Page 40 of 68
Renegade Wife is often nice enough to search for interesting places for us to go. A little while ago she found one place which used to be an amusement park but has later been taken over by a Buddhist organisation who have turned it into a kind of temple or monastery. Many of the old amusement park buildings still stand however, but remain unused; in essence, it’s like an abandoned amusement park within the temple grounds. This sounded very interesting to us so we went to check it out.
You don’t have to go to Europe to find castles 
The castle up
It’s just after lunch and I’m sitting at my desk when I feel that weird sensation I always get when there’s a earthquake, kind of like seasickness on dry land. A moment later I see how our computer screens start wobbling, there’s an uncanny rumbling from somewhere above us and the whole building is shaking. I’m tense, ready to run at any moment, but my colleagues haven’t budged from their seats so I keep calm and remain seated as well. I look up at the girl opposite me, her face is contorted with fear, like a carved wooden mask, it’s … Read the rest
If you go to Alishan you are supposed to see the sunrise but I did it a few years ago, and it’s really not that fantastic. So while the rest of the hotel rose to join the sunrise tour, we slept soundly in our beds and got up at a far more reasonable time.
We spent the morning walking around in the Alishan forest recreation area. Most of the easily accessible trails consist of wooden platforms elevated above the forest floor which let you take in the scenery at leisure. There are plenty of tourists walking about but thanks to … Read the rest
When we go on this kind of short trip we usually don’t do much research or planning before hand. This means we’re always taking a bit of a chance with the places we go to, normally it works out just fine but sometimes It doesn’t; today things didn’t go as well as we hoped. We were planning to hike the Spi Spi trail to a place called Titanic Rock. When we got to the trailhead however, a sign informed us it would take two and a half hours to hike there which we felt would demand better preparation, so we … Read the rest
This weekend is the tomb sweeping day so we got two extra days off. On Saturday it was apparently international pillow fight day, so we joined a pillow fight event in Taipei. It was quite simple, just bring a pillow and show up, but fantastically fun.
We’ve seen most parts of Taiwan but we haven’t really been sightseeing in Jaiyi county so we decided to spend the remainder of the weekend there. … Read the rest
The standard for our business trips is that we get the weekends off but thanks to several delays we had to work during the weekend as well. On Monday however, there was some kind of festival going on and the customer’s factory was closed, so we couldn’t go to work even if we wanted to. Needless to say we didn’t waste the opportunity. Our customer was actually nice enough to let us use the chartered car for sightseeing so we didn’t have to spend any money on transport – the good part of being on a business trip I guess.… Read the rest
Me and my colleagues are in the chartered car heading back towards our hotel; speeding through the Indian landscape, low bushes and dusty yellow grass on both sides, the setting sun hanging like a glowing orange ball in front of us. I’m in the passenger seat, relaxed, leaning my arm on the door handle, a black market beer in my hand watching the landscape flow past – bloody brilliant!… Read the rest
My company has sent me and two colleagues to India to install a machine. Naturally we will spend most of our time at the customer site but we get the weekends to ourselves and it just so happened that we arrived on a Saturday, so we got our first day in the country off. Me and one colleague, Scott, took the day to explore the city while our other colleague, who has been here before, stayed at the hotel. Our hotel helped us arrange a car with a driver that took us round to some of the more famous places … Read the rest
At the end of the Chinese New Year the Taiwanese celebrate the lantern festival. Colorful lanterns in all shapes and sizes are put on display on some suitable piece of land for about a week. People come from all over the country come to admire the creative designs, watch the light show and try some tasty snacks at the night market. It moves to a new city each year, but me and the wife were there a few years ago when it took place here in Hsinchu. This year it takes place in Taoyuan, close to where I work, so … Read the rest
All through our stay here it’s been cold, windy and snowing, today the sun finally came out. Because of the strong wind last night however, the snow wasn’t as good as previous days. All the same I had a very good day, and it was nice to actually see where I was going. Thus concludes our week of skiing, except for some slightly adverse weather, both Renegade Wife and I have both had a great time.
Some general points about skiing here in Niseko:
The resort actually consists of three separate areas, Annupuri, Niseko Village, and Hirafu – Hanazono. Hirafu … Read the rest