Well, I’ve been incredibly slack lately and those few of you who regularly read this blog will know what I’m talking about: I didn’t write at all last week and this week’s entry is late, short and perhaps you’ll find fairly uninspiring. With that ill motivating preface set out for you, please read on!

I was early, early to bed last Sunday night as I had a 4.30 a.m. start on Monday morning for a surf trip to Nan Ao with Dan, Simon and Zef. Chinese New Year always starts off in a dreary drizzly fashion and this was no different than any other year. It’s weird really: based on the lunar calendar, the New Year switches around in dates year to year, yet the weather is depressingly similar each time! The worst thing is that in the working weeks either side of the break, the sun comes out, the skies clear and lambs frolic in the fields (or something like that!). Anyway, I’ve wildly digressed from this paragraph’s main idea, so I’m going to cut and start another.

The trip started sensationally well. We were a little bleary eyed but excited to find Nan Ao pumping at a solid 5-6 foot, offshore, with fast pulsing lines charging down the point. It was on my very first wave of the day that the rot set in. Overbalanced on the lip, I free-fell awkwardly about 8 feet top to bottom crashing on my side on the water at the pit of the wave which had the consistency of concrete at that velocity. Immediately, I felt an immensely sharp pain and the wind knocked from my lungs as I was tumbled over and around the famous Nan Ao thunder boulders like a rag doll. I knew I’d done something major, but in denial (come on, it was the first wave of the day!) I grimaced and battled my way out into the lineup. 

I ended getting some sensational waves on the day, yet the pain was becoming almost unbearable by the time I was into the second hour of my second session. I reckon nearly five hours in the water was a pretty fair effort! Anyway, to cut a very long story short, a night without sleep and searing pain from my left anterior rib cage every time I moved, convinced me to scooter myself up to the emergency department of the local Cheng Hsin Hospital on Tuesday morning. In and out in an hour and a half, consulted , x-rayed, advised and medicated for $15 (yes, really!), my torn rib muscle and one fractured rib were sent home to rest for the week.

Luckily, my darling wife, put paid to her long held, self-professed inability to nurse, showing great patience and kindness for the next week until today (she’s actually still exhibiting these traits, it’s just that I’m slightly reluctant to extrapolate her extreme care into the future!). We watched eye-straining, headache inducing hours of cricket and muscle numbing hours of tennis…thank god for the great Australian summer of sport! I commented on my facebook page that my interpretation of my suffering was rigid stoicism, yet I think Cass might change that assessment to a lot of moaning and groaning at great volume! One thing I did discover: if you have a cracked rib, it’s sensible  to avoid laughing or coughing, but whatever you do, don’t sneeze! I’m pretty wussy, but I almost passed out from the pain of those couple of sneezes this week!

As the theme for the week was pretty much sitting on the lounge all day and all night, we both managed to do a lot of reading, lots of (aforementioned) sports watching and lots of very lazy cat petting. We did get out on Sunday to see the surprisingly entertaining and well made “Haywire” (Cass and I both give it an “A-”) and ate a delightful lunch on the leafy avenue of Chung Chen Road at Al Fresca trattoria.

I’m reading Stephen King’s new and exciting novel “ 11.22.63” on my e-reader, and Cass is reading Gods Without Men by Hari Kunzru

It's always a bit of a letdown after a holiday and we had two of the best, in a row. Work has been tedious and busy at different intervals, yet always enervating as we adjusted to our early morning wake ups and late in the day returns. As the season change slowly drifts in, the days are getting shorter and we're leaving and returning in the semi-dark some days. Suffice to say, we've been very thankful for the weekends and have done very little at all!

The Australians' dominance over the Indians in this summer's cricket tests has been a source of much enjoyment and if the wind swirled and the rain threatened, we were quite content to curl up on cosy lounges and settle in for most of the day. If we ventured out, it was to replenish stocks or to take advantage of one of our favourite restaurants, making sure we didn't venture too far from the "hearth"!

We've seen both "Mission Impossible 4" and "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" on recent weekends and enjoyed both of them immensely. I was a late uptake on the Millennium series, but I devoured them when I finally got to read them. Cass was a fan as well, and the film version of the first book did what all great film adaptations do, that is, give the film a concise and necessary edit. Hopefully the next two films will continue this trait, as the they both needed a trim, especially the 3rd one. Mission Impossible was great fun as well, plenty of seat gripping action, spectacular stunts and clever tongue-in-cheek dialogue: nothing like a modern action film that has the guts to take the mickey out of itself....refreshing!

We've also been to "Eat Burger", our super favourite burger joint and ventured out on our wedding anniversary to the quaintly captioned "Yummy Town" (yes, really!). It was a real find and we enjoyed a multi-course meal, a fine NZ fillet steak and a bottle of French red wine for lunch on Sunday: Cass surprised herself being so bold, drinking so much wine on a "school night"....she's just going nuts in her more mature vintage, don't you reckon?(!)

Well, just as we were getting used to the weekly grind again, we're set for another break at the end of the week to celebrate the Chinese New Year of the Dragon, not that we're complaining! Shops and restaurants will close and traffic will slow to a bumper-to-bumper crawling snarl over the week. Therefore, looks like we'll be set for a fair bit more hibernating, although I'm sure we'll venture out for a surf, movie, meal, hike, party or two along the way!

Photos: Year 'o the dragon, Spice Shop (yes, again!), another great sign, the boys at Uli's, cricket lounging, Cass window shops down Chung Shan, our new bonsai, and on the verandah after we returned from Yummy Town. I'm reading my 3rd Lee Child, Jack Reacher book in a row ("Die Trying") to break from my heavy reading of late and Cass is reading "The Summer Without Men" by Siri Hustvedt, to continue hers!

Japan was still deeply resonating with us when we arrived back at Taipei's Taoyuan International Airport on Christmas Eve, yet we'd made the decision on the plane not to embark immediately on our round-Taiwan driving adventure. We decided to find some kind of Christmas dinner the next day, then enjoy the first day of the traditional Boxing Day test match before setting out again.

After a long and fruitless search for a traditional Christmas dinner in Taipei city that either was not fully subscribed (like Jake's and Wendel's), making a vague nod to Christmas (such as pudding for dessert at various 4 and 5 star hotels around town), or the just plain bizarre (like the full Chinese menu including chicken feet, or the totally French menu including freshwater trout and foie gras!), I finally found a place that served a traditional Christmas feast with wine. Of all places, Carnegie's nightclub, most famous for it's wide bar where patrons are encouraged to writhe and dance to the pulsing beats into the wee hours, had lunch set of turkey and vegetables, plum pudding and a glass of champagne and red wine! We taxied down to take advantage of such, had a great time, then lazily ate our Papa Poulet cooked puddings for dessert...bliss! We slept early, still tired from our trip before rising to watch the test match, where we camped on the lounge all day till stumps...double bliss! A little bit of packing then an early night before we were due to set out the next morning.

Car packed away with board and bags, CDs stacked and GPS taught a destination, we were off! The freeway system in Taiwan is stellar, yet pretty boring. The GPS guided us on and off alternating freeways at irregular intervals as it determined how we could thread our way down to the opposite tip of the island in the least amount of time. Our CD selection was pretty cool and we kept up a fairly constant karaoke performance the whole way down! The official pit-stops along the way are utilitarian but slick, allowing some easy on and off access and quickly getting us fueled, toileted or fed. A bare 6 1/2 hours later we'd sped past the megalopolis of the smoke belching west coast, a seething pit of endless building and populace, a morass of dipping and weaving freeways, ducking over and above each other, sometimes stacked two, even three high. We'd sped past the thinning cities, past the ever lush and tropical vegetation on the southern isthmus and finally, as the roadside coffee stalls dotted the coastal highway heading into Kenting, we palpably relaxed and began to soak up the tropical charms of this fascinating piece of Taiwan.

Our first destination was the boutique hotel where we'd stayed 4 years before. Sand was a great find, situated through the main part of town and opposite the white sands of Shadao, before the Eluanbi lighthouse, which is the official southernmost point in Taiwan. If it wasn't there, had changed, was booked etc, no worries, we'd try one of a myriad other small places which seemed to have cropped up in the time since we'd last visited. To our surprise and delight, it was still there, had room and had been refurbished! I launched into my Chinese, stumbling a little, but negotiating a price, a room a length of stay and various other stuff necessary to book in....the Japanese tried to creep in a few times, but I held it at bay!

It was great to be back and the room was just fantastic (all for the ridiculous price of $80 a night, including breakfast), so we unloaded our junk then went across the road to check out the protected little beach in front as well as watch our first "proper" sunset over sea. A rarity when you have always lived on the east coast (in Australia) and the north coast (here), the novelty of this magnificent sight just doesn't wear off. We watched as the sun sank lower and lower, playing lights and colours across the ruffled water until it plummeted below the horizon at the very end. Why does it always seem to disappear so quickly at the end?

Dinner was a short drive away in Kenting town and we enjoyed wandering the market stall crowded streets after our dinner at Cassy's favourite "Tex-Mex" restaurant, Smokey Joe's. It was pretty good fare, but we couldn't help comparing with last time: when we were here before, there were so few Mexican based places in Taipei, yet now it almost feels overrun by them...we're very spoiled for choice these days. After a full day surfing at the wonderful laid back break of Jialeshui, with Cass relaxing on shore, we again hit the town, this time enjoying some Thai food. At  a roadside stall, Cass bought some ridiculous swizzle sticks made of glass...they were cute, but I suspect kinda useless!

The next day we started up the east coast, heading vaguely for some of the spots we'd discovered years ago on our first foray into the wilds of eastern coastal Taiwan. If Taiwan's west coast is heavily and densely populated, polluted, unattractive and hectic, the eastern equivalent is exactly the opposite in more ways than compass points. It has hints of Indonesia, Thailand and even outposts like New Caledonia about it. You can breathe crisp and clear as the air floats off the mountains before mixing with the salt sea mist. The local people are languid and unaffected: they talk through blood red dripping, betel nut drenched teeth in a southern drawl mix of Taiwanese and Mandarin and laugh open mouthed at the foreigner's attempts to make himself understood! The road draws a straight line up the coast, tracing through hill-billy towns and almost deserted villages, most of the way right beside the ocean. I was getting a neck-ache looking at all the "potential" surfing spots as we flashed through on the way to various discovered spots.

We stopped at a classic little spot, known as "Water Running Up". They're not real big on the poetic naming of places round here, but the literal monicker at least allowed us to realise what it was! It was a funny little spot and the water really does appear to run uphill! Obviously it's an optical illusion of some kind but....check the little video here.

We had lunch at the famous Donghe river mouth, but the surf was all blown out from a fairly fierce onshore wind. Such was its strength that I actually began to despair of getting any surf at all that day. I did hold out some hope for the slightly protected point breaks of Sansiantai and Bashien if all else failed: trouble was they were still more than 100 kilometres away! I stopped the car and asked Cass to take a photo at the newly built "surfers" statue at Donghe, but in my wild excitement that such a statue might exist I ran to jump on, only to crack both my lower shins straight into the metal platform. Can you see my grimace in the photo above? I did a little war dance to deaden the pain (that always helps!). It is still bruised and sore as I write!

We eventually found some awesome surf at the strangely named "Eight Fairies Cave" (Bashien). A minor tourist attraction on one side of the road (the caves), has been completely ignored by every surfer who has passed this spot. It is a perfectly formed rocky point break and I'm sure if it was closer to any population centres it would be overrun all day everyday. As it stands, the traveling surfer stops and savours the beautifully formed waves, yet full scale exploitation has not begun....please hold off a little longer! Check out one of the waves I caught here to give some indication of its excellence (but not mine!). Cass had her heart in her mouth as she watched me out at this break. The take-off is straight into rocks and if you miss the first turn, you could easily get smashed into same: she worries what she'd do, as it is so isolated.

After an exciting and exhilarating session we headed off again to Hualien, where we wanted to spend the night. As we turned down one of the main streets, Cass kept her eyes peeled for a hotel. It's a tough job as the buildings often don't look like hotels and there are no English signs. She spotted one and we pulled in. We eventually went and stayed at one over the road, a very Chinese business hotel. It was super cheap, but it was tiny: we had to negotiate around the foot of the bed one at a time! It was super clean and comfortable though, and after a dinner in town and a take away coffee, we slept like the dead.

The Quingshui Cliffs are a world famous Taiwanese natural scenery highlight and in drizzling rain and fog, their appeal was only mildly diminished. About halfway along this engineering marvel that had been hewn from precipitous vertical cliffs which plunge straight into the sea, all traffic was halted due to a land slide across the road. About 5oo metres ahead of us, a crane and team of labourers worked furiously to clear the debris and re-open the road. It gave us another chance to take in all the beauty and majesty of this road and general area. Cass had already spotted the different colour of the sea which delineated where the deep ocean shelf started. In places, the vertical cliffs dived straight into the sea so that deep water was just a few metres off shore...i mean really deep! Our road was like a continuous crazy step carved from the vertical cliffs, but a step that continued for 80 kilometres. It snaked up and down the mountain, hugged the ridges and ducked itself beneath landslide shelters that covered the road in critical sections. It sliced right through the mountains where hugging the edge would have proven too calamitous: the tunnels oozed moisture and occasionally were breached to the extent that gushing torrents rained from the roof! It is a spectacular and sometimes scary experience. Add to this mix some speeding betel nut chewing truck drivers and you've got some real excitement! Bursting out the end, we were relieved to trace our way through the calming rice paddies of Nan Au, where the surf was again thundering on deserted shores. These are the times when I really feel like investigating a little piece of real estate down here: Cass, less so!

We got home in the late afternoon and both felt really tired, but totally relaxed. As we began to reflect on our holiday, we could hardly believe the things that we'd seen and done in two geographically similar yet vastly different countries and societies. Even after a week back at school, we're still going over many of the things we saw and did, and I think we will be for some time to come: we're very lucky to be able to experience these things the way we do. Photos above or here.

Just a few hours flight, an initial sputtering, popgun start to my Japanese speaking revival at the Japan Rail office, then we were whisked away on the steel gliding luxury of the shinkansen bullet train to Japan’s ancient capital of Kyoto. Whisper quiet, cushion soft yet hyperspeed all combined to see us deposited efficiently in a vaguely familiar station 22 years after I’d last left its platforms. A surreal and wonderful journey was about to begin.

It seemed crazy to us, as we sat on this train, that we hadn’t taken advantage of Japan’s proximity in our 10 plus years here in Taiwan. I think we’d just become very complacent: it was “just there” and we could visit “any time”….problem was, we hadn’t! We were to make up for lost time and discover and re-discover respectively just what a beautiful and magical place Japan truly is.

We had booked a small traditional house for our week’s stay and it proved to be a gem, tucked away like a little jewelry box in the back of a drawer, nestling amongst the wooden houses in the back lanes of the traditional Geisha and Maiko district of Gion. We could hear the clip of Geta clad feet on the street outside and occasionally caught a glimpse of Kimono bound and white makeup masked beauties as they whisked and fluttered their way to their next assignment down tiny lamp-lit lanes. The house was tatami matted in each room, had a tiny functional kitchen, bathroom and laundry as well as a beautiful bedroom and sitting room. Low table, zabuton cushions on the tatami and traditional floor futon for bedding and we were really in traditional Japan. It was eerily similar to the farmhouse I lived in over 25 years ago, just a miniature version of same.

We were in the heart of the city and our initial forays to temples, shrines and points of interest were on foot to spots in our general area. Kodaiji and Kyomizudera were great entrees to the majesty of feudal Japan, dripping with history and wonder. The aesthetic poise of these areas is so simple and beautiful: there is real class and artistic merit in all the spare, but of so carefully crafted architecture, of buildings and gardens alike. We were to be struck by this aesthetic again and again and again in our travels and constantly (perhaps unkindly!) compared it to the almost opposite sense of beauty which we see here in Taiwan!

The next days were an impressive overload of more of the same, peppered between train and bus rides, subway trips across town and lots of walking up grand staircases and through thousands of tori gates as the vermillion structures formed a tube of kilometers of gilt edged light as we hiked up an entire mountain! The thousands of gates at Fushimi Inari were the highlight of Kyoto for Cassy and they were quite awe inspiring. To grab just a taste of their majesty, check this video we took of the very first few gates. The impressive Kinkakuji (Golden Pavilion) and Ginkakuji (Silver pavilion) were also highlights, Ginkakuji being the most impressive, its raked sand gardens the equal of any in the world. Ryoanji rock garden was another highlight; the contemplative mood it can elicit is palpable and quite intoxicating. For an idea of Ryonji, check ourlittle video of same.

We travelled on the shinkansen again mid week, this time to visit the beautiful island of Miyajima and the infamous city of Hiroshima. The red gate in the ocean at Miyajima is the gateway to the island and as it gets ever closer on the ferry across, the sunlight dances across, making it seem quite ethereal. Wild deer greeted us as we disembarked from the ferry and had a little walk with Cass along the boardwalk. We wandered through the jettied temple in front of the gate as it seemed to float on the water. Numerous photo opportunities followed, (as they did through the entire trip!), and then we climbed up and up through a spectacular park of bush trails and Japanese maples. Our destination was the first of two cable cars that strained their way to the top of the precipitous peaks of Miyajima then traversed the high ridges to provide even more spectacular scenery. My aversion to great heights was again tested to the limits here and the creaks, groans and shudders of the cars didn’t help! We took a video on the way up and yet another from the uppermost peaks. It gives some sense of the overall view, yet just doesn’t quite translate the enormity of the height. After hiking back down to the shore from the base station we had a delicious lunch of the local specialty, kaki don.  

The second part of our mid-week journey was far more sobering: we went to Hiroshima city, jumped on yet another form of transport (this time, a tram!) and made our way to the Peace Park and the memorials, A-Dome building and the accompanying museum. It is a devastating journey. We walked from the restored A-dome building with its skeletal roof umbrella ( an everyday real life reminder of the ferocity of the bomb), through the impeccably maintained gardens, parklands and eternal flames and memorials all the way to the stark and imposing museum. The horrors inside are almost too much to bear, but a pilgrimage that should be made if you’re in the area. The personal effects of the victims, graphic photos and reconstructions and actual items that were nearly vaporized send a message to all who visit, and it tends to be that universal sentiment: that war visits its awful wrath on the most innocent of victims, while the powerful people from both sides just float above the carnage. Suitably chastened, we did find some solace back at Hiroshima station in the form of that most basic food staple, station katsu curry for me and curry rice for Cassy….delicious. The shinkansen scythed through the night back home to Kyoto and we readied ourselves for another couple of days of sights and sounds.

In the following days, more travels in Kyoto were the norm, as we visited castles and temples in different parts of the city. Nijojo was a huge complex of beautifully restored palaces and castles complete with gigantic stone walls and a deep full moat! The creaking floors are not a design or building flaw either: ninja assassins could never catch the sleeping Shogun or Daimyos unaware in this cleverly constructed trap. After a full day touring, we walked through modern Kyoto down covered malls of endless beautifully presented shop fronts: it was very decadent but so very stylish and so very Japanese. It was great to get a sense of the locals hurrying along, heading home from work, to do some shopping, or meeting friends for food and drink.

Nara was our last side trip, so after nearly missing the local train (my poor setting of an alarm!), we were deposited neatly at Nara station after a 45 minute ride from the ancient capital. Nara is in fact an even more ancient capital of Japan than Kyoto and houses the biggest bronze Buddha in the world within the world’s largest (and one of the oldest) wooden structures. Daibutsuden was truly jaw dropping and we spent time wandering around its vast cavernous insides. Before getting there, however, we encountered Nara’s curious and quirky animal mascot, the Nara wild deer. These creatures roam at will and Cassy decided to feed them some of the special deer biscuits that were for sale from a vendor in the park. The result can be seen here, and although I thought it was completely hilarious, Cass actually got bitten on the bum and leg a few times! We ended up wandering through Nara’s parklands for hours, visiting lots more temples, shrines and other places of interest. It was cold today (below zero) so we were glad of our recently purchased “puffy” down jackets.

The slide show of our trip can be found here (or above for a while), and all of the videos can be found at our Youtube channel. This was only the first week of our Christmas holiday and we subsequently had a very bizarre Christmas day lunch then an altogether different but no less enjoyable second great round Taiwan driving/surfing trip! Cassy has become a Japan convert after this trip and this will not be our last visit. I was ecstatic that I didn’t need to use any English at all for a week (except to Cassy!) and that my Japanese skills, although a bit rusty, still did the trick: it felt very comfortable being back there. I apologize to my conscientious readers about the length of this missive, the gap between posts and most of all the fact that this aint over yet! Taiwan trip next week!