So I went to Southern Taiwan this weekend. It was exceedingly uninteresting. There were many things like the two pictures below to look at. eh…

One interesting thing about the trip was the Kaohsiung subway system. it was extremely EXTREMELY nice.

As you can see they have figured out a way to stop suicide attempts on the subway tracks. Supposedly there are lots of issues with people deciding that the best way to end their lives is to jump in front of an oncoming subway train. Japan’s solution involves heavily fining the family of the person who killed themselves, combined with some sort of 3 foot tall wall. New York’s solution is to, well…, do nothing. But in Kaohsiung they know how to take care of business. There is absolutely no way for anyone to get onto the tracks. That glass is about an inch and a half thick, and the doors only open when the subway comes so no suicides.

Also their uber-cool method of purchasing tickets seems very relaxing. When we were trying to figure out how to purchase subway tickets in Japan I had the urge to stick a pencil in my neck right there. It was a NIGHTMARE. And yes those are 30 inch LCD’s on their Subway ticket purchasing machines.

I actually really liked Kaoshiung. The city is much more slow paced that Taipei and actually has more of a Los Angeles feel to it. There are lots of open spaces and the traffic isn’t the hellish sight that you see everyday in Taipei. There was also a HUGE department store (shopping mall) in Kaohsiung. It makes anything that I have ever seen in the US look like small beans.

This Dream Mall was pretty cool here are some MORE pictures!

Oh and I learned something very interesting today. In the US when there are sales we usually say “this is a 20% off sale” or whatever it is. So basically the higher the number the better the sale. Here in Taiwan it is the opposite.

As you can see the sale sign looks kind of weird. the first number translates is a 1 Zhe sale (sorry I don’t know the intonation). it literally translates to 1 fold and actually means 1 tenth or 10%. So this is a 10% sale. For us in the US that would be a crappy sale. But here in Taiwan that means that this is a 90% off sale! Crazy good sale! But yeah the mall was cool.  But they really only had women’s clothes at a good price and since I am not a woman this place was worthless to me!

But hands down the best part of this weekend’s journey was riding the Taiwan High Speed Rail. This trains are pretty much a Shinkansens, but in Taiwan. In hindsight I am pretty happy that I wasted the money on it because now I have ridden on a “Shinkansen” and it was only 60 bucks instead of $200. Here is what the inside looked like it was pretty nice.

Unfortunately there were no opportunities for me to take a picture of the outside of the train  so I snagged this from Google.

As you can see it looks pretty much like a Shinkansen train except it is orange and white instead of blue and white or whatever color the Shinkansen is. Oh in case you want to look them up these trains’ model number is 700T and it was actually built by the company that made the Shinkansen. But anyways it is late and I have class tomorrow so I’ll have to post more later!

Peace out ya’ll!

When you leave the United States and come to Asia you really start to notice that things are drastically different outside of the US. Sure we have more shared traits than differences but a crap load of things are just different.

One thing that really shocked me when I came to Taiwan (and Japan), is that there is no such thing as a personal check here. Everything is either credit card or cash. And as you might expect, in Taipei, cash is king. People walk around with huge wads of thousand dollar bills to see to their daily needs. But the lack of personal checks has had a somewhat curious effect.

Here in Taiwan, and to a lesser extent Japan, there are convenience stores EVERYWHERE. And this is because here people depend on convenience stores for more than Slurpees or late night alcohol purchases. The convenience store is where you pay the bills! it’s crazy, you hand your bill to the guy behind the counter, he scans it and then you pay him. There is some behind the scenes transaction and both companies get their money.

But the funny thing is that the most dominant convenience store out here is 7-Eleven. That’s right! the same 7-Eleven that sells us our slurpees in the USA. And if I had to guess I would say that out here 7-Eleven makes a lot more money than in the US. If I was to drop you off any place in Taipei, you could walk about a quarter of a mile in any direction and I can almost guarantee that you would run into a 7-Eleven. It is quite insane and a little funny. But yeah, that’s traveling! You learn new and interesting things.

You should come out to Taiwan. But don’t stay as long as I have because you start to miss the US. Mostly you’ll miss the gadgets, like the palm pre, and the movies. Disney Pixar’s Up isn’t going to be released here until July 31st. But oh well it has been worth it.

peace out ya’ll! Míng tiān jiàn! (see you tomorrow)