Taipei break

Robina and I visited Taipei last week for a short break. Robina discovered that her tolerance for Beijing was fast running out, so a quick dash to a more civilised Taipei was in order. so far, the ROD for Robina is about 5-6 months (TTC blogger Dan calls it aptly, "the cycle of funk").

funny thing was that we really appreciated Taipei only after moving to Beijing. I guess it's all relative. Now we kowtow to the Japanese-level of gracious service that is common in Taipei. not to mention the delicious Taiwanese and Japanese food that we could find so easily in Taiwan. the only drawback for Taipei (also for Beijing) was that english books were hard to come by, but the situation in Taipei was better since you could still find a reasonable range of english books in places like Eslite or Kinokuniya.

for some strange reason, we had to dodge another typhoon during this trip, Chanchu (pearl in Chinese). thankfully, our flight to HK was not delayed even though the typhoon was moving towards the mainland and quite close to Taiwan after hitting the Philippines.

after the tanking up on some civilisation, I hope to travel to more ulu spots within China. maybe a short trip to Qinghai Lake during summer to see the migratory birds and Tibetan culture. or to experience the grassland steppes of Inner Mongolia. the downside is that, we have to pick some really ulu boondocks in order not to find the rest of China there as well. we discovered to our dismay during the May holidays that local tourist spots were innundated by hordes of humanity. not surprising, since one fifth of humanity is in China.