Hey guys, Arrived safe and sound in Taiwan and is humid here I can say that!
As promised I will TRY and blog about my time here in Taiwan.
Haven’t started placement till next Monday, so I can blog about what I’ve done so far. I might not be as diligent later on. But I will try as much as I can. As for pictures, I wanted to post them up here, but I forgot to install PS, so if I post them here the pics are HUGE, unless I can figure out another way to resize I will re-post some here. So in the mean time. Get pics from FB.
So here it goes. There is a lot to read I pre-warn you so I thought to make it easier just separating the whole post.
Flight was fine, minor incident at the airport of too much luggage. The guy at the entry to customs wouldn’t let me in. I had 1 carry on luggage, 1 laptop bag and 1 handbag…which technically on the airport website is allowed. Well he went to weight ALL my bags not just my carry on bag and well it came to like 20kg in total saying I am only allowed 8 kg in total for everything…WTF. Excuse me last time I was on a plane last year there was no such thing. He said I had to go back to the airlines and do something about my luggage. Well there I had a minor freak out. Dad was gone, managed to call him back. Sorry Dad for making you come back. Then went to Malaysia Airlines check in and they were also like WTF as I was allowed my to take my luggage on the plane, so then they had to write on my boarding pass I’m allowed to go in. So went back through those gates at Melbourne Airport and showed the guy my boarding pass. Hah, he couldn’t do nothing there!!
But I have to say, Melbourne Airport looks cool with the new renovations. Not sure when they did it but last time I was there, which would have been 2006, looked very different in their layout. Looked pretty cool, from my point of view.
The flight was fine, food was pretty good, but then again most western food is pretty good for me! ^_^. Watched two movies, despite the fact I was on a 0015 flight. Letters to Juliet was great. Ahh Chris Egan!! Hottie from Home and Away, ahahah I still remember him from then. Add a British accent and well what can you say.
Next I watched Streetdance, its actually not a bad film. Based in London about streetdancing. I love watching all the cool moves they can pull off..Amazing!
Then I arrived at Kuala Lumpur, whoa that airport is HUGE. Probably the fact they do so many different transfer to Asia, Europe, Middle East, basically everywhere. They have this really cool monorail train thing, that transfers passengers between the two main terminals. Very cool, which I think they should do with Sydney airport. I’ll post up the pics on facebook.
Then off on a flight to Taipei. Met some Malaysian travellers on my flight there, really nice people to talk to. They served this Malaysian dish, Sambal or something, slightly spicy with prawns and some other thing with rice. They gave me this peanut and dried fish in a small dish, had no idea what that was for the travellers I met showed me you actually mix it in with the rice!! They also had this pudding thing with white and dark chocolate in it yummy! I forgot to take pictures. Sorry, lots of time I keep forgetting to take pictures of the food.
OMG the landing into Taipei was the WORST I have ever felt. Don’t think the pilot was very good with landing a plane. These days’ landings are pretty smooth in the decent, but not this plane. It wasn’t a small plane the same style to the Virgin Blue ones 3 x 3. OMG the decent was crazy, felt like I was on an elevator going up and down for like 10 minutes. Landing down in Malaysia was fine but omg this was horrendous, even the guys next to me looked pale and said they felt very sick. I though my stomach was going to heave anytime. Luckily it didn’t but I felt like it all night long. Then plan will just loose altitude and then stop and then loose more altitude and when the plane came to a complete stop at the loading area the stupid pilot hit the brakes so hard everyone went forward in their seats.
Anyways, got out of the airport and met up with my aunty. We took an airport shuttle bus back into the city area. Wow they have so many airport shuttle buses, so all sorts of places. Really cheap too, only NT125 which is like $4.50, compared to how much is our Airport bus? I know it isn’t cheap.
Taiwan is HUMID, it is sweltering here. I feel like I’m sweating constantly, when we arrived it started to poor down with rain too. I met up with the other people in the PT department was talked to the Head of the School in relations to PT in Australia and what I had done etc. She was really interested in how we did our placements and stuff. Then we had to take my entire luggage in the RAIN, to my dorm which was just a 5 min walk away, wasn’t easy trying to push it. Then my room is on the fourth floor no elevators. Carrying so much luggage isn’t fun but I had 2 people to help me.
My dorm is pretty cool, I share it with 3 other girls, and I’ve met two of them so far they are really nice and have helped me heaps. The other girl I haven’t yet, she doesn’t seem to be at the dorm much. So we have a bunk style bed. There is a desk, drawers and small wardrobe all below, which is awesome for the amount of stuff it can hold in such a limited amount of space, so they have done really well with the design. Since I don’t have much with me, I’ve got plenty of room to fit my things, I suppose if you live here for a whole semester you end up taking lot more things like my dorm mates.
So I went out for dinner and checked out their stores, went to the grocery store to buy a drink bottle. I was so thirsty throughout my plane trip, and then in Taipei. All that sweating I’m loosing my fluids quicker than normal. I wonder how long it takes to climatise to a place? It’s a 31 degree day and there are people walking around in jeans, and saw some crazy girls wearing knee high socks and boots. Here I am in shorts and a t-shirt sweating like crazy. I’m getting better, last night I felt so hot, at the moment its not too bad considering its still around 30 degrees here!
We have aircon, but my dorm mates buy for the service and I feel bad asking them to put it on when they don’t themselves. So I must solider on!
So last night didn’t do too much, unpacked chatted to my dorm mate and then went to bed early since I had no sleep on the plan, pretty buggered.
Have to get used to sleeping on a hard surface, mattress here is like those this foam mattress you get at some stores. No wonder uni only charged like $35 AUD for it. It’s small as. Oh well I suppose it technically better for my back, but I’m a side/tummy sleeper! Oh well, have to make do with what you have.
So today, finally got connected to the web by borrowing the account of my dorm mate, since my connection won’t come up till Monday.
Anyways, the teaching assistant for PT took me around Taipei, went to few stores to buy odd and ends. And then went to the Children’s Hospital where I will be doing placements and then went to the National Taiwan University Hospital to pay my fees and get my ID card etc.
Oh I had Bubble Tea, like the originals ones. It like everywhere. I think it was straight Milk Tea, super sweet and you know how I like sweet stuff this was sweat as with pearls. Must find out what other flavours they have. It’s so cheap here, around NT25 which is under a $1 in Australia. Oh yeah, ever coming to Taiwan swap AUD in Taiwan. It’s so hard to get hold of in Melb and I swapped only at 26.45, but here I got to swap at 29.81. How insane is that!! Yes, I will be blogging about everything as you can see this blog post it getting really long. You know how I like to talk, now it’s me expressing my self through blogs!! ^_^v
As for speaking Chinese, is been so far ok, some words I don’t know and some times people are sure of my pronunciation of some words but hey its going well. According to the teaching assistant she says my Chinese was better than two HK students they had earlier in the year which ended up them mostly communicating in English… tee hee so technically I can get by with English since they did but I will try as much as in Chinese as possible. I mean that’s one of the reasons I came. Reading is a bit hard. Taiwan write in Traditional Chinese, some words I can make out since I’ve learnt Jap Kanji and they look similar to Simplified since its looks the same with more strokes, but some words, no idea. One of my dorm mates is also from Xi Men in China and she says she also struggles with some of the traditional words too.
So yes, went back to dorm to rest a bit, trying to work out what I’m going to do for the next two days. Might go to some of the different tourist places nearby.
Then went out with my dorm mates for dinner, we ate Japanese food. I know I’m in Taiwan, but hey my dorms mates chose. I got to eat Pork Katsu with Rice. Actually took a picture this time! >.< I did eat this beef noodle soup yesterday which is really popular in Taiwan, so I will try as much Taiwan food as possible. And boy are there tons of food here. It’s cheap and there is so much of it. They even had pig ears but I wasn’t game enough to eat it at lunch today. They even eat pig lungs..omg..i felt like puking when I heard that. My motto is. I don’t eat organs not any of any kind and other really random body parts…so ears and lungs are out of the questions no matter how good they taste. I’m not eating it. My grandpa likes liver and kidneys but sorry I can’t eat those. They look gross to start of with. Ok, no more gross food talk.
So now I’m back at dorm typing this. So far so good, I’ll let you guys know what I’ve done as soon I can type it out after my exploration over the weekend. Please excuse my poor English, I’m guessing there will be A LOT of typo throughout this post but I really can’t be bothered to re-check it all.
