Taiwan – David and Yanmei

August 18, 2015August 18, 2015

Thank You

As a traveler I think the most important phrase is “Thank you.” That was what I learned to say before each country we traveled to. Even if you can't speak the local language and talk in English or gestures, it is nice to be able to thank someone in their native language. Second most important for me is “I'm sorry” or “excuse me”. That is very useful when on crowded buses or trains and you have to push by someone to get off. Third is probably “where is the bathroom?” or simply “toilet?” which gets the message across.

Anyway, here is how to say “Thank you”, in every country we visited, at least how it sounded to me. Please don't get too offended if I mangled your native language, I was trying 🙂 :

Taiwan (mandarin), China: Shi-shi

Korea: Gamsameeda

Egypt (Arabic): Shockram

Zurich – Switzerland, Vienna – Austria (German): Danke

Geneva – Switzerland (French), France: Merci

Spain: Gracias

Italy, Vatican City: Gratzie

Hungary: Kusonome

Czech Republic: Dekuji

Poland: Dziekuji (very similar to Czech)

Norway: Takk (pronounced like talk)

Denmark: Tack (like tact)

Iceland: this is the one I didn't learn. Supposedly it is similar to Danish (tack) but they add several syllables to differentiate from Denmark. Just saying “tack” is frowned upon, so I went with “Thank you” which everyone understood.

Canada, U.S.A.: Thanks.

-David

Posted with Blogsy

April 26, 2015April 26, 2015

Next stop Beijing

We're flying to Beijing, China tomorrow. I'm not sure if I'll have wifi access there so posts will probably be less frequent.

Today we met up with Yanmei's friend Amanda again. She has been a great host to us here in Taipei. As you can see I got a new hat. We happened to see a Roots store here, so I picked up that hat. It is an interim hat until I find a good one with a full brim.

-David

Posted with Blogsy

April 25, 2015April 25, 2015

Back to Taipei

We had a little look around Chiayi before we caught the train to Taipei.

Unfortunately that is probably the last picture of me in my hat. I mistakenly left it on the train when I got off at Taipei 🙁 . My new Tilley hat that I bought for this trip didn't even last through the first month.

Anyway that was Friday, and we got settled into our new place in Taipei. It has a small stove so Yanmei can finally cook. She misses cooking her own food.

Saturday we decided to mostly rest, not be too busy. However Saturday morning we went out to the local morning market to get some stuff for Yanmei to cook. She told me to stay back because she thought she wouldn't get good deals if she was with a foreigner. So I decided to just look around the market myself, maybe I could find a new hat, and it shouldn't be too difficult to find her again. Not a good idea. After a few minutes I went back to find her and I couldn't. I circled the whole market with no luck, then realized that wasn't the whole market, there were other little alleys leading off here and there with more stalls. I circled a couple more times and finally saw her walk across the other end of an alley, so I caught back up to her. Didn't end up finding a hat.

So we mostly rested Saturday. I followed the Raptors losing game 3, we're 12 hours ahead here so Saturday morning I can follow the Friday night games. Although we were resting we'd recently heard it was firefly season, which is late April-early May. I wanted to go see them, because if we ever come back to Taiwan it will be in the cool season, like October or November. It's not even the hot season yet, but it is still hot and humid most days.

Anyway Saturday evening we went to see the fireflies. The small mountain behind the pedestrian suspension bridge is where the fireflies are.

Unfortunately, because the weather was good and it was Saturday, it was extremely crowded, and thousands of people trying to go up and down a narrow mountain trail doesn't work very well. It actually felt pretty dangerous in spots because there was no railing, and if someone tripped in the dark they could easily push you off the edge.

We saw quite a few fireflies. I was hoping to see a giant cloud of them, and maybe that existed, but the line basically ground to a halt so we turned back. Fireflies don't photograph well, and my pictures turned out worse than I hoped, I need more practice with my camera in low light situations.

We also got to see some nice night Taipei skyline views.

-David

Posted with Blogsy