were 90s & later...

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