I didn't do too much today but drink tea and go for a scooter ride and a short walk through a handful of Miaoli's rural hills ( Read more... )

Aaron woke me early because he had an early appointment to drink tea with his friend and employee, Eric. He and Eric were reviewing some 1990s teas, and I was to join them. We tried two samples labeled only with letters, and they were both quite gross. They had an unpleasant bitterness much like stale green tea, but they tasted otherwise like ( Read more... )

I planned to visit Yanqing Hao today, but all three attempts to contact them had them behaving very cool to me. This last time, they told me flat-out not to visit them, saying they moved their warehouse to mainland China, and there was nothing to see. So, I called Aaron, told him I was on my way, retrieved my bags, and took the train to Miaoli ( Read more... )

I emailed Mark (boymrkymrk ) to start setting up plans for when he arrives in Taiwan, then went to the post office, then ate a breakfast, then went to the train station visitors’ center and had them call San He Tang teahouse. ( Yet more tea )

Shortly after waking it hit me that I didn't know what to do: not a lot open on Sundays, and I’d seen most everything I wanted to see. Nothing else coming to mind, I walked to some other small sights nearby. The Temple of the Five Concubines is more park than temple, but it features some interesting paintings and is altogether different from any ( Read more... )

( Tea junk... )

After some failed tea shopping in Kaohsiung, I went to the train station and took the short trip north to Tainan. Tainan was Taiwan’s old capital and contains many of the country’s older buildings and history. According to Marshaln, Tainan should have offered a lot of good tea and tea stores, but I ultimately found this wasn’t the case. But I’m getting ( Read more... )

My second day in Kaohsiung I spent the morning at the Museum of Fine Arts, a modern building that houses a decent collection of sculpture and a lesser collection of paintings, all art by Taiwanese, some sections wholly southern Taiwanese. Of note is the artists' search for what is Taiwanese Art, and how it is different from mainland art. Of course ( Read more... )

I awoke just before 5:00 a.m. because of the noise echoing through and above the partitions of my room. I couldn't fall asleep again, so I went to find some breakfast. Now, in the mainland I can find breakfast anywhere at 5:00 a.m., but central Macau's restaurants do not open so early. McDonalds was also closed, and not 24-hours as advertised. ( Read more... )

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