Chiang Mai Zoo

What can I say...I really love zoos and animals.

This huge bear was waiting for us at the entrance of the zoo. Isn't he just super cute?

This zoo is beautiful. Thailand in general is very beautiful. Everything is very clean and well kept.

I have heard Hippopotamuses are one of the most dangerous animals in Africa. My impression is that they are very lazy hungry animals.

I've never been so close to a elephant before. He would look at you with his eyes as you walked by, kinda of creepy.

The lion just woke up and started to roar very loudly then fell back to sleep.

He just wants to play.

Thai food is very very spicy. I will never think Mexican food is spicy again.

How do you cap off a day at the zoo? You go to sing Karaoke haha

These little motorcycles were our mode of transportation.

In Taiwan again!

I am currently in Taiwan again!! I am so happy to be back I was very bored in my house waiting for the day that I could go to the airport again. I did however have a great time with my family and friends. I even got to take a trip to the mountains and New York. I feel very jet lagged and will wake up very early in the morning and then at around 1 or 2pm crash and have to go to bed again. I hope that soon I will get use to the time change and start sleeping at a normal schedule.

The plane ride from North Carolina to Taiwan was very long and tiring I woke up at 3am and was in the air for around 29 hours before arriving to Taiwan. The worst ride was the flight from San Francisco to Japan. Even though it was around 12 hours I could not wait for this one to end. Finally on the way to Taiwan I fell asleep on the plane and didn't get a immigration card to fill out. After going through immigration and customs I got my suit cases and was ready to meet my ride. I was just thinking about sleeping at this point I had been awake for too long to want for anything else. Stepping out of the airport I could feel the Taiwanese heat hit me very hard I had forgotten how hot it was in Taiwan!!!

With the weekend coming to an end I need to start to look for an apartment to live in.  

South of Taiwan Part 1

Last night we got back from the South of Taiwan. We got back at around 2 am in the morning. It was so much fun. South of Taiwan is so different from the North of Taiwan. I loved the city of Gaosiong! I could see my self living there. It is so pretty and modern with so much space. It is so cool how everything changes in Taiwan from city to city nothing is the same. It is so much to travel and see the differences.

We left at 1pm and half way to Daping we stoped at a rest stop. Rest stops in America are rather small and only have a bathroom and vending machines. In Taiwan it is a full center with restaurants, arcades and stores. Many people were traveling so it was full of people everywhere.

I got this hot dog looking thing at the rest stop. It is a sausage with a bun made out of rice. It was really tasty and ate it all very quickly. The drive was very long. About 6 hours. It is pretty amazing how you can drive from one tip of Taiwan to the other tip in 6 hours. The traffic was heavy when we would pass big cities but soon we hit the country side and everything turned flat with lots of rice paddies and corn farms.

 We stayed in Jerry's mothers house. It is a huge house with three stories with many bedrooms and bathrooms. It is like a mansion. There were about 12 people living in this house while I was there. It was fun being part of such a big family. Eating together was the most fun.

This was my first meal I ate in The South of Taiwan. It was very good but very different from what I have eaten in America. Like I said before eating together is so much fun hearing everyone talk and laugh. Even though I could not understand much I can feel the warm positive energy coming from everyone voices and smiles.

After eating about three times more then I should have eaten I went to sleep. I could hear fire works going off at night so it was hard to sleep. The next morning we went to buy fire works at a small store. Daping is much more rural then Taipei. At least this town has a dedicated scooter lane. There are more people on bicycle here then in other cities.

 There were these huge type of fire works and many that shoot off into the sky.

After buying the fire works we went to a brewery and saw a lot of alcohol. These jugs have alcohol in them. In traditional Taiwanese culture when you have a baby girl you but alcohol into a jug and bury it and when she gets married you dig it up and share the alcohol with everyone at the wedding.

These are different types of cigarettes that Taiwan has. They were very old and had colorful advertisement.

We stopped at a bakery and I got this cake and pudding pearl milk. It was all so tasty! I love food here.

My host family likes to play food games with me. They give me weird food to try and won't tell me what it is till I try it. This was some egg they had. It looked so creepy and I didn't really want to try it... but I didn't want to be rude.

I put it into my mouth and it was really soft the outside jelly part was spicy and when you tasty the center creamy part it was bitter but it almost tasted eatable. My host mother really likes it. You use this egg as medicine.

This was some kind of rice thing with pork inside of it. It is like a Tamale but it is made with rice instead of corn. I didn't like the taste of the rice so I could not eat it.

FIREWORKS!!! These sparklers where huge and powerful. We also shot off fire rockets into the sky. So loud and bright! This first day was so much fun! I will post most about my trip to the South of Taiwan later.

 

Chinese New Year's Dinner

Today we went to another city (I forgot what it was called : ( ) to eat dinner with my host mother's mother. It was about a 30 minute drive with a lot of traffic on the way like everyday. This city was much smaller then the other places I have been to. This looked A LOT like Colombia. It was weird the similarities in both countries. Here are some pictures of the city.

My mother told me that was a temple and since Chinese New Years is coming everyone is going to temple to pray and make offering to the Gods. I love the trees in the background.












We finally found a parking space!! There is very little space in these narrow roads and it is dangerous to walk because there are no sidewalks and cars and scooters come flying down the road.











This is the way up to my mother's mothers house. It is still dangerous because scooters drive though this narrow walk way. You have to use your ears to know when a scooter is coming behind you. If not the scooters are nice enough to beep at you and then yell "XIN XIAN KUAI LE"!!

I am not use what this is but it looked pretty.













Those two cars almost crashed into each other. It was sorta scary to watch.









When we got to to my mother's moms house I got to meet my moms younger brother and his wife. Everyone was so nice to me. They spoke some English but like most people in Taiwan do have a lot of trouble understanding when English is spoken. So if I wanted to talk I had to use all Chinese. I liked hearing my (host grandmother?) speaking Taiwanese. It sounds like the language they spoke in the movie "Code talkers".

Here is a picture of the temple in my host grandmothers house. It looked very pretty. We put the food under the temple before we eat it to give food to the Gods.

In this picture we give money to the Gods. We have paper money and throw it into the fire to give up as an offering. Everyone in this city was doing the same thing. It was so cool I have never heard of this before.














This is the lottery ticket cover. It is very pretty.















I bough two lottery tickets. I think the jackpot is 4 billion Taiwanese dollars : D. Everyone is buying lottery tickets so that is why the jackpot is so big! There are lines to buy these things. Each ticket cost about 50 NTD. I hope I win XD!!







My host sister playing the scratch off game. She wins just 100 NTD. She was so happy to win.













I bought this snack from the store. It is seaweed and it taste so good. I loved it so much I ate two packs! NOM NOM!!










I watched a lot of T.V here while everyone was cooking and getting ready. I think Taiwanese news is pretty cool. But Taiwanese commercials are so cute and funny. They make me laugh a lot! Soon it was time to eat!


 There was so much food!! Most of it I have no idea what it was. I just ate and ate and drank and drank till I was so full!! My host  grandmother could not speak Mandarin but she keep telling me to eat more and kept filling my bowl and glass with more food.








The chicken still has the head on it. It was so funny to watch my host uncle making it talk. The chicken tasted so GOOD! Nothing like you can find in America.









Taiwanese wine. But it was so strong I think it is liquor!













I had a lot of fun today! I really enjoyed trying all these different foods even if I don't know their English names or even if they have an English name. I was so sleepy when I got home I went straight to sleep. I could hear fireworks going off in the city all night long. But I slept so well!

Hot Springs!

Today we went to the hot springs and the library. We drove for 20 minutes to get to it. It is a mess to get out of the city. The traffic jams are the worst I have ever seen. But once you get on to the highway it is pretty easy to drive anywhere. When we got to the city we parked and started to walk to the library. I noticed that on the drive the weather was sunny, but when we got there it was cloudy and very windy. The weather in Taiwan changes very fast! My host mother said that there was alot of Mainland Chinese people around. She says she can tell because of the way they speak Chinese. To me it sounds the same unless they put (r)s at the end of words like. Dianr,shuir, or wanr. I find that I put those (r)s at the end of words because that is how my Chinese teacher taught us these words.
The library was very beautiful it was made out of wood. We are not allowed to take pictures of the library. It was like 3 or 4 stories tall and had a lot of books. But sadly only three shelf of English books. I had a lot of fun looking around. We were then off to the hot springs. Since Japan use to own Taiwan a lot of the buildings where made in the Japanese style. It was really pretty to look around. I guess it is like me going to old Winston Salem and seeing the old colony style buildings.

 This is a picture of me next to the old administration building when Japan was in control of Taiwan.

 A picture of me outside of the library.

 We walked up the roads to the hot springs. There is the center where the hot springs start off. Where the water is 90C which is sooooo hot. You can't swim in it! Put the hot water goes down in a small river and cools down so you can swim in it. We didn't bring bathing suits so we could not swim. But we did put our feet inside of the water for a big.

 This is the center where the water is the hottest. The steam that comes up from the water is very impressive! The smell was also very bad. My host parents told me that before there use to not be a fence but a little kid fell into the water and died so they decided to make a fence there.

 Here is where the water cools down and everyone goes to soak there feet in the hot water.

 Here is pictures of us soaking our feet in the hot spring. The water was very warm almost like being in a hot tub. It felt so nice! I liked it a lot. We had a lot of fun.















We also went out to eat here. I ate beef noodles for the first time. It tasted so good!! I also tired an special egg that is cooked inside the hot spring water. But I did not like how the egg tasted. I ate all the noodles and fell in love with the taste. It is now my new favorite food to eat!
After finishing our meal we went off to go home again.














At home we wrote things for New Years. We wrote our new years wishes on the papers
































Today was a very fun day!! I had so much fun. And today I will be going to the South of Taiwan which I can't wait to do. Here was my late dinner. Dumplings and a soup. All tasty like most of the food I have eaten in Taiwan : D.