Tale of Two Ties (Phor Phonetc Eez)

One of the reasons that Julia and I were eager to make the move to Taiwan (Tie One) is the ease and opportunity for travels around Asia.  So we hadn’t even been in Taiwan for 2 months and it was time to leave for Thailand (Tie Two as it were)... 

We wanted to get out and do something active whilst traveling, and through the miracle of the interwebs we were able to find a really great bicycle tour operator based in the Northern Thailand town of Chiang Rai www.chiangraibicycletour.com   It was a small group, just 5 of us riding.  Me and Julia, a couple from the US and a woman from Belgium.  Bee, the company owner was on the bikes with us and his brother Anek (whose name I’m most likely butchering on spelling) drove the truck with our bags and water and snacks for along the road.  This wasn’t a monster ride through the mountains kind of trip that Julia and I have done in the past, but it was a great way to get out and see the countryside and travel in a way we love.  The riding was good, a mix of mostly pavement and some dirt roads (no single track, though).  We were on mountain bikes which was good, as some roads were pretty sketchy in terms of pavement.  But a  roads department with signs this cool can get away with it....

We stopped regularly at sights along our route, like The White Temple, which was pretty amazing - it's a more contemporary take on a Buddhist Temple.  It’s still very much under construction and we had the chance to see the craftspeople at work building the incredibly ornate parts for later application to the buildings.  

Lunches and dinners were amazing - little hole in the wall places but really tasty food.  Who knew you could get such great Thai food in Thailand? There was a bicycle stage race going on while we were there - we followed some of the same routes as the race. We're thinking of going back one of these years to do it - it looks fun - some dirt, some pavement and some trail riding.

As travel goes, it was, we hope, reasonably friendly to the locals and their economy. We stayed at a cool, very eco friendly guesthouse on the banks of a river that was nice, we could feel good about that - the money was staying within the Karen Hill Tribe community.  After we left the aforementioned guest house we stopped to ride some elephants.  I was really torn by this as I have a hard time with those particular animals being in any kind of captivity - and yet, my desire to have a chance to be up close to such a magnificent, hulking animal does not come along too often - and it was already a part of the trip.  The economic piece of it was warm and fuzzy - the animals themselves are owned in shares by the members of the local community.  I just hope that they are well cared for - not knowing anything about elephant care, I couldn’t say, but I know they’re really intelligent animals and they’re pressed into a routine of repeated laps around the same walk - up the hill, around, back down, into the river, walk downstream, back on the road to the start and then either chained up to wait for the next customers or straight back out with two more people riding on their backs to do it all again (and again, day after day).  I hope that they get at least some small chance to be simply an elephant and do the elephant things that elephants do without somebody literally on their back about stuff.  As cool as it was to be that close to them - (the highlight was a rather healthy trumpet from one of them right next to us) - I won’t do it again - I know that millions more will and that many more elephants will be consigned to walking endless laps with goofy tourists on their backs, but I’ll let them do it without me I think.

There were Buddhist temples all around the countryside - sometimes in sight of one another.  Many of them had shaded spots that we used for our breaks off the bike, so in addition to visiting ‘special’ ones like the White Temple, we saw many that were comparatively more ‘average’ and yet still spectacular.  

We also stopped at an enormous happy Buddha, which was probably 30 or 35 meters high, and he was perched upon the top of a building built at the top of a hill in rather spectacular fashion - really amazing to see.

Our last day on the bikes took us to the Golden Triangle - the area where Thailand, Laos and Myanmar/Burma meet.  We took a longtail boat ride up the Mekong to right where the three countries intersect - with Thailand and Laos separated by the Mekong and Thailand and Myanmar by a much smaller river that flows into the Mekong.  After we got off the boat we walked around a little town where I spied the benches below.  The area is named the Golden Triangle at least partly due to the flow of drugs and in turn gold both in the past, and sadly, the present.  Sounds like mostly Opium in the past and more Meth today.  For Americans reading this, you’ll be happy to know that our demand for drugs in the US leads to yet another arm of our government getting out to spread goodwill around the planet, offering hard tile, er, comfy places to sit.  I guess the older ones with Nancy Reagan’s face and a word balloon saying ‘Just say no to drugs’ wore out and we replaced them with this more workmanlike model? Dunno....  But in a stroke of marketing genius, fortunately 1 of the15 or so of these that I saw had the message in Thai - so we can feel good that the message about this reward program is really getting out there, winning hearts, minds and asses with this cool blue tile pile of comfy seating.  

We worked out our travel so that we had some time in Bangkok before the start and after the finish of our time on the bikes.  Bangkok is an amazing, sprawling over the top city.  2 days of city exploring was just about right for us both - we visited the Grand Palace, a bunch of other Temples,  got held up in traffic for the King’s motorcade, hung out by the really nice pool at our hotel, ate amazing food, saw a giant lizard crawl out of a sewer drain, (he stayed under a car so I couldn’t really get a picture worth sharing - but it was nearly a meter long and bigger around than my bicep in the middle (I know, that’s a weedy cyclist/runner’s bicep, but still!)... we walked all over the city and generally relaxed.  It was a great trip!

March of the Little Guy

For your viewing pleasure, here's another in a series of photos of Little Guys (first one here) with an even more international flair - a few are from Thailand.    Here's a bit more context into the spring from which the Little Guys in Asia flow.

There's a Japanimation element to many of the Little Guys, but there's also this cuteness angle.  Which brings us to Japan again - cuteness, or 'Kawaii' is actually a 'thing' in Japan.  I stumbled across this post on BoingBoing.net.  I was fairly floored, though it's not really too inconsistent from what I see around me.   Here's what Wikipedia has to say about kawaii.  If you scroll down a bit at Wikipedia you can see a Japanese jetliner with Pokemon... EVA Airlines (one of the two Taiwanese carriers) is working hard to keep up.  Julia's actually flown on one of the (several) Hello Kitty planes and says that the interiors are all decorated with Hello Kitty.

But let's get on to some lesser known little guys, like this one, a Taiwan Postal Service Little Guy.

A Little Dairy Guy in Bangkok, just loaded with vitamin-y goodness - perhaps 55 flavors of them?

A Thai chef Hat Little Guy who is clearly happy about a good inspection rating.

We're gonna need a bigger boat...err, living room

We looked at an apartment right across the street from this, with windows and a balcony pointed straight at it, which would have been pretty surreal...

If I had a chance to build the ideal road....

....for cycling downhill, it would look an awful lot like Rte. 21 in the foothills east of Taichung.

A nice long straightaway would be a lovely addition, but that's just nitpicking - as is it's really sweet!  It has great pavement, good turns, not too much traffic and generally good visibility of the road ahead.  The only bad part are two patches of wetness that, in my experience are always there. (Sample size of 2 - hey if you can't make statistics work for you, what good are they?) Just kidding, today's riding companions bore out my hunch that these wet spots are pretty much permanent.

One of said patches isn't a big deal, as it's visible.   The other one is on a tight turn hidden from view, and it's right where you want to be riding if you were carving a great line in the turn.  I generally try to ride with more than enough friction in the cornering bank account to cover sudden, unexpected withdrawals or course alterations.  Bouncing that check is no fun.

The ride up to the crest from the South is pretty perfect too.  It's 10Km or so of nice, consistent grade, switchbacks and also good road surface.  I was riding with some guys that are all way fitter and stronger than me, I'm sure they hit the top many minutes before me.  They were kind to wait.  I think the Tea Eggs they got at the little place at the top may have helped to pass the time.

The rest of the ride was big fun as well, and now I'm happily parked on the sofa.  Rides like this one are great for reasonably guilt free laying about and eating too!

We're only 9 weeks into our time here and there are many great and wonderful aspects to Taiwan and our experience of it.  But I'm also ready to wager on a number of things that I imagine will be in the 'bummer' column no matter what.

1.  The general welfare of dogs here.  There are many that are beloved pets, but there are many more that are chained or confined in very small spaces, and many more loose on the streets and roads, including injured and maimed ones.   It appears there are gradations between full on feral dogs and ones that seem to have had some human attention - many have collars, but  many are clearly fending for themselves to varying degrees of success.

2.  The air pollution.  Much of the haze we get is really just Marine Layer off the Taiwan Strait, but there's definitely more to it than just that on many days - and even if the air aloft is reasonably good, the street level air can be more than sketchy to my sensitive lungs.  It's true, I have tender, oh sooo sensitive lungs.  If I could buy air collected from remotest Antarctica, bottled in organic stainless steel vessels lined in recycled, small batch, responsibly manufactured glass and shipped here I would.  I'd just buy a boatload of carbon offsets to even it out and sleep like a baby as a result.

3.  Garbage everywhere -  Littering out the car window or off the scooter or while walking are not uncommon, but there are also people heaving big bags of trash along the side of the road too.  It's such a beautiful country, and it's hard to see this so commonplace.  It's equally as curious to me to see how fastidious individuals and the government are about cleaning up leaves and twigs and the odd bit of litter while just feet away could be a trainwreck of garbage strewn about that seems unlikely to be cleaned up.

A sad 'two-fer' photo  - feral dogs and trash strewn about, taken on a different ride, but illustrative

Of course Taiwan isn't the only place with these problems - way too many dogs in the US and elsewhere are kept in appalling conditions as well.  But in America we get to practice that wonderful bit of   'out of sight, out of mind' avoidance since many of our houses set back from the roads, while here many are right close to roads and streets, visible to all who pass.  And we've got idiots throwing bags of trash in the US too, and air pollution (like that which helped chase me away from Los Angeles).  But both seem to be more commonplace here.

Not trying to be negative about this place, (I'll write more about Taiwan's wonderful things beyond just really good roads to ride!), but I'm just noticing and musing aloud and in type about these challenges as there were glaring examples of all of  the above on today's ride.   I'll revisit this in the future to see if I was right.... maybe I can work some statistics in to support my confirmation bias as well!

On Design Sensibilities Across Cultures

It's surely not unheard of or even uncommon for businesses and entities to have mascots or cute graphical treatments around the planet, we see them everywhere.  But to my eye, the Chinese, Japanese and now Taiwanese seem to use them to a far greater extent.  In my limited travels in Asia previously, I thought of photographing and cataloging them, but never really did.  But no longer!   So here's the start of an ongoing series, The Little Guys of Asia (I know not all of them are specifically 'guys' in the strict gender sense, there are many female figures too ) but, like walking into a room with a mix of genders and saying "Hey guys!",  they're all Little Guys to me.

From the hilltop town of Xinshe, where they grow and dry loads and loads of mushrooms.  The Little Guy is often in action, on the move, like these two.

Little Guys serve and protect!  A Nantou County Police Station, somehow I don't picture this flying in front of a US Police station, but who knows I could be wrong.... again.

From a great riding spot,  Pineapple Ridge, south of Taichung.  She's winking at him, what's up with that?  Where are they running off to together?  Dunno, maybe they got wise to the cannery at the back of the building and decided things weren't looking good, and if there was a future for them together, they had to take off? Or maybe that's reading way too much into it, but while riding long distances, the mind wanders, sorry.