In Shanghai and Hong Kong for a few days of business and pleasure.
I haven’t quite found time enough to talk about the amazing number of visitors to Taiwan in the last couple of weeks, and indeed my intrepid parents in New Zealand, but I promise I shall soon!
View in the other direction from my hotel – think I prefer the park-side view!
Schooled
We struck it lucky with the yesterday, and penned in an afternoon ride to make room for the previous night’s activities (Japanese Rockabilly Punk, anyone?). As ever, Mark and I winched up for the climb and met the taxi crew at the top. Just before we got there, we passed a group of really rather young mountain bikers riding alone, and on quite decent wheels. This, quite simply, does not happen in Taiwan, so we were delighted to meet some young ones getting out into the hills, and jumped at the chance to guide them down some of our trails. These, dearest industrialists, are the future of Taiwan’s chance of becoming a real force in sport and culture, and the best way it can maintain a lead in Bicycle technology. Take note.
It was quite clear that the kids were going to comprehensively smoke us on the descents after about five minutes of practice – indeed, they grabbed Georg’s new super rig and schooled him in wheelies and bunny hops to his dismay / delight. We descended for over an hour together, managed to avoid getting any of them killed, but left them with Mark to take the easy route home after seeing them begin to get exhausted before the final section.
I have to show super respect to them – we were especially impressed with their flip-flop / body armour combo, and the non-stop hair-combing of one them when we stopped. I hope – really hope – that is is a trend. Really great day of riding again, and hopefully we bump into those kids again soon.
Latest aprés-slope style
Irony, in shoe form… thanks for the photos Georg!
Andy Warhol at the CKS
The latest ‘hot’ exhibition to visit in Taipei is th Andy Warhol retrospective at the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall (at least, I think they changed the name back from ‘Democracy Memorial Hall’, when the DPP were pissing around with changing names of historical monuments). I suppose I am not the biggest fan on earth of Warhol, but I am happy enough to go along and check it out – especially since it was with a few arty friends who know a little more about the subject of screen printing and pop art.
What made me double-intrigued was the fact that it was being held underneath the mausoleum of said National Icon – and it could not escape my finely-honed sense of irony that one of the key exhibits was a print of his arch-nemesis, Mao Zedong.
Like all too many exhibitions in Taiwan, there were too many exhibits (walls and walls full of Marilyn, it seemed) and too many people shuffling around. The exhibition design was lacking, and the space was, in a word, ‘poky’ – although I can hardly blame this on them – if you plan to have an exhibition under a tomb you ain’t going to argue about space. The shop did seem, however, to deliver on the ‘commercial art’ promise of Warhol, and was thus packed with people buying tat pasted with Warhol signatures.
Or maybe I was just hung over. Anyway – a fun day out. By starting at Chiang Kai Shek and ending up at Ximen, I really did feel like I was in a foreign country for the first time in a little while.
Seeing the dancers practicing in the windows reminded me of trips there when I first arrived. The photo I took that day of the kids throwing one of their friends in the air is still one of my favourite shots.
Friends jacking around
I probably take the same photo every time, but it still makes me chuckle.
Impressive doors, and brass nobs.
It’s a little bit late to celebrate Chinese New Year, but these pictures have been sitting on my hard drive yearning to be posted. After living in Taipei for so long, it’s rare these days that I get a ‘holy shit!’ moment. But happen they do, and in this case, we had three of us with our jaws on the floor screaming a mixture of expletives, ‘gnarrrly duuude’ (Moshe), ‘crazy scheisse eh! (Georg) and ‘goodness gracious me!’ (yours truly).
It seems at one of the temples we ride past on our ‘Gas Plant’ ride to the south of the city bids farewell to the year of the Pig with a rather special … what’s the word … not quite sure what it is. It’s one of the craziest things that I have ever seen anyway, and I’ll let the pictures do the talking.
Sorry for the crap quality – cam phone.
Yum
Completely spherical!
Check out the Mohalk hairdo … I still can’t believe they managed to stretch the skin out like that. And I don’t want to ask how they keep it so perfectly spherical.
The town of Pingxi, East of Taipei, has train tracks running through it, with trains regularly passing through – especially crazy when thousand of people are trying to launch sky lanterns at the same time.
Formation flying.
As part of the Chinese New Year celebrations, it’s traditional in Taiwan to release sky lanterns into the, well, sky and mark the coming of the new year with wishes and desires for the 12 months ahead.
For those people that have not released sky lanterns – ie: most people I know – it is truly a magical thing. A nightmare for local fire services admittedly, but a magical thing none the less.
The idea is, to write your wishes onto the side (pick your colour first), wrap it up, and head to the launch pad / open space. Once there, take your wad of prayer money (soaked in lighter fluid for two hours) and place it into the recepticle on the inside frame. Take your most pyrotechnically-inclined person (usually a male) and light that wad, ensuring that your friends / family members are supporting the outside paper and maintaining the shape. Then, watch it slowly fill with hot air and when ready, synchronise the release.
“We want bonus”
If the salesman has properly soaked the wad of cash, it should woosh up into the air, accompanied by ‘coos’ and ‘aahs’ of the team, and hopefully some pointing and poorly exposed, shaky photos. Served best, surrounded by thousands of other people doing the same … and for desert, watch other peoples’ wishes plummet from the heavens and crash into the ground!
Ah, sweet schadenfreude (isn’t it great how the Germans have a whole word, just for this concept 🙂 ).
T-Minus.
And this is the result …
My first trip, after four years of wishing I could go … lovely!
Open-Source Architecture in Taiwan
I am sure I could find some earnest academics somewhere postulating about Architecture 2.0, or some such thing, but the fact is that it is happening here in Taiwan right before your eyes.
Unlike in the West (see top layer of the image), where we tend to build something, and leave it as-is until it falls down, or at least when a new supermarket comes to town, Taiwanese people tend to view their buildings as a mere starting point for their own augmentations and addenda. When you first arrive – or at least for the first few years – it’s easy to say that it is ugly and unplanned, and that clearly nobody cares about the big picture (see second layer of the photo). However, after some time looking and getting used to the pipes emerging out of every orifice, it does at least seem to make a little more sense. Why not, indeed, customise the building for its eventual use? Why not allow it to adapt over time? Is this not what we are talking about with Web 2.0, Democratic Design and Open-Source Architecture? (do forgive me if I am coining these trends, or at least give me a royalty cheque).
With a little more foresight, and accepting that this is going to happen no matter what the planners do, I reckon that there is a way to build these edifces with just a touch more grace and charm. Lord Rogers – do pop in, and I’ll discuss my ideas with you.
Lloyds Building in London (with the Erotic Gherkin behind) – sometimes Taiwanese buildings remind me of this building, a little.
Photographed by Adrian Pingstone in June 2005 and released to the public domain.
Steve blagged some journo tickets to see the National China Beijing Opera as they visited town for their one-off Sunday night review, and it gave me the chance to have my first ever taste of this form of theatre that one might assume everyone sees on a regular basis when living in Taiwan or China. It wasn’t quite the Full Monty – instead the performers wore suits and refrained from the make-up – but a line-up of virtuosos from China and Taiwan had been (re)assembled, and clearly peoples’ emotions were piqued.
Photo from www.artsticket.com.tw
First impressions were, at best mixed. Cacophonous musical barrage ballons that mark the style of music butted up against the entirely-too-harmonios stage design and pastel presentation.
Set in an environment where we were the only foreign / under 50 people in the house, it all made for a rather strange experience. The crowd heckled and clapped at seemingly entirely random points during each set, screaming out in appreciation as might a crowd of Rolling Stones fans. And yet, when I felt moved, the crowd remained silent.
This continued throughout the performance, and I have been thinking about it a great deal over the past few days. Essentially, in the same way as the music that I constantantly critisise in Taiwanese for being bland and monotonous, this music seemed to be rewarded by this crowd of octogenerians not for being expressive, but for restraint. Not for the performer letting go, but for surfing the boundary within a tightly defined set of constraints. As Steve put it so perfectly, the entire ‘Aesthetic’ of the music was completely different – harmony and riot, restraint and revolt are flipped on its head.
So, after almost five years in Taiwan, perhaps I understand something a little bit more, and maybe this window into music also allows me to see how the design scene here rewards restraint and operating between the boundaries. Need to think about that some more.
Finally, while leaving, I realised just how many of the crowd spoke not in a Taiwanese accent, but in thicker tones of Northern China. It’s doubtful that they were tourists, or that they travelled to Taiwan especially for the concert, so it only means that this ‘scene’ of elderly Opera lovers were left stranded here to appreciate the artform. And on this day, the best performers from Taiwan and China came together, spanning old maestros and the considerable battalion of young artists that have chosen to fly the flag once again. It might not quite be to my taste, but it felt pretty special to see the tendrils of tradition reaching out across the waters to bang the drum.
Rule number one for me – no internet, e-mail or mobile access. Worth it.
So yeah, last week I came back from ten days running around Cambodia and Laos. These two countries have been lurking on my list of places I fancied visiting for the whole time I have been in Taiwan, and while I barely managed to scratch the surface, at least I have a clearer idea of where I might want to return to if I do ever darken their doorsteps again. Excluding two trips to the UK, this was also my first ‘foreign’ holiday since Bali, so I was quite looking forward to it.
Jewel in the crown, and more or less the focus of my trip, was seeing the ruins at Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Clearly, several tens of thousands of other people from around the world have also had the same idea, and we needed to be up early in the morning every day if we were to stand a chance of seeing anything without being mauled by bus loads of Korean middle-aged sightseers en-route to the next Korean restaurant.
As I mentioned in my last mini-post, I have bought a new camera and I was lucky enough to be able to borrow some of the lenses from Abe during the time there. Pretty impressive stuff, and I was particularly amused by the wide-angle zoominesss of the 16-35. As result of that, getting up stupidly early, and hunting nice light with Abe, most of my pictures fall into three categories:
Our original plan was to fly into Siem Reap to check the ruins, jet up into Laos, and drift back to Phnom Penh along the Mekong river. Sadly this plan was compromised by a number of factors, including Abe’s emergency departure back to Taiwan halfway through, and the fact that the guidebook I was relying on for up-to-the-minute travel information was written in 2001, clearly before the authorities had fully embraced tourism and certainly before the Japanese gorvernment had started paying for a web of paved roads across the country.
The first half of the trip, starring Jonny Biddle and Abe Sitzer
While it seemed all the more exciting that the road route alongside the Mekong was accompanied by threats of bandits, prone to completely washing out and policed by highly corrupt officials, the updated roads have effectively put the boats out of business, and the buses that now use the road are clearly moving too quickly for any ambushes. Drat. One thing is for sure though – the officials still stink of corruption, and we had to grease the wheels of international travel with piles of 1$ notes at every booth. Ach well.
Anyway, some photos, in approximate chronological order.
Cambodia
Abe enjoys one of my jokes.
Sunset shot #00345a
Boatman at the floating Vietnamese village … rather a tragic ‘floating Favela’
All the temples building blocks are literally piled up on top of each other – not great for longevity, but nice for distressed photos.
Ta Prohm temple was totally cool, and indeed set the scene for some of Tomb Raider
The trees looked like molten wax, descending from the heavens.
… or maybe industrial piping. One thing is for sure, when compared to my travels to Mayan temples in Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras, this certainly rivals or beats them.
Amazing faces carved into the rock.
Faces, in fact, were everywhere.
Abe wearing the ‘Abe-iators’ … again at sunset. Cough.
Up on the hill with all the other bleeding tourists, by far the best sights were to be had taking photos of them instead.
I like this photo just for that one guy looking at me in the middle of proceedings.
Improbable post-dawn shot of Angkor Wat.
Oh look! A dawn shot of a boat. And a pond ripple!
Much amusement from watching the local trasport. This girl clearly has it all worked out.
… and this one, perhaps less so. Managed to capture a 5-person scooter, but missed out on the golden 6!
Laos
Empire of the Sun
Yes, I know, another pointy boat + sunset shot. But hear me out … I was a little confused by the bite taken out of the top of the sun when I took this photo. I thought it could be a cloud, but it did not seem to make any sense. I stumbled across a solar eclipse web site when I returned, checked … and so it was! A partial solar eclipse. So there.
Pretty cool graphic, huh.
Back to earth with a bump – and riding the local buses to my next destination was a real treat for the senses … accompanied by the faint whiff of Betelnuts and the screaming of pigs strapped to the roof.
Pointy boat. Sunrise. Yes. But what followed was a completely fantastic few hours floating down the Mekong from Don Khong to Don Det – precisely the target for this section of the trip.
Kids splashing on Don Det (a place that was equal parts charming and irritating – there seemed to be a backpacker tractor beam installed in the place).
Pointy boats.
Back to Cambodia
When I got through the border, I realised my travel options back to Phnom Penh were limited in the time I still had left. So, I bit the bullet and jumped on a very bumpy backpacker bus in a 12+ hour trip back to the capital. Quite good fun though, since I managed to accidentally
locate the only Taiwanese girl on the bus and we spent the next two days hanging out and only speaking Chinese.
Cruising the markets with my ‘Thrifty Fifty’ F1.8 was super fun – just snapping away as people went about their business.
… and catching some of the emergent night-time entertainment was quite delightful. It seemed that the Khmer Rouge banned all music and much of the evening gatherings. The nascent pop music and nightmarket scene was like seeing Taiwan in its early days, I would imagine.
… and seeing some of the older people, it was sobering to think what they went through in their years. Visiting the Killing Fields on the final day was a particularly jarring experience, and it was uncomfortable being reminded of the feats man is capable of – one must say though, that the people of Cambodia were full of spirit and humour, and I really was rather taken with them. Hope the future is as bright as the past was dark.
Getting some headspace on my ‘Data Holiday’ in Laos & Cambodia – and watching kids messing around in the Mekong River
I just got back from ten days of exploring and generally running around Laos and Cambodia, and am feeling all the better for it. My self-imposed ban on all feeds digital, ‘e’, ‘i’, ‘www’ and mobile worked pretty well, and I will be doing this activity on a more regular basis in future – it’s just too easy for me to get caught up in all the pace and excitement of a thousand trillion bits of information all vying for your attention – and most of those bits being things I set up for myself.
I have a big pile of photos to sort out, and some architecting (if that is a word) of my images. I took the plunge and bought a new camera (‘finally!’, I hear you say) – a Canon 5D, allowing me to gain free access to the lenses and toys of my flat mate’s 5D MkII – and have been shooting in ‘digital negative’ RAW. I am quite excited about the extra options this will give me, but a little unsure of how I want the workflow to operate, since iPhoto does not really help me too much in that respect. I am messing around with Adobe Lightroom, and I suppose I will be spending the next few weeks working out how I want my data to exist. One thing is for sure – my spacious 250 Gb internal hard drive that I bought six or so months ago is now 40 Gb from becoming full up, and shooting in RAW is going to knock that space out in a jiffy.
Anyway – I’ll aim to pump out a bunch of images in the conventional fashion using iPhoto for the time being so I can get a full blog post up, and then perhaps use Flickr more for my artsy fartsy messing around with images. All very exciting.
I have been amusing myself over the past year with Web 2.0 darling Dopplr.com – essentially a set of tools to help plan, track, analyse and prod your travel, and allow you to see where fellow travelly friends are likely to be. It has taken quite some time to find anyone I know that uses it, but it has slowly grown into a nice thing that I believe has some potential, with a similar amount of interaction and intensity as Linked-In. This is actually an advantage in my view – I have a suspicion sites like Facebook that demand your everyday and immediate attention will fade as quickly as they appear. But I might be drastically wrong about that.
My raumzeitgeist. Whatever that means.
Along with the ‘social’ aspects of the site, it has some nice tools to make you feel guilty about the amount of carbon you are using (about 7500 kg for me in 2008 – oops!) and one or two fun toys, as you can see. We’ll see how it goes, but do connect to me if you can find me.