The Philippines: I found heaven and hell

This is gonna be a long post, but so much stuff happened - it feels more like a month of experiences.
I hope you enjoy it.

So on the 9th of January it was finally time to leave Taiwan.
My next destination was the paradise-beach resort of El Nido on the island of Palawan in the Philippines. My friend JiaXiaSha and some other exchange students had recommended it to me as the perfect beach place and also as not too touristy.
My flight was in the morning, first to the Philippines capital Manila and then to Puerto Princesa, the main city of Palawan and south of El Nido, where I finally arrived in the evening. From there I had to take a further van ride in the night to El Nido.
Unfortunately the ride took place on a bumpy dirt road and the supposed 4h ride (according to the woman who had sold it to me) stretched to 7h. In short, highly unpleasant. On the ride I met Richard, an English guy who has been travelling for the last 20 month and he even told me that this was the worst ride he had had during all his travels. -.-
This though, turned out to be a price worth to pay.

How would you imagine the perfect beach to look like?
Yeah, that’s El Nido!

I stayed at a small guesthouse that was run by the warm-hearted Filipino woman Oring and her funny little cat Simba. All in all, my stay was a bit like living with a small temporary family and I often played with the cat and talked a lot to Oring, who told me a lot about the Philippines and the corruption everywhere and also about her future business plans and in the evening she sometimes cooked vegetable curry for us and some other guests. During my stay there I also met a few other travellers who had some cool stories to tell. And again I found that during travelling, you never have to be alone if you don't want to. However, for this week I often chose to go for some solitude.

my room, first time ever sleeping under a mosquito net. One night my feet got stung really bad though because they touched the net - the curse of beeing too tall :-/

me, my host Oring and Adil from Belgium, who is already travelling for 3 years by now!

On the first day, together with Richard, I went for a guided ciff climbing tour that would definitely not be allowed in Germany - climbing on steep walls of sharp stones without any security gear. Definitely in the top 5 of most dangerous things I've done in my life! But our guide told us that he had done it barefoot before and during the way back we encountered an other group with the guide in flipflops and a woman in sandals. Nice job! :D
But again the view from top of the cliff was kind of worth it.

May it begin! Richard and our guide

Holy shit!

What a view!

Yeah, we were also carrying this rock up.

The second day I decided to take it easy and just relax at the beach - white sand, palmtrees around and drinking coconut juice.
And bumped into a friend from Taipei. What a small world!

sharing a tricycle with my German friend Timo, who also studied at NTU

The third day, I took a so called island hopping tour, I'm not quite sure, but that might have been the most beautiful experience of my life. Gorgeous mountain islands around and beautiful beaches everywhere. Furthermore we had some cool activities as diving through a small tunnel hole to a so called hidden beach, snorkeling and also delicious food, that our guides prepared on one of the beaches.
I'm not too happy with the pictures I took, but a Czech guy I met on the tour had brought a good camera and might send me some of his pictures soon and then I'll update it here.

The next day the weather got a bit worse unfortunately. Nevertheless together with Richard I started a Kayak tour to a nearby island. The woman that rented out the kayak to us, looked slightly amused when we departed from the beach, that was probably already a bad sign...
And yeah, about halfway we decided to turn back as the wind and waves just got too strong. Fail...
After that I took a tricycle to a slightly farther-off beach that was completely empty. I jogged down the beach for about 15 min without encountering anyone.

The day after that I strolled around town a bit and ended up in a slum-like area, with houses made of trash, poor children playing on the streets and a cockfight taking place!


So now some general impressions about the Philippines and Filipinos. In general it is completely different to Taiwan. The living standard is much lower and I had seen some really bad poverty. Everything is also quite cheap, but the food is in my opinion not so good and really not special. To me, some people had been quite nice, many competely indifferent and some openly unfriendly. In general Filipinos are rather laid back, a bit slow, taking things easy and not worried about efficiency. For example in restaurants it takes ages to pay the bill: First you ask for the cheque, after around 5min they bring it and walk off, eventually they take your money and walk off again and 5min later they finally bring your change -.-
Also it's much less safe and scams are taking place all the time and you have to do lots of bargaining if you don't want to get ripped off. The island of Palawan is supposed to be quite safe generally though.
However, Manila was yet to come...

So that was El Nido and I had a really great time there. However my plans for leaving civilization a bit behind, meditating in solitude on lonely beaches and writing stuff had only worked out partially. The place was just a bit to touristy and also there was just too much really cool stuff to do that I didn't want to miss out on. Yeah, whatever...

In the evening of the 14th, after 5 days in El Nido, I took a night bus to drive back to the bigger town Puerto Princesa from where I'd get my flight to Manila. While the bus was much more pleasent than the horrible van ride I had taken a few days before, I encountered some very unpleasent situations.
After a few hours of driving I was wearing an eyemask and earplugs to try to get some sleep. Then I noticed how a guy sat down next to me and after a while, I started to feel his hand carefully feeling around my side at the hip (No, not in a sexual way, you pervert!).
I'm not sure if he was really a pickpocket, but I immediately took of my eyemask and looked at him (probably a bit sleepy-confused) and he made big eyes and gestured to his phone strangely. At the next stop he got off and I noticed that pretty much all seats behind me were empty - so it was additionally strange that he had chosen to sit next to me. Scary!
Just recently I had heard about other travellers who had been pickpocketed while sleeping in a bus... Maybe after all it's not so bad that I practically never can find sleep in buses (and airplanes).

After a few more hours, around 3:30am nighttime we arrived at the bus station in Puerto Princesa. The problem was that I had not yet organized an accomodation as I had decided quite spontaneously to leave that evening already and a good place that my host knew down there was only available for the next night. I had hoped for other travellers that I could just join or a group of locals trying to sell their rooms. However that did not work out and instead there was only a bunch of tricycle drivers aggressivley trying to sell their service to the arriving people. So I approached one and asked if he knew a good accomodation for 500pesos (~10€) for a single room and I added that I would not take anything else or anything more expensive - if he's really sure that he knows a room for this price (beware of scams!). He said sure, sure and as I expected that he knew some place where he would get commission for bringing me I asked if the ride would be free and he agreed. So far so good.
Then we arrived at a guesthouse and the receptionist wanted to sell the room for not under 800 :-/ So we moved on... The next place was 750 and the next one was booked out. Thanks man, good job!
As I was really getting tired, I finally gave in and accepted the next places 700peso room - at least it's my fault not having organized something before. But when I said goodbye to my driver he complained that I hadn't paid him yet. What the fuck!? (You remember - he had agreed to drive me to a 500peso hotel for free) I was still curious though, how much he would demand (I had read in a guidebook that the usual price for a ride around town is 20pesos). So he said his price is 650 pesos.
Well, you know that I pretty much never get angry.
But that was a bit too much. So after some heated discussion I told him to piss off, just walked off to my room, locked the door and went to sleep furiously.
Not the best start in Puerto.
It didn't really improve matters that I didn't have a mosquito net in my room (the receptionist had told me that's no problem) and after a few minutes I saw those beasts flying all around me :-/
But the next day got much better and I got a pleasent acoomodation, started the day with a nice massage for 6€/hour (massage counter: 3) and strolled around the town a little.

tricycles everywhere

and everywhere

not the best area, slums in the background

In the evening I went to a bar to meet some locals and this time someone succeeded in stealing my money.
The value of around 50€, fortunately only the cash, no cards or other valuables.
Great!
I like to trust people and generally believe in the good nature of people. And in terms of this, Taiwan had been such a paradise - everyone you could trust, really everyone!
But in the Philippines now, it had become hard for me to trust anyone. Not a nice feeling.
So at this point I was kind of fed up with the Philippines.

The next morning was my flight to Manila.
However, I had heard some really crazy stories about taxi drivers. For example that after loading your bag in the trunk, they would drive off, or that they would spray some narcotic through the airconditioner to make the passenger unconscious and then rob them,or after a short ride just inviting a guy with a gun in who makes you leave all your stuff in the cab and then drive off without you.
In short, I had become a bit paranoid.
So I decided to take an expensive shuttle service from the airport to my hotel, sent the plate number to Karl after getting in and switched off the airconditiong - better safe than sorry, right!?
And finally arrived at my 4-star hotel in Manila.
What a relieve!
Karl had opter for the luxus and I had originally argued for a cheaper accomodation. but now I was really happy in the comfort of the hotel.

Except for a short walk to an ATM and to get some dinner (plain rice and some plain veggies, thanks to the wide selection of vegetarian dishes -.-), I didn't leave my hotel room for that day.
It seemed the surrouding mostly consisted of various banks protected by heavy-armed (shotguns or M16 assault rifles) security guards against all the poor people living on the streets. And those were really lying around on the street everwhere. I have never seen such a misery.

Ankers flight from Hong Kong was supposed to arrive quite late, after midnight - the receptionist was supposed to call me, when he would arrive - and around 11pm I fell asleep on my bed.
Then, suddenly I woke up from someone entering the room! A bit confused and pretty thrilled I called "Who is this?!", and the person left again. Then I heard voices on the floor and someone asking cautiosly "Lino?"
And Anker came in!
It had been Anker all the time what I had not recognized without my glasses on. Scared from my resolute call, he had retreated the first time :D
I'm still laughing when I think about this. The Philippines just fucked with my mind. Damn!

The next day after a good round of sleep we started the day with a nice lunch buffet from our hotel and then went of for some sightseeing. (Of course only taking as few valuables with us as possible) First was an old fort and the historic part of the city which turned out to be quite nice.

However, after leaving the by entrance-fee restricted area of the fort, things got pretty fucked up again and we experienced continuing upsetting situations.
A tricycle driver that didn't leave our side for about 15minutes, all the time proposing a tour and completely ignoring our rejections.
And then slums everywhere around and poor people living on the streets and probably most sadly: A small child in torn lumps and covered in dirt.
Some of these people seemed to have lost their humanness to some degree. Living more like animals, day by day in the dirt, no planning for the future, probably very limited social interaction, beeing completely on their own, derived of their dignity as humans.
On the same time, we got to feel shame just for the fact that compared to them we were the rich and that most of this is probably due to the bare luck of beeing born in a different country. We thought that they must think about us the same way, that we think about the super-rich in Western countries that invest a fortune in a stupid sportscar, expensive dinners or redundant other luxuries.
And further there is a social coldness. Most people treated us very submissive, but without any warmth or honest appreciation.
Our minds just filled up with negative emotions. Distrust, anxiety, shame, pity, anger.
And now imagine all those people living their whole live there.

We didn't really take many pictures of poor people and slums because we felt uncomfotable about doing this. But at night this is a home for some people. 

a tricycle driver and his son

I'm pretty sure that the root cause for all the misery is the massive corruption taking place in the country. I've heard outrageous stories about it and it seems that corruption is rooted so deep in society that you endanger your life with the simple act of speaking out against it. This of course goes hand in hand with massive inequality and the rich using their money and influence to get richer and richer and the poor beeing on their own. It's not that whole Manila is a slum, right next to some slums are massive shopping malls and vast mansions surrounding by high walls and armed security.
It's just outrageous and for me seeing this made me want to somehow fight for some change. It's just how? What can you do? If you give people on the street some money, does it really do any good? If you get a massage for 3€/hour or a tricycle ride for 0,10€ is that exploitation or do you support the people? What can you do politically without risking your life? Should we pressure our homecountries governments to speak out against those grievances?
Tough questions but I think it's good having to think about them.
In general these experiences I've made felt pretty shitty. But after all, I guess it's good I made them. It gives a new perspective. Maybe these places would not exist if everyone got to see them. Go and travel!

I also seriously think about donating some money to those four countries I'm travelling to now, as they are all pretty poor and my money surely has more value for the people there than for me. But again the difficult question is to whom and how to donate it. I talked to some people about this issue and everyone has different opinions. I haven't made a decision yet but it's keeping me occupied.

To be upfront, I feel a bit uncomfortable about writing so much bad stuff about a country but this is just what I've experienced and I just want to be authentic about my feelings.
It might be biased from some particular experiences and places I've seen. At least my friend JiaXiaSha after school spent a voluntary social year in Manila and he could stay a whole year there - for me pretty much one day was too much^^

The next morning we finally got our flight to the next destination, Vietnam.
I have never been so happy to leave a country.

my 10min New Years, goodbye Taiwan, review of the exchange

Before I come to the farewell-Taiwan part here, some words on my amazing New Years celebration:
I guess everyone knows about having these different states of lets call it "willingness to interact with people" depending on situation and mood. For example when I'm in a good mood and leave my apartment I hope to meet people and chat a little "what a wonderful day!", "Taiwan's really awesome, right?".
On the other hand when I'm feeling pissed about something, I like to share my complaints with someone: "oooh Chinese is soo hard!", "It's so horribly cold!" or "Bah - I hate stinky tofu!" ;-)
And when things get worse I start not wanting to interact with people. And when I have to, I hate it!
This, even worse, was Lihong around New Years with some nice infection of food poisoning :D (Probably from Tainan as JiaXiasha got it as well). Fluids leaving the body from all opening! I haven't felt that horrible for a good while and was actually close to going to a hospital the night before New Years with the only good thing beeing my lovely Swedish friend Larsson taking best care of me at some point. I told him that when he dies, I will hold a funeral speech to mention that ;-)

However, my new years celebration literally went from 11:55 to 12:05:

party-party!!!

Furtunately I recovered relatively quickly and was good to go again for finals week. So I had my final exam in Chinese that went pretty well. I'm still not sure though how much effort I will put in learning more Chinese in the future. I might really go for Spanish first actually. If I had put the effort of learning Chinese into learning Spanish instead, I'm quite certain that I'd be fluent by now!

A last adventure I had, was a visit of the Buddhist nun at the Yangmingshan mountain. For the way back, I decided to try my luck with hitchhiking and already the first car coming by offered me a ride. But not a normal ride in a normal car. No. This instead:

Sitting on a cable drum, tools around, great view - what better way to travel?

However, the driver was speeding like crazy through the windy mountain road what my stomach was not too fond off. And finally arriving after a 30min drive I felt sick for the next 2 hours and had to lie down for a while after coming home :D Great!

And of course I have been pretty busy with the preparations for my departure. I also sent a huge suitcase home to Germany with stuff I don't want to carry around with me during my final travels. It ended up really, really expensive so let's not talk about it... ;-)
And then of course came the saying goodbye to new (and old) friends. But similar to my farewell at UCSD, I feel certain that I will see many of the faces again not too far in the future - so I haven't been too sad.

with good old Larsson and some last delicious fooooood! yumyumyum

saying goodybe to Iris (met her at UCSD)

...and my language exchange friend Stefany

Now some last thoughts on the Taiwan exchange in general.
One comparison that came to my mind regularly was this exchange compared to my former exchange at UCSD. While this comparison is certainly a bit difficult as I've probably changed a bit and came here with different goals, I found three things I preferred at UCSD: First while the weather in Taiwan has in general been quite nice, I've been freezing during the last weeks and occasionally it rained a lot, while the weather at UCSD was just PERFECT! And then this awesome beach nearby where you could go surfing...
Second my courses at UCSD had been much better and exceptionally interesting, while at NTU I barely found any courses I liked (what is mostly due to not so many classes beeing offered in English but Chinese instead).
And third, probably most important: I-House! While there was basicially nothing to complain about the housing here and the location was great, the room just perfect and the staff helpful, it just couldn't compare to the greatness of Ihouse with its outstanding international community (though this is like comparing an average good person to Gandhi! Seriously, Ihouse was this awesome!). Also, I ended up hanging out mostly with Germans - not that I have anything against Germans (I mean I'm German!) or that it wasn't fun - it's just that I didn't come to Taiwan to meet my fellow countrymen. And in stark contrast to Ihouse, here I had to put some active effort into meeting locals/Taiwanese for example by looking for language exchange partners.

Even though this might have sounded a bit negative, the exchange on the whole has been an outstanding experience! Including my travels to other countries I have deeply experienced Asian culture - Japanese Onsen, Korean Bibimbap, Chinas Great wall and nature, Singapore and of course Taiwan, you pearl! While basically not knowing pretty much anything about Taiwan until about one year ago, I came to fall in love with this lovely island. The Taiwanese people in particular are probably the most hearthy and upright people I've so far encountered and the Taiwanese culture is very authentic Asian - just what I had been looking for. And basically every week was packed with adventures and cool experiences such as (extreme) hikes, learning about Buddhism and meditation, the delicious food, exploring nightmarkets and cities, singing karaoke or soaking in hotsprings to name a few.
I definitely want to come back sometime!

A new environment of course also brings change to you. When people asked me about my plans for the future before I had started my trip here, I had used to tell them, "Well, I do have some plans now - but I guess after Taiwan things will be quite different" and indeed this happened and I got a lot of new plans and ideas for the future.
One change I found quite interesting is that I used to think that an exchange semester is the very best opportunity to experience a foreign country as most of the stuff gets organized for you while you are able to dig quite deep into the culture and meet lots of people. However, by now and for future trips I feel that I would prefer beeing more independent and organizing pretty much everything on my own. In particular I have 3 destinations in mind where I want to go next trying this: India, South-America for learning Spanish (maybe Argentina) and travelling through China/Taiwan again to improve my Chinese. I might have about 2 month at the end of this year so let's see where that's going... :-)

Now I'm looking forward to the upcoming month of travelling through Southeast Asia and soon also seeing Berlin, friends and family again, living with my good-old roommates Melli and Jakob and eating fresh German bread again!

I've been on the top of the 101 tower again, this time at night - what a fabulous view!

This has been a long post and might come like a final ending for the blog. Nevertheless, I will write some more posts in the upcoming weeks during my travels through Southeast Asia. Probably four more posts to come, one for each country - so stay updated ;-)

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!