Taibros.net

Time for my next Singapore Update; this times it about Taiwan!

I spent the weekend in Taiwan with my relatives to meet up with my parents who are also visiting Taiwan for the week. I ended up not doing to much, but I got to see (almost) all my extended family, as they all trekked down to Kaohsiung for a Taifamily big pow-wow. Only a few were unaccounted for (particularly, the other Taibro).

So to save hassle and costs, I took the Taiwan HSR (High Speed Rail) from Taipei to Kaohsiung. Essentially a Shinkansen bullet train in Taiwan, it can get from Taoyuan Airport to Zuoying in 1 hour 38 minutes. Conveniently, the Zuoying terminal is pretty much in the backyard of where my relatives live, so it was an easy trip (also, Taiwanese people are particularly uniform in height, so it is very easy to see over them all in case of large crowded areas).

The first thing I did after arriving was eat a good home-cooked bowl of Beef Noodle. Not as good as some restaurants, but it definitely has that nostalgic, authentic feel to it. (lots of people often complain about eating ethnic food outside of the place of origin because it isn’t *authentic* enough; I think this is rubbish. Taste doesn’t have a correlation to authenticit. Case in point: Pho. Authentic pho has undercooked beef innards, which to most people, is not particularly appetizing). I have no picture of Beef Noodles, so here is a picture of Sea Cucumber, which I also ate during my time in Taiwan. I was so traumatized by eating it, that when I came back to Singapore, I ate two Whoppers at the local Burger King to balance my diet out.

Taiwan also has some nice views. Here are two pananoramics which I took. The first one is at my grandmother’s burial site, atop a cemetery-type hill. You can see the cascade of shrines below. The other one is atop a 15-story high-rise apartment complex, which overlooks the Kaohsiung Naval Harbor.

In addition to visiting burial sites, I also attended dinner/lunch parties. Heres the table at our first dinner party, where we ate at the Ambassador Hotel. The food was quite good, but I met my cousin for the first time since 1997 - who is also aptly nicknamed “Shung Shung”. Obviously, this led to much confusion, since I have known no one else previously with this same nickname. There were many double head-turnings when someone would call out Shung Shung.

Here is a picture I have of my dad and his five brothers in order of age. They’re all 6 feet tall, and their nicknames include numbers which signify what order they came out. I believe my dad is called “Number 5″. Thus, these are the Original Taibros.

Just a few more pictures to round out the experience:
Here’s me and my mom at some lake.

My mom and our relative’s dog, matching wits.

A picture of me and my two cousins. We’re all the people in our extended family born in 1984. (I let you extrapolate how many cousins I have total from that).

Finally, me standing in our relatives yard, with mom, cousin, and family dog behind me.

Whew, I think that’s all for now. In the meantime check out the photo album.

Taiwan Photo Album