Bangkok blurb

just some loose pictures on my computer i thought i'd share. i still have a ton to put up from the past month. i just finished one of three massage courses the other day. been hanging out with lots of people. kings birthday was today, pretty crazy, but i'll tell ya later.

making a mess is what we do best



a gross amount of fish at the pier awaiting the bread tossed in by everyone waiting for the boat







tuk tuk

Taiwan, revisited (part 2)

the equivalent to our chewing tobacco, although i doubt this is quite as bad. some seed, wrapped in a leaf thats coated in some white chalky stuff.

i guess the seed and leaf are the filler, and the chalk stuff is what makes you feel warm.

it was gross



so many of these things. they make up most of traffic. at intersections the cars have to stop a ways back while all the vespa things come through the stopped cars and pile up at the front. its pretty funny standing at a busy four way intersection and seeing a few hundred of these things.





incense


one of about three pieces if graffiti in the city


the best meal i had there. all vegetarian buffet, complete with fake chicken wings (the bone is actually a piece of wood) -also getting hand cramps from chop sticks was frustrating...






taipei 101


worlds tallest building until a few years ago


view from the other side of the city. you can see taipei 101 on the right. so this is where i went with my three taiwanese buddies. it was a tea house way up in the hills overlooking the city. it rained off and on which was rad. we ate, drank tea, and talked until around 2:30 am, then went out again to find more to do.

Taiwan, revisited (part 1)

revisited online of course, im still in bangkok.

taipei view from the other side of the city



i dont mean to hate on their food, but it sucks. The morning i left i had a green bean drink...


the girl is a couchsurfer that i only hung out with. the two guys are friends of a different couchsurfer that was too busy with the army to host me, so he asked his friends and i hung out / crashed with them. funnest times ever.

one of many amazing night markets.


Vera (the girl couchsurfer) and i drove up here after the hot springs.


one part of the hot spring, along side the river.





absolutely disgusting. they're called hot spring eggs. the shell was coated with some weird rice hulls or something, and this scrumptious snack was inside.


i saw a lot of these ninjas about, not sure what they were up too but they mostly kept to themselves...

2012 olympic contender?

abiding by the usual stereotypes, how rad is it that i completely smoked these asians in ping pong?




and while i was at i went ahead and set a new record, maybe the highest in the world?

not much christianity going around taiwan

actually while i was there i was asking about the aboriginal people of the island. i noticed a large cross in what seemed to be nothing but jungle with a road passing through. so it got me wondering. i mean, if the newbies are all all about confucianism, buddhism, taoism... then the aboriginals must have something really crazy going on... but as it turn out most of them are christian! thanks to a portuguese priest that converted them all early on when portugal ran the island. whew! where would those people have been if they didnt know they would burn in hellfire for all eternity if they didnt put a cross up in their jungle villages.

the person i was talking with didnt know about the aboriginals religion before christianity, since i guess its been that way for a very long time.

Officially settled

soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo... there is still so much to share from the last few weeks and i will get to it very soon. nick left yesterday so i got my apartment set up. still a little sparse...

out of touch

i havent been in a place to get my laptop going with internet but i have so many good pictures / videos / stories to share.

i left taiwan friday and have been with nick in Thailand since. its been so amazing. we went to a small city about 4 1/2 hours out of bangkok to stay with some of my extended family and go to a super rad yearly festival. so many great expiriences in just a few short days. i'll share them soon.

today we leave for another city (pattaya) and when we come back to bangkok in three days i'll have an apartment with internet so there will be a plethora of new posts...

pattaya

this with about 1,000 more people

second day cont.

im not putting all the pics up now since this is what i look like and havent rested more than 6 hours in the past three days... i also realized all the pictures are having the right side cut off... i'll fix it later.


i went north to visit Yuliou, a park along the north coast with with a some crazy eroded rocks

fishing boats


some crazy eroded rocks






and then went to Keelung just to check out the city...

markets lining every street






dipped into a 7-11 for a water and thought i'd share these scrumptious beauties of unlabeled meat / ? formed in various shapes and floating in water- standard in every 7-11 here.

second day taipei

first order of business, unfortunately, is to retract my "good food" remark. i was fooled early on with a pretty tasty boca burger style sandwich and fruit, but havent had much luck since... except the tea and fruit mixes. that stuff blows me away.


anyway, the people and setting more than make up for it. if i had to choose one word to sum up the people here i'd use gentle. everyone is soft spoken, super polite and helpful.


i cant get my pictures going right now but i do have this...

Its a temple in keelung, north of taipei by about an hour. From what i understand (and thats not much) the puppet show is for the entertainment of a god or gods.

Usually the show depicts a story of a particular god for that gods entertainment or sometimes the show is hired by someone to act out a prayer for the god being prayed to. So if a person is robbed or something, and they pray that the thief is caught and their belongings returned, they might pay some puppets to act it out and hopefully earn some points with that god so they can have their prayers answered. I guess the puppets are the ones pulling the strings ...

day 1- loving it

3 hours to sf, 16 hours to taiwan, 1 hour to taipei. grabbed a hostel, grabbed a snack, grabbed a nap.

half a day in and i can tell i love this place. happy people, good food, cheap, lots of things to do and see. relaxed metropolis in the middle of a jungle on an island...

middle of the city. you hearing those birds?


an upside of only speaking english is my mind isnt filled with advertising... just pretty colors.











someone from couchsurfing contacted me so i'll be staying with a family about 20 minutes outside of the city. http://www.couchsurfing.org/