We’re all set up in Waterloo, Ontario. Mike is now a full time student in pursuit of a second degree at the University of Waterloo, and I am on the hunt for a job in environmental consulting. It is nice to be back, but there are certainly things I miss about Taiwan, too. Still, one […]
Author: debondad
Cycling the West Coast of Taiwan
Many people recommend starting with the West coast of Taiwan and moving counter-clockwise when riding around the island. There are a few reasons for this – the higher population means more places to stop and fuel up and stay overnight, and more English speakers also helps with easing yourself into the Taiwan way of life, […]
Cycling the East Coast of Taiwan
Cycling the Northern Cross Highway
In addition to taking the coastal road that skirts around the edge of Taiwan, there are a few mountain passes as well. We planned to tackle the northernmost road that crosses the mountains, Highway 7, aka the Northern Cross Highway. Our route took us from Hsinchu to Luodong (near Yilan), via Guanxi and Baling, a […]
騎自行車台湾環島 / Cycling Around the Island of Taiwan
As I wrote before, the day after I finished teaching at Royal we packed up our bags and started to cycle around Taiwan, something referred to here as 環島 (huandao), meaning ‘circle the island’. Our trip can be neatly broken down into three sections: 1) the northern cross highway over the mountains; 2) the east coast […]
Touring Taiwan
I finished work on Friday, and the very next day, Mike and I headed out on the next installment of our adventure in Taiwan: 我們騎自行車環島. We are riding our bicycles around Taiwan! We started with the northern cross highway over the mountains to the East coast, and I’m currently sitting in a great B&B in […]
Cycling Taiwan
Cycling is a great way to sightsee, and the conditions in Taiwan for cycling are absolutely fantastic! We’ve done a bunch of day and few-day rides since arriving. Sometimes we bring the GoPro, and Mike stitched together this:
Dragon Boat Festival
Yesterday was the Dragon Boat Festival. We headed down to the harbour at Nanliao to eat some zongzi (sticky rice dumplings) and watch some of our friends compete in the day’s races. Mike put together a video of some of the action. Have a look!
Take me out to the ball game!
Baseball’s a popular sport in Taiwan, and on Thursday we got out to see a CPBL (Chinese Professional Baseball League) game! There are four teams which rotate play through 12 stadiums across the island. The number of games at each stadium is weighted by population, and Hsinchu’s stadium has 10 scheduled games (out of 240 […]
Shrimp Fishing!
When you drive around the Hsinchu area, it is not uncommon to see many people sitting in lawn chairs around shallow, aerated concrete ponds. As it turns out, they are shrimp fishing, a popular pastime here! I’ve been intrigued by it for a while, and a friend just had his birthday party at a shrimp […]