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
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| here you see the beautiful Sun Moon Lake! |
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| Weird bananas! |
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| 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
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| 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 ;-)
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| doesn't this guy look exactly like Popeye?! |
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| 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
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| 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!
