Kaohsiung 高雄市: My kind of town
“Please just point to it on the map. Don’t try to pronounce it!” Julia pleaded with me as we approached a ticket counter at the Tainan train station to buy tickets to our next destination. The day before, she was chatting with her massage therapist and tried to tell him […]
Introductory Course: Taipei 101
All of a sudden, everyone knows what Taipei 101 is, after Alex Honnold scaled Taiwan’s tallest building with no ropes and no fear, live on Netflix. We were in Taipei a month before this death-defying stunt, and when Victor mentioned that we would visit Taipei 101, I had no idea […]
Hail Mary at Taoist Temple
“You enter on the right through the dragon door and exit on the left through the tiger door. And you never enter or exit through the middle door. That door is for gods.” We sat on a bench in front of a brightly colored Taoist temple with a rooftop looking […]
Taiwan: The First 24 Hours
The first 24 hours in Asia are crucial. This isn’t an easy 4-hour flight to Mexico City, where we get out of the airplane and hit the ground running, only occasionally stopping to marvel that just a few hours ago we were at home. It doesn’t have a mere 6-8 […]
When the Night Falls: Night Markets in Taiwan
A few days before our trip, I was talking to someone who had previously visited Taiwan and their only piece of advice was straightforward and without mincing words: “Do not eat street food there.” This was completely unexpected. If they’d said, “Don’t go there under any circumstances,” that would have […]
Back to Asia: Discovering Taiwan
The last time we were in Southeast Asia was in 2019, which now seems like a lifetime ago. Our first trip to that region was Thailand in 2013, followed by India in 2014, Japan in 2016, China in 2017, Cambodia in 2018, and finally Vietnam in 2019. On our first […]
