Special edition of the blog today, because by next Sunday we will have been to Bangkok and returned, traveled on the brand new High Speed Rail here in Taiwan and dined, as special invited guests, with one of the world’s richest families…an interesting week!

I’ll write about Bangkok next Monday, as we leave this afternoon.

I traveled on a grade 3 field trip on the newly opened bullet train here from Taipei all the way down to the south of the island along the west coast yesterday. It was a magic experience for the kids and also the adults. Cass and I have been on the shinkansen in Japan and France’s TGV, and this train was a good match for these two in terms of speed, smooth ride and luxury. I’ve included some photos of the mean front end of the train as it pulled into Hsinchu station.

On Monday night, we dined with a parent couple associated with the school. We, along with 4 other couples traveled to Neihu to their building. We were zipped up to the top floor by lots of helpers and were treated to an absolutely amazing experience. We checked out the newly built Japanese room and garden, the indoor waterfalls and the opulent living and dining rooms. We dined on a menu of hand selected meals from one of their hotel’s exclusive menus: all specially prepared onsite for us. Our host had personally selected copious amounts of his own reserve red from a chateau in France and it was top shelf. The bottles just kept opening and opening. We were served by a bevy of wait staff, secretaries and personal assistants were there to supply anything we wished for, and generally, we lived in a very rarefied world for a few hours. The hosts are on the Forbes 500 list of the richest people in the world, but are surprisingly down to earth. It was very entertaining and a real eye opener to how only a very few people live. Items on the menu were flown in exclusively for the night’s meal on one of their jets and we heard tales through the night of wealth that we could barely comprehend. At the end of the night, we were very pleased that we had experienced this, but wondered whether our hosts had ever ridden a scooter back home through pouring rain on busy Saturday night streets in a big city…maybe not (and maybe they don’t want to!). Photos: high speed train, Rodin sculptures in the office with Lewy(!), tea ceremony table of one thick piece, Japanese gardens, super meals at a super table!

Rain bucketing down on sodden streets and we were stranded downtown, 40 minutes from home on the scooter! Saturday night proved to be even more of an adventure than we had planned when we set off relatively early at 5.15 pm to try to beat most of the Saturday night Taipei crush. Didn’t work! The scooter ride down was just amazing, probably one of the most frenetic we have ever experienced. I think a combination of good weather on top of a rather frowsy week had enticed the multitudes out to wine, dine, party or just to wiz around and be seen. We were stopped at traffic lights in a snarl of at least 200 scooters each time before the launch off at full throttle to the next set. It was a great buzz and as usual, we saw all the very best and worst that Taipei has to offer in the fashion stakes on the back of these scooters as well as whole families, tiny toddlers standing on the platform in the middle in little bamboo cages, full sized ladders strapped to the back of scooters as they weaved amongst everyone else and the constant puffs of air as riders zoom within a whisker as we both reach top speed flying down the road.

We had started the night in search of a place called “the Diner”, the name not creative, but nor did it need to be from all reports. It is tucked away in a back lane near Heping East road, an easy 40 minute ride down for us. We were tempted to ride the MRT, but it would have entailed two changes there and back, so elected to get there under our own steam. It was a bit tricky to find, but fantastic after we got in to eat. We had to queue for about 20 minutes, a novel experience, but it was well worth it: these people don’t advertise at all, but word of mouth has people flocking. It was cheap, home cooked, western style food, pretty good service and a hum of excitement in the place. Cass wanted to get spinach lasagna, but they had run out so she got a lentil burger and I went for the home made meatloaf with mashed potato and gravy…wow! Just opposite was Gusto Hot Dog, offering about 30 different varieties of hot dogs, so we’ll have to check that at a later date.

My camera was ready to be picked up from its repair job at a little camera shop behind the Shin Kong Mitsukoshi building behind Taipei Main Station, so we decided to head north west after dinner to pick it up. The rain had just started and wasn’t much and we jigged in and around some one way back streets until we found a park nearby. Hou Kang Street is home to about 300 camera shops. As is the Taiwanese way, and sooo good for the consumer, sellers of like goods tend to congregate together. It is convenient and usually cheap, as traders have to keep prices down to compete. Our guy has been used by a number of people we know, so we went to him and the camera seems all fixed up. By now, however, the rain was tumbling down, so we got some throw away rain suits and boot covers, and went out to brave it. It certainly proved to be an interesting trip: all the mad stuff that happened on the way down happened on the way back as well, this time with sheets of water on the road thwarting the tiny tires getting a decent grip. Spazzies were flying along, we were getting showered with spray from passing cars and buses and drivers with Coke bottle bottom glasses neglected to see us at all a few times, necessitating hurried avoidance action! Suffice to say, it was an interesting trip, but we survived.

The weekend had started much more sedately, when Cass joined Kristin and Kathy to celebrate Kathy’s 50th birthday at Pizza Realto. They had a great time and enjoyed some wine at Kathy’s place before some excellent food at the Realto. I met up with Wal at the Green for a few drinks relatively late, so we both didn’t get to sleep till near midnight. To our horror, the “girls” decided to wake up and cry incessantly at 6 am, so we had to get up and let them out. That shortened sleep saw us both keen for a sleep-in today, which we had, before a very lazy day catching up with some news from home via the Herald clippings that Mum regularly sends, some internet news, including footy chat on the radio and state election results via the electronic news media (looks like Tate and Gaudry have split the Newcastle protest vote, handing the seat to Jodi Mackay in Newcastle despite their efforts)

Anyway, enough! I’m starting to bore myself, so I pity anyone else reading this drivel! Photos are of Cass lined up at “the Diner”, a view inside same, and a sign for an English school near the photo shop..!

We’d both had another full week of teaching and meetings this week, the school seemingly having stepped up another gear in response to the new superintendent being on board. The new person has been visiting various teams at their meeting times and while being very much in the background and just there to observe, it has obviously set a few hearts racing, especially amongst our administrators! Needless to say, this sort of tension is a bit like water, trickling down to get to the cave dwellers (us!), but hopefully not drowning us.

We didn’t get to the beach at all this weekend for the first time in a long while, despite various attempts over the past three days. Friday night was the first attempt, but although a couple of guys went over, it was incredibly messy and blown out. We settled for a couple of beers at Diamond Tony’s before heading home for tea and a bit of telly. Saturday was meant to be an early run, but Josh texted me with the news that it wasn’t even worth going over, it was that bad. He had left at 5 am as Johnnsy was taking his surf ski over, so I was glad to get the message which saved Carl and me a trip. Cass and I watched the first NRL game here between the Cowboys and the Broncos and were most impressed with the standard of play for the very first round. Cass then zipped over to meet Kathy Patterson “on the dyke” just as the game ended, so they could venture downtown to the megalithic bookshop, “Page One”, housed in the equally gigantic Taipei 101 building. On the way there they had a couple of stops at various stations to explore some Japanese shops. Kathy has managed to scout out heaps of these stores around Taipei, as she is a sucker for these useful items you can’t afford to be without! Cass bought a quite beautiful plate from Spain for hardly any money at all, so she was very pleased with herself when she got home. The highlight of the trip, if I had gone, would have been the sight of a number of beautiful girls performing some kind of sexy dancing in tight white micro mini skirts and long white boots as they advertised something or other, perhaps a credit card. Cassy described the scene in great detail to me: even though a rather large crowd of men had gathered to watch, apparently the girls weren’t that impressed! They took the sky walk from Taipei City Hall station all the way through from the Eslite bookstore to Taipei 101, managing to avoid hitting the footpath for a good number of blocks. While Cass was away, I managed to get out while the rain held off and have a good long brisk walk and felt great when I got home.

Lewy and Josh and Wal had all told me about the new Sri Lankan restaurant in the back lanes off Tienmu West Rd, so we were keen to visit and check it out. Although the Sri Lankan restaurant that has been here forever serves very good food, we hadn’t been anywhere that was able to replicate the subtle flavours and aromas of Sri Lankan foods since we went there Christmas before last. As soon as we had our first bite, we were immediately transported back to the beach restaurants of Hikkaduwa: just superb! The odd thing was that when we walked in, every table was taken up by non-Chinese people, a really bizarre sight. As the night went on, more and more locals drifted in, a good sign if the restaurant is to survive the cutthroat atmosphere in the trade here.

We had a very lazy breakfast, read our clippings and had a chat before getting the radio streaming over the internet. The 2GB team was back in full swing and we listened for an hour or so before the live call of the Knights game came on. With my beaming apparatus here, I was able to get the internet radio playing through the stereo and beam the live, updating score and stats from nrl.com.au through to the TV. We were horrified when Joey was injured and frustrated to not get any more news for a long time. The latest we’ve heard is that he’ll be out next week at least, but has no facial fractures, which is relatively good news. We felt so proud of the Knights for digging in, coming back and getting that great win. We decided to eat at Jacques for lunch and enjoyed the delicate French flavours available at this tiny sun-filled café. We’ve never seen another foreigner in there and hope it stays that way, actually! The young girl who is the chef there has trained in France and it shows: delightful food for us was a pesto pasta and bacon pasta, delicate crepe or cream brulee and a coffee each, all for $14…just amazing!

Photos: Virg’n Mary have a love/hate relationship with this little teddy bear: we often come home to find it with them, while at other times they’re killing it. A couple of views of the “dyke” from my walk and Cass outside Jacques.

It’s been wet, cold and dreary here in Taipei nearly all week and the weekend was very similar except for some respite on Saturday afternoon and evening. The kids at school have been virtual prisoners in the building for the best part of the week, so that by the time the week eventually ended, kids and teachers alike were very relieved! There are just so many indoor activities that can occupy the mind of the 8 year old in the same classroom all day, every day!

We battened down the hatches on Friday night after retrieving our curtains from the dry cleaners. For a ludicrously cheap price, we had the huge curtains in the lounge room cleaned: they were emitting a very musty odour, so much so that even I was aware of it, so it must have been bad! Anyway, they’re up again now looking fresher and smelling a whole lot better as well. We watched some trashy TV and had a relatively early night.

Up at the cracker to get to the beach, I ended up going over with Carl which was quite a treat, as I’m almost always driving myself. We got to the Rocket to find very similar conditions to last week and although it was fairly small, the sun poked out every now and then, the wind was light and the water was clean and refreshing. We got a few waves, then I decided I’d had enough and clambered out onto the jetty to take some photos, sending crabs racing for cover as I hopped from artificial rock to rock to get a good vantage point. I got quite a few good ones for Pointyhat, and Josh has sent me a few more as he was taking some shots from the cliff with his big fancy equipment.

I got home to be greeted by Cassy feeling guilty for sleeping in for a good few hours: I don’t know why on earth she’d feel guilty…we work hard and get up early all week. It’s just that she has a maniacal husband who seems to feel the need to wrench every last moment of living out of his weekend! We made plans to make the most of the break in the weather and I set about studying the Taipei map to scout out a new adventure, somewhere we hadn’t been before, perhaps. Cass left me on the lounge with my map as she went to do the shopping and I promised her I’d have something sorted by the time she returned.

We went down on the MRT to the Shida area of Taiwan University. Curiously, its official name is “Taiwan Normal University”, making us wonder if there is a tertiary institution for the retarded or perhaps the vaguely abnormal folk. Anyway, after walking a good few blocks past the uni we delved into the backstreets to discover a thriving night market scene. We wandered through the labyrinth of tiny super-crowded alleys, the smells and sights and sounds of our familiar Shilin night market echoed here, half a city away. It was an interesting wander, but we kept on, this time headed for a famous “food street”, Yong Kang St. It was about a half hour walk away from Shida Rd and when we arrived, we’d started to work up quite a good appetite. It didn’t disappoint, with lots of different cuisines, Japanese, Thai, Italian etc, but all with Chinese menus and what seemed to be exclusively Chinese speaking staff. I’d come out all prepared to use my few phrases of Mandarin, but at this stage, I realized it was woefully inadequate for the task at hand. Anyway, not in the mood for the “silly foreigner pantomime act”, we decided to retreat to the nearby LinShui St, and get a wood fired pizza at Alleycats. It was rather delicious and so were the giant Hooegarden beers we each had to wash it down! My sister, Helen, would have loved the shop we spied in a back street on the way back to the station: a huge dedicated Betty Boop store (see photos).

Sunday, freezing and wet and wild, we did brave the elements to see the “300”, a movie of the legendary Spartan army of the same number. It’s very hard to describe, but it was a little like Kill Bill II in the amount of limbs hacked off and blood spilt, along with the incessant slow mos and splatter fest cartoon characteristics. Unfortunately though, unlike the former, this film had a woeful script, a lack of class all round and one of the most bizarre David Wenham performances ever: he must have needed the money! Lunch, a tasty Japanese style “Omrice” (rice with wafer thin omelet surrounding) at Takashimaya food hall, back home to laze around for the afternoon. Photos: beers at Alleycats, Betty Boop, Dave (towel) chatting with Tobes at the Rocket's track.

Drinking German Erdinger beer in a big tall glass, lounging back in a garden courtyard with a view of the passing parade at 4 pm on a Friday afternoon... not bad! Josh and Gurecki and I were joined at stages by Carl and Rourkey, yet we were all home safe and sound before 8pm. It was a very pleasant afternoon, tempered slightly by a few pangs of jealousy. We’d checked the cam and had deliberately passed on what looked like a pretty good surf, only to be informed by Dan’s wife Nicky, that Dan was performing some pretty hot maneuvers out at Jinshan Point as we sat!

We thought we’d rectify the situation by making an early dash on Saturday. The flower festival is in full swing at Yangminshan and the cops start placing some very inconvenient detour barricades at 7.30, so we left at 7 and flew up past the cop shop in time to avoid this. The surf was a pleasant adventure as I took Josh over and Carl carted his mini-mal on his roof racks. Carl and I got a few nice ones before the tide started to fill up and the hordes descended. We were the first ones to surf the rocket, just under two and a half years ago, but it now suffers the tyranny of being in full view of the road. That reason, and the strange insistence of the local boys to call and text all their mates to come and join them at a good spot, has meant that our spot has become very crowded. Not that we’re complaining too much: it is their country! It’s just a shame that we keep discovering spots, riding them and then become inundated with everyone as the word gets around. We were in the water for over 2 ½ hours, so after the drive back, we were pretty tired. Cass and I had a subway lunch and we took it easy doing some shopping, watching episodes from the latest series of that train wreck show from Australia (deeply disturbing but strangely compelling!!) The Biggest Loser that I have downloaded recently.

We had a hankering to get down to Ming Sheng East Rd for some Turkish cuisine for tea so decided that the Saturday night scooter ride would set the heart racing and work up an appetite. The ride down was, as always, an amazing rush of sights and sounds and smells. Neon blurs and 125cc engines screaming away at their maximum rev capacities, Taiwanese girls hanging on like baby koalas on the back of the little thunderbolts and the ubiquitous flouting of every road rule in sight! Trouble was, when we got there: the all too often seen works in progress, spotlights in an empty shell as workman pulled the guts out of the place to change to something else…the Doner Kebab was gone! We were really disappointed and roamed the backstreets looking for an alternative. One such was O’Ginny’s, a tiny Irish pub replica, which serves some pub food as well as the usual liquid refreshments. We ordered some calamari and fish and chips, but left most of it on the plate as it was very heavy and filling and seemed quite oily. It was only during the night that this meal took its full toll, as Cass and I both got very upset stomachs. Cass seems OK but I’m still very delicate now. On the way home, we stopped to do a little plane spotting, but none were coming in to land as we watched. On the way out of the airport’s little back road, I spotted a line of gleaming Harleys! I had seen the odd one or two, but this seemed to be a little dealership: we just had to get a photo of that!

We had planned to see “Notes on a Scandal”, with Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett, but it was not on up here in Tienmu. We decided to see it relatively early on Sunday morning down at the Shin Shin cinema in the Regent hotel precinct. It was just superb: it’s so great to see great actors do their thing and these two were sublime. What a sad, frightening and tragic little story it played out for us…we were very pleased we’d traveled down to see it. When we got home, Cassy decided to walk down to Jason’s to get a few supplies and I lay on the lounge watching the Quiksilver Pro streaming live over the internet and then beamed on to our TV, while doing one of my audio Mandarin lessons: quite bizarre. Cassy has been very tired this whole weekend: she had parent conferences on Thursday and Friday all day and the constant talk and added stress have really caught up with her. Even now, she hasn’t completely recovered, which is a shame as we have to get back on that treadmill again tomorrow!

Photos are a portrait of Cassy with the cats, Dave on a wave (Josh took these close up shots with his SLR camera) on Saturday, Dave and Harleys and tiny little Cassy with her cousins…can you pick her? Cassy’s uncle took this shot and sent it on to Chris as he was digitalizing all his old photos.