christmas, travel to Tainan and a good looking corner

This will be the second last post in Taiwan. The end is coming near...

And it's been Christmas!

Little Lihong :D

Christmas-concert in Taipei :D

Unfortunately Jiaxiascha had been sick, so we couldn't go for paintball. Instead we had a small Christmas celebration at Ankers place with an authentic christmas tree and delicious snacks! And this year I received absolutely zero christmas gifts :D But thats fine, recently I feel that I really don't need any more stuff but rather want to get rid of things - "The things you own end up owning you"
And of course this also meant that I was saved from the hustle of buying gifts for other people ;-)

Christmas tree lazy-german-guys-style

some lovely Christmas-snacks lazy-german-guys-style

A last tribute to the food here - so aaaaawesoooome and cheap!

coconut noodles

something-something

And this weekend I have been to Tainan with Jiaxiascha, Taiwans oldest city, famous for its distinct culture and temples. 

The christmas-spirit in Tainan!

"good looking corner" (see next picture)

sweet potato snack

boat trip with lots of old people that seemed very excited about it

Additionally we had been hoping for better weather compared to Taipei as it's relatively far south. Sadly in terms of this we have been disappointed and it was still quite cold down there; at least no rain though -.- I'm really really looking forward to the next trips to Southeast Asia. I'm sick of feeling cold - right now I'm wearing 5 layers of cloth (Tshirt, 3! sweaters and a jacket). 

I guess that my surface/mass coeficient is just highly inefficient - I'm too tall and thin in relation to my surface!

For the way back I opted to take the slow train to spend less time in my cold room - seriously! -.-

what a useful construction!

And recently Anker discovered a cool app to make funny shortclips with. Here some impressions from our travel in Tainan

here a guy was so nice to take us to the next bus stop on the loading area of his car.

Our fancy hotel room! :D

And again, the Taiwanese we met have been incredibly friendly and helpful. We even got a free Taxi ride - the driver just didn't want any money from us! How awesome is that?!
And we had some success moments regarding our Chinese: We successfully managed to ask our hotel receptionist for help in reserving a room at the next city we were heading to :D yay! That would have been completely impossible a few weeks ago.

somethings missing
Superstitious Chinese think 4 and 9 bring bad luck

On the way back we made a stop at a famous mud hotspring place, that was quite pleasent. However from the term mud hot spring - one of 3 locations worldwide we had expected real thick mud and instead it turned out to be just a "normal" hotspring with dirty water. But still there are few things more enjoyable than a hotspring!

All in all, I didn't feel Tainan to be very special though. I found Taipei and Kaohsiung much more interesting. Nevertheless we had a pleasent time there including a bike tour and delicious nightmarket snacks of course.

raining cats and dogs; female toilets and a little lord

Bad news first: The weather here is shit! For two weeks it's raining all day long plus beeing supercold!
As I'm writing this post (on a Sunday), I'm sitting in the library because I had to flee from my frosty room. After getting up today I literally ended up lying in bed under my blanket with jacket and shoes on! And still feeling cold! The problem is that there's no heater in m room (just my air conditioner - not so helpful) and as I'm leaving soon, I don't want to invest money in any equipment. Furthermore because of the enduring rain, the humidity is really high and my windows are always fogged with water pouring down the glass. So I'm afraid stuff might mold -.- (heard of problems regarding molding cloth from former exchange students...)

Nevertheless not owning a heater is a major advantage for my energy saving challenge (did I write about this? I've challenged myself to only consume one elecricity card (500NT$/~12,50€) for the whole semester - don't ask why!) by now I'm still left with about 50NT$ for the last 2,5 weeks. I guess I'll need to travel around Taiwan in case I come short ;-)

I can't remember having ever seen someone in Germany riding a bike with an umbrella in his hand but here it's totally normal. So to integrate culturally recently I had my own first bike ride holding an umbrella. And I must have looked pretty neat: A grim-faces white guy on this ridiculously high bike seat; holding a transparent green-dotted umbrella like a lance in front of him like a knight in a duel...
However, my brakes are already shit when it's dry, but that day with wet ground + only one hand remaining to break (for the other hand was holding the umbrella) my breaking distance knew no limits!
So at the first red trafficlight that I encountered, I bumped with an amazing 2km/h speed into a scooter waiting in front of me ... really awkward situation.

Oh and by the way - my bike is a bit fucked up by now - look at that piece of shit:

Those holes in the bike basket are very convenient for carrying long umbrellas!

Nevertheless JiaXiaScha agreed to buy it for 1000NT$ when I leave. What an idiot!

Yesterday I have been to an authentic hot spring place again with good old Lee Johann Gemüsemann!
Unfortunately the pools there werea bit too hot for me (~42°!) and it was even advised to stay not longer in the water than 3min. And as the place was outdoors, I was in a constant shift between too hot and too cold -.-
Nevertheless all in all it was quite an enchanting experience again: some Taiwanese guys there had brought a tea set and invited us to drink some tea with them. And now imagine sitting there, a view of misty mountains and exotic forests around, these steaming pools emiting a mild smell of sulfur and a bunch of naked, old taiwanese guys around! That's the magic of travel! :D

And by the way, Jiaxiascha - I've just been kidding, the bike's working smooth of course ;-)

Next topic: Learning Chinese.
My motivation is highly fluctual. It's kind of funny - I sometimes make notes for things to write about in the next blogpost and while I was just about to write that I'm highly motivated again, I found a note about my frustration regarding learning Chinese. I guess its changing about once per week.
My newest investment has been a new flashcard app (Pleco, ~10€) that has really neat features and every possible way imaginable to learn flashcars such as multiple choice, fill in the blanks or just hearing the vocabulary and then having to write the character. While my reading and speaking skills are pretty okay, I found that my weak spot is listening what is probably due to me beeing a visual learner. I'll try to improve on that with Pleco.
However, last week in the middle of my frustration with Chinese I had already thought about postponing my Chinese studies and first going for becoming fluent in Spanish (these two are on my bucket list)... well, let's see what next week brings ;-)

Now a random impression from life in Taipei:

Visualization of toilets currently in use!
So if a female friends goes to the restroom and you are a creep, you can check which cabin she's using - awesome!

JiaXiaSchas birthday party!

Some updates on my lovely macroeconomics class. I decided to stick with the course as I got a B- on the midterm and feel positive that I can make an A- for the final grade if I put some effort into the remaining assignments: A presentation I had this week, that went pretty well and a literature review assignment I'm currently working on. If I can finish that in the next days I'll be only left with my Chinese class, what would be nice.
Additionally I just stumbled on the official course questionnaire, where I can evaluate my taken classes.
My first impulse was to write a really bad and slightly mean evaluation for macro - muhahahaha
But I refrained from sending it to get more time to sample the pleasures of thinking about it! >8-)
(the credit for this wonderful phrase goes to http://dict.leo.org)


Yesterday way also very nice - movie night to see good old "Little Lord Fauntleroy" (Der kleine Lord). I hadn't seen this movie for ages, at least 30 years! Very contemplative movie to watch around christmas ;-)

And guess what - I might go for playing paintball on christmas :D That's the spirit, right!?

A homage to minimalism

For all those who might think that recent posts have been too long:
...Nothing happened last week!
I literally just had a look at my google calender from last week and Saturday and Sunday are completely blank - I have no idea what I've been doing! :D

This frees time to reflect on the meaning of this picture

Adventures at Sun Moon Lake, travel plans, no more drinking and a theory on clubbing

It's been a while...time for a new post!
On Sunday, two weeks ago I've been on a picnic with three lovely Taiwanese ladies at a huge riverside park. The park reminded me a bit of the Tempelhofer feld: A huge open area, many families and people around and flying kites in the air. Anker was about to join us later, but unfortunately his arrival also brought heavy rain, so right when he arrived, we had  to pack our stuff together and leave :-/
Afterwards Anker and me went to a famous 24h bookstore where I bought the "Southeast Asia on a shoestring" Lonely Planet travel guide to plan my next trip! And this is my plan so far, first flights are booked: Right after my last exam, I'll leave Taiwan at the 9th of January for a week in the Philippines. I'll probably head for El Nido, Palawan, which my friend Sascha recommended to me. He even found a website ranking it to be the BEST island in the world! And still its supposed to be not too touristy :-) wooohoo!
So far I'm planning to make a one-week-lonely-beach holiday there where I temporarily want to integrate some rountines into my lifestyle. For example I'm planning to daily do sports, meditate twice a day, write a diary and write down some stuff I've been thinking about recently plus no facebook/restricted internet. I'm really exited about it.
After that I'll meet up with Anker in Manila and shortly after we will head for 3 weeks of exploring Vietnam, Cambodia and probably Thailand or Myanmar. Finally on the 7th of February I have my flight back to Germany from Bangkok - I just hope that the political protests at present there will cool down up to then.

The biggest of last weeks adventures took place at Sun Moon Lake, Taiwans biggest lake, where I went with Anker for 2 days.
After arriving there in the afternoon, we found it to be so foggy, that we couldn't see anything of the lake. If we hadn't known its a lake, we probably would have taken it as a small river next to the street. Additionally the fog was so dense that you got wet from just beeing outside + freezing cold. Notwithstanding we decided to rent motorized bicycles to take a ride around the lake and were told this would take about 2h.
After taking at least 1,5h to reach the village at the opposite side of the lake, hungry, wet and cold we found that Ankers bike was already running out of battery plus it was already getting dark. (Slightly) disheartened first thing to do was buying gloves and a hat!
After a huge meal in a restaurant, we finally ended up at the local police station asking for help, where the officer called our bike rental shop to send a driver to pick us up. In the meantime he invited us for some tea. Awesome! :D

here you see the beautiful Sun Moon Lake!

Weird bananas!

and a cool temple

At least our hotel was a great success. The Love Home Garden Inn lived up to its name and our room turned out to be a honeymoons dream! Too bad I had Anker with me and not a charming Taiwanese princess :-P

love poems on the wall...

On the next day we were compensated with perfect sunny weather. But it was too late for Anker - he had already caught a cold :-/

Nevertheless we had a nice boat tour on the lake and visited the impressive Chung Tai Chen temple. I had heard of that place from the Buddhist nun I had met up with before as it is the centerpiece of her organisation. There, we even got a private tour and our guide even knew her.
The place was crazily wealthy with golden Buddha statues everywhere and an 8-storey, 100%-wood Pagoda inside of the central main tower which also featured Asias largest glass window. They seem to have some money there ;-)

doesn't this guy look exactly like Popeye?!

Chung Tai Chan monastery

Now some words on clubbing:
I usually state that I don't like clubbing because its just too late and so fucking loud and I don't really like drinking and expensive andandand ;-) yeah, I admit I'm one of those!
(In case you are wondering why do I go anyway sometimes. Well, to be up-front, same as probably 90% of guys: To meet the ladies! ;-) )
However recently I have developed a theory on why people go clubbing so fucking late, that I'd like to share here :D (using the awesome mindset of gametheory!)
Usually people talk about late clubbing as if it's just cooler. Like Berlin clubbing is super late so it must be much coller to go out there than in other places! But I think thats just one of these justifications where relatively stupid things somehow turn cool. (for example: not studying for a test, driving too fast or eating unhealthy food, right?^^ and yeah, I'm also guilty...) So this is my theory instead:
Whats the best time to arrive at a club? - When it's already full and people are dancing, right? So no one wants to be early and everyone tries to come when the place is already packed. This though drives people to arrive later and later and the only reason preventing clubbing from starting at times like 6am is that you also don't want to go too late. Because maybe you still don't want to completely mess up your sleeping cycle or would just fall asleep at home at some point. So it seems that around 1am is the time when the costs of beeing too early (so it's empty) and starting too late (so you are tired) are roughly equal and the clubs eventually fill up. And this state obviously beeing socially inefficient with everyone beeing better off if people could just start at something like 10pm.
I know this theory sounds a bit strange at first but think about it, who would really prefer to start so late?

So to fix this, I propose a money based incentive system to make people arrive early! :D
For example free entrance before 9pm and after that something like 5€ surcharge +1€ for every 15min after that. (And secondly the music should be limited to a level where your ears are not actually getting damaged -.-)
How would you not prefer this? :-P

As usual I've also been hiking and hotspringing again with my Taiwanese friend Lee Johann Gemüsemann :D

Taiwanese graveyard

And on Friday I had my birthday - Lihong is 23 now! This year I didn't throw a big party though and just went to a nice dumpling restaurant with a few people, what was fun.
However that night I drank more than in the 6 weeks before combined - about one and a half beer!
Of course this resulted in getting sick right again on the day after -.-
Therefore I've decided to completely stop drinking now (In the past I've found that I often got sick after drinking and feel pretty sure by now that drinking somehow has a strong negative effect on my immune system). As some of you might know I've already thought about making this decision recently and it doesn't come too difficult for me as getting wasted and crazy partying are fortunately not the activities I enjoy most in life ;-)
Just recently I've again talked with a friend about our society rather strange drinking behavior. I mean after all alcohol is the worlds deadliest and one of the most addicting drugs, I bet everyone of you knows not just one but a bunch of people that died from alcohol - directly or indirectly (accidents, drunk driving). And still in many social situations it's not just normal to get drunk but you actually need to justify yourself if you don't want to drink. Yeah sure, it makes some things and situations easier, I have to admit that most of my romantic encounters started under the influence of alcohol and I could imagine that this is the case for something around 90% of these cases in many western countries. But is it really worth it after all? Yes a crazy night with a group of drunken people can end in a really funny story. But I bet you also know some people that you can usually have as much fun with without drinking and without loosing the next day to a hangover.
Be the change you want to see in the world!

hotpot, hot springs and hot photos

So last weekend I have been to a hotpot restaurant with my Taiwanese friend Bonita and two other of her friends. As the name might indicate, you get a pot with boiling water in the middle of your table and then massive loads of food, that you can then put in the boiling water! It was a bit spicy for me, but as I'm planning to go to India as my next big travel project and heard that the food there is crazily spicy, I usually feel that I should go for all the spicy stuff as a kind of preparation :D And you know, "pain is just weakness leaving the body!"


Same night I also went to a Karaoke place again, what was really funny. I was completely sober (recently I seriously think about completely stopping drinking alcohol...) but the guy next to me was drunk as hell and just watching him, eating some melon or a chicken leg - closed eyes, 100% focus on this one task - was really entertaining. The two of us also ended up singing the Beatles "Yesterday" three times together! And over time I can tell our singing improved from a really, really horrible level to a really horrible level if not even more :D


And to hot springs I've even been twice recently. Last weekend I went to Wulai, a place not too far from Taipei, thereby having my first scooter drive here in Taiwan (yay!). For my friend this was probably also his first scooterride having armrests (my legs at his side) -.-

Wulai

There, as my Taiwanese friend Lee Johann Gemüsemann told me, some pensioners, nothing to do all day long, had decided to build up a hotspring area which is free. In contrast to all the other commercial hotspring places I'd been to so far, this place it seemed was build with the stuff the old people had found in there garages - and with lots of creativity. The sauna for example, looked like one of those slum buildings, made of plastic covers and inside people were splashing some hot spring water on the walls so that the evaporating steam made up the sauna. Awesome!

the thing on the right is the sauna!

An other interesting attraction was a pool, located right between the river (cold) and a natural hotspring (extremely hot) and connected to both. So depending on the streaming water, the temperature in this pool was a gamble, changing every moment from "a bit cold", to "aaaw - perfect", to "FUCK THIS IS HOT!!!". In the last case, the only thing you could do was to stir the water with your hands like a manic to mix the hot one with the cold water from the river.

This one! hotspring on the right, river on the left

Me and someone drowning in the background ;-)

An other weird situation there was when I bought a package of ready-cut pineapples from a local streetvendor. Taking in the first slice though, I found that it tasted pretty salty and eventually got to know that Taiwanese vendors sometimes use to wash the cut slices in saltwater to stop the oxidation process and to preserv the fresh color... seriously?! :-/

Waterfall in Wulai, one of many

Now I've covered hotpot and hot springs and with "hot photos" I'm just refering to a pretty cool National Geographic exhibition that I had been to with Anker. Not what you might think, pervert!
(just wanted a third term that begins with hot...)

one of their most famous photographs

The exhibiton was really cool, some stunning photographs deeply moving me. Live on earth can be just so beautiful.
The area where the exhibiton took place, was like a little Berlin actually. With lots of arts stuff, tiny cafes and creative shops.

What is going on here? I know, but I don't tell you! :-P

Finally on Wednesday I've been clubbing again. And this time even to two clubs in one night - Lihong in beastmode!
(This one was for you, Jiaxiasha!)
And I just thought that so far I haven't really written about the actual clubbing experience here in Taiwan compared to Germany - so thats what I'm gonna do now:
Firstly the clubs I've been to were rather fancy and expensive with cover charges around 15€. While the general clubbing experience is not so different to Germany (dancing people, music too loud...) whats different though is that here the female guests show active interest in me :D
For example on Wednesday: I just arrived at the club with some friends, walked to the dance floor area where immediately a girl approaches me "Hey, you've also been at Myst (a club) last week, right? Whats your name?", while from the other side a girl is touching my arm to softly pull me to the circle of her friends. Awesome!
However, all this usually makes me become a bit overconfident and then I usually end up going home alone
Maybe there's some flaw in my strategy... :D
However, some of the other guys here in the dorm are really... well let's use the neutral term "going for it" ;-)
For example this badass:

just kidding, Katha ;-)

And yesterday I went hiking with Lee Johann again at Yangmingshan. He had told me that for the hike we could meet up with some friends of him and this turned out to be a 30 man travel club :D
Unfortunately, I had done lots of sports just the day before after not exercising in the last weeks, so that my muscels were soring really badly. Moreover I was somehow super tired and therefore could't enjoy the hike too much... BUT afterwards we went to a local hotspring place which was aaawesome! Lots of different pools of varying temperature, water jets for massaging your back and very shallow pools for lying/sleeping there. Soooo relaxing!

steam from a natural hot spring

my hiking group

So, thats it!