May 27 to June 8, 2008 Taiwan: 6 days Hong Kong: 5 days Event: CAOS International Conference, Hong Kong Where: Taiwan and Hong Kong So I arrived in Hong Kong with no plans whatsoever other than        my flight to Taiwan the following day.  Where to sleep tonight?        After surfing the internet at the airport, I found a youth hostel        out somewhere "near" the airport.  This is where the taxi driver       dropped me off after a 3/4 of an hour drive up through a steep       col, past deserted beaches and into the middle of a jungle in dense       fog... uhhh, hello?  Anybody there?  I was half expecting a puma       would jump out at me! The next day, on my way back to the airport by bus, I found out that the place was        normally very touristy because there's some sort of giant Buddha statue.  It was raining        so hard, though, that this is all I saw, and the place was completely deserted.  Quite        spooky. Linden's house in Taichung.  He lives outside the city at the edge       of the mountains. Linden's sweet ride! Linden's wife Wesley's sweet ride!  An old Vespa... Linden took me on a motorbike ride up into the mountains behind his house.  This is the view from a tiny middle-of-nowhere farm road down to Taichung. Temple on the way. The biggest watermelons I've ever seen. Dragon fruit and papaya. Typical mild scooter traffic in Taichung.  The smog is so bad, you can't go without a        mask, otherwise you get nauseous. Linden in a bike store with the face mask he developped and sells to Giant, etc. Linden's cat Hobbes. Barbecued flattened squid lollypop.  Very tasty. Wesleigh and Linden.  The national sport in Taiwan is eating.        They have these street-level restaurants everywhere.  The food        is cheap and very good.  They love sauces.  And the bathrooms       are spotlessly clean.  Cleaner than the restaurants themselves... I thought this paintwork was fake and Disneyland-like, but no, it's the real thing! The world's smallest triple tandem bike: two on the saddles and one standing        behind on the pegs. The couple on the left are good friends of Linden and Wesleigh's.  They took us to        a sweet restaurant, I have no idea where.  We ate a tasty lamb (I think!?!) soup with        tofu and noodles.  The funny thing is that in Taiwan, you can bring your own bottle        of wine to a restaurant, and they'll even open it for you!  That would just NEVER        work in Europe ... let alone France!  Paul, on the left, works in the climbing business,        designing and manufacturing equipment such as carabiners, ice tools, etc.  They're a        very nice couple.         Street bbq vendor.  This is what we ate right after the giant soup        in the previous picture. Then we went and had some flattened squid... And finished the evening off with a solid half a litre of bubble        tea.  This one cost about a dollar.  Mmm mmm. The following day we went to a hotsprings way up in the mountains.  Super lush jungle everywhere.  The hotsprings was officially in that shanty-like structure on the left, but it had recently burnt down!  Apparently the water from the source was       so hot, that last time they had come, they'd brought a fresh chicken and boiled it in the springs... This is a Taiwanese drink called Payolta (sounds like a motor oil        brand or something!), that Linden insisted on us trying.  The        ingredients consist of: Angelicae, Ginseng, Rhizoma (these all        sound like cough medicine ingredients), Thioctamide, Lysine,        Methionine (these sound like cockroach poisons or paint        strippers), a variety of vitamins (mmm, healthy!), Nicotinamide        Caffeine, Taurine (no comment), invert sugar, ethyl alcohol and        distilled water.  It was the most disgusting thing I've ever tried!        Go figure. So, after getting high on Payolta, we went to this fancy hot springs in a nearby hotel. After which we ate some larvae toaseted with peanuts, red pepper       and green onion.  Mmm mm.  No seriously, it was good. The rest of the meal...  The cabbage was used for making rolls. That evening, Paul took us to a tea farm somewhere in the middle of nowhere at 2000m, where apparently a friend of his dad's was working as a tea farmer.  The workers live in the yellow building        that looks more like an abbandoned garage sale than living quarters.  We kind of crept in there at around 10pm and Paul started talking to some random guys who, apparently knew his dad!  They        had no idea we were coming, but they let us stay overnight and made us a tea, which was so strong I couldn't handle it.  Linden had to cover for me.  Then one of the guys disappeared at like 11pm        and drove off in his jeep.  10 minutes later he came back with a huge fresh cabbage which he said, while grinning from ear to ear, he'd stolen from the neighbour's garden.  So we had a ton of cabbage       fried with garlic for dinner.  Mmmmm mm. Tea plants Paul's wife preparing soup for breakfast with noodles, red        peppers, garlic, probably some kind of meat and I can't        remember what else, except that it was good. Temple on Sun Moon Lake.  Don't ask me where that is, because       I slept the whole way there in the car! Sun Moon Lake. Anyone for some bbq'ed chicken limbs/head? Intestine soup.  I think they were trying to find something that I wouldn't eat with       pleasure.  But, frankly, everything was so tasty, I enjoyed it all. The mandatory tea stop, with camping stove and all, on the terrace of an icecream       store.  In this store they made bulk popsicle-style icecream in so many different       natural flavours...  ie. mango flavour was basically frozen mango puree.  Sooo good. My final meal in Taiwan, once again courtesy of Paul...  Clams. Bamboo shoots with mayonnaise. Some sort of deep fried pig skin or something with red pepper,       green onions and peanuts (classic combination). Squid. Pork on cabbage.  Although the presentation and the food was exquisite, the restaurant       itself was a total street restaurant, with a tarp for a roof.  The bathroom, once again,      though, was spotless... Rice. Hong Kong!  My camera ran out of batterier just as I arrived        in HK, so the following photos are all from other people.       Photo courtesy of Jack (a student of Carolyn's.  Carolyn being       my prof's ex-postdoc student who's now a prof herself at U of       Calgary). YT presenting.  Photo courtesy of CAOS. The lecture hall.  Photo courtesy of Jack. The Vancouver group (L to R): Carolyn, Karen (Carolyn's Masters student), Ilker (Tony's PhD        student), Jack (Carolyn's Masters student), Tony, Chris, YT.          YT with Tony at Stanley Beach.  Picture courtesy of Carolyn. Fantastic meal we had, with everyone from Vancouver... mmmmmmm. The conference banquet.  Photo Carolyn. Street market in HK.  Photo Jack. Bamboo scaffolding with an overhang and all!!!  The bamboo        is lashed together by hand with rope.  And they use it to build       their skyscrapers!!!  Amazing.  Photo Carolyn.