This picture was taken from the 76th floor of Tuntex Sky Tower, Kaohsiung.

Kaohsiung is like Taipei, a very big, Taiwanese city. It's the second biggest and located in the opposite corner of Taiwan. In Kaohsiung it's hot and there is more space between the buildings. Roads are bigger. If you plan to be in Taiwan during winter, I can strongly recommend Kaohsiung. Taipei is a bit cold right now, actually. In summer though, it's probably a little too hot to feel utterly comfortable in Kaohsiung. You could go to the beach, which is much much better down in the southern part of Taiwan, but Taipei is already a bit uncomfortable hot for most people during summertimes, so personally, I think I'll prefer to stay up here when it gets warmer.

They do have MRT too in Kaohsiung, so getting around wont be a big issue. MRT is a little smaller and slightly different there, but mostly the same experience.

Took the HSR (High Speed Railway) Train to Kaohsiung today. (A train that can reach speeds up to 400km/h. From Japan obviously.) Took over 500 pictures and they're still uploading. I was there all day, so been doing a lot. Hopefully I will remember some of the stories from my trip when looking through some pictures for tomorrow, should I manage to get some time for writing. Today, all I can say is that Kaohsiung is a lovely harbour city. Very big, very hot (it's the southernmost city in Taiwan.) The roads there are much bigger and everything is much easier to see.

Been taking pictures of big buildings like this. I was told that it's the 8th biggest building in the world or so. It's called Tuntex Sky Tower. Also known as Kaohsiung 85 or 85 Skytower, because it has 85 floors and is located in Kaohsiung. (Just like Taipei 101 located in Taipei and having 101 floors.) Tuntex Sky Tower and Taipei 101 is designed by the same architect, actually.
And of course I was inside. There's an amazing view and great food.

Also cruised a bit around in the harbour taking pictures of many different kinds of interesting ships.

Also went to see some monkeys in the mountains. Used a lot of my time there in Kaohsiung climbing up and down to get to their place.

Also managed to snap some photos during dark. It's a beautiful city.

Be back soon and I'll tell you some more about the differences between Taipei. Have pictures of MRT, roads, Engrish, strange stuff, arty architecture, lots of ships with strange names, (even found some Danish ones,) dogs, mountain, monkeys (of course, told you, and I have lots of pictures of those) and I bet probably some more stuff that I'll remember sooner or later.

Didn't finish the sequel to the Wulai trip just yet. It's a lot to cover, and I haven't a lot of time. I still need to get to some of the other stuff such as mountain climbing and stuffs, but I guess I can just write quickly what I did today.

7am - going to school, getting a few minutes late but gets ignored by the military there as they probably don't know (or dare) how to explain in english, that I they're unhappy about my lack of hardcore discipline.
Then: Sit in the class for two hours staring at a math teacher talking chinese, then going to a website-design class to draw stuff for a drawing competition by the MRT Amdministration. (I guess that's website design in some Taiwanese logic as you have to find the rules for the competition on the internet.) And I am not exactly good at using a chinese version adobe illustrator on a chinese version MAC. (Ever only found out how paint works on my Windows, that's my graphics experience.)

Okay, that's a standard school day for me now more or less, the more interesting part comes here:

Wow, what's that? About 1pm I was sitting at Starbucks eating danish candy.

While talking danish with some Irish looking beard man. His name is Ciarán Knakkegaard McLoughlin and he currently lives in Taoyuan.

Well, you should be able to tell the outline of our day in the title. Sadly, he's not in Taipei City too much as there's a bit long to there for him and also because he goes to Taiwanese school all day. Apparently he has a problem with people telling him he looks like Leonardo DiCaprio too, which is even more ridiculous than telling me, as you should be able to figure from his picture above.

Actually I just knew Gundam was some robot stuff before we bumped into this place just outside Taipei Main Station. Now I also know that Gundam is based off of some old anime series and immensely popular. Maybe even bigger than those warhammer figures you can paint by yourselve I'd say. They're quite cool, and honestly, I wouldn't mind having one standing in a glass box in my room. I doubt that it's inexpensive though, both money and timewise.

But what's Mikuru doing here? Took a break from that dominant god somewhere in the future without us knowing?

Gundam Base Taipei, eh? Well, now you can find it yourself with some Google skills I guess. I have to be carefull about going there again though. Already got a serious addiction to that arcade game Jubeat. If I start to look out for figures like this, it might very well hurt my pocket a bit more than just a few percent of my expenses.

So well.. Didn't take so many pictures except for a lot of the figures there (we were just there shortly, went to buy shoes and chinese versions of the lucky star manga and other japanese stuff. (Yeah, I might not write a lot about it, but I do mostly do taiwanese stuff around here.) By the way, I also peed in a urinal with an advertisement LCD screen ontop today. Wicked.

It's cooler now. And isolation is not really good around these parts, but I'm ok. It's not THAT cool, just somewhere down about 13 degreees celcius outside when it's really extreme.

I went to the Taipei Metro Mall two times just this week. I take the MRT around the area it's located underneath several times every day, yet never heard of it just until this Monday where a teacher on my school asked me if I had been there yet. It's an awesome and quite big place with a lot of shops, all underground. That'll be one of my really big projects in the future - to cover some of the underground malls around Taipei because I believe they're probably not something you're going to see very much in little europe untill a few years have passed.

However, today is reserved for figures. Actually just three of them, because I'm not really a big collector just yet.

And there it is, my entire collection. All off them are rather cheaply obtained. I bought two packs with random Haruhi figures in figures in at a discount because they were the last two that a street store had for sale some day pretty long ago already. At that time I got the two standing on the red circles or whatever-they're-called for just 200 NT$ total. I think the version I have of Yuki (the one with a raincoat) must be quite popular amongst haruhists around here. I can see her in a few of those kindof flee-market-stores where anyone can rent a box and sell used stuff. The pack you can get her in usually costs 150 or 200 NT$ but you cannot see which of 6 female Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu you get. That's the way most of the figure selling for the smaller ones work, so people will often try to collect all the possible ones for a type of box and then sell the ones they get too many of. This results in that this kind of figure can usually be found in mint condition below the price of the random box.
However, this figure here always costs 200NT$ and up, so I guess I was lucky on my first buy, hoho. Not going to sell her though, I can see why people like this figure.

So today I also went to Taipei Main Station. I bought some donuts there at Mr. Donut. They always look and taste really great so I bought there a few times before. It's quite some time since I did it last though, as they're a little expensive compared to other food here and also will make me fat if I keep eating them.
I had to go there sometime soon though because I had some coupons I got from earlier purchases. They're from some promotion where you can collect points to get a little bag for free there. I had 7 of them and you have to hand in 10 points to get the bag. The promotion runs out on November the 10th so that's why I wanted to buy more.
What a shameful day this is. I have failed my anticonsumerist ideology. I got just the points I needed though (the coupons are little scratch card so you have to use your luck again.) So yeah... I guess I'm becoming a real Asian now, eh?

You can prepare a plethora of goodness quite easily with donuts like this I tell you.

So here's Mikuru. I just bought this one today in the Taipei Metro Mall before I bought the donuts. Actually I spotted a number of characters from Lucky Star in one of the many "flee-market-stores" there this Tuesday when I went there for the first time, but when I came back to check them out again I saw this one and decided it was worth the 200 NT$ on the price tag. I bet the previous owner paid a lot more than just 200 NT$ to obtain this one, it's quite detailed and good looking I think. I don't understand why the owner decided to sell it actually, it seems to be in pretty good condition too. I'm quite satisfied with my loot today I think.

Now tell me, have I gone completely insane?

Oh yeah, you can now comment on the pictures at http://boonbot.com/. No registration is required, but you should register on the page if you want to hide your IP and email when you comment just btw.

Hey, this evening I just uploaded a video I took while shifting trains in Taipei Main Station (for MRT) some days ago. I hope that especially people who have been here before or even lives here normally but are in a foreign country for a long time, can perhaps feel a little nostalgia or like they're home or however you want to describe that feeling.

Perhaps some day soon I'll tell a little more about the MRT in Taipei.

There's always a lot of people in the MRT. - Or rather - there's always a lot of people anywhere in Taipei. But if you come at the right time, even more people are going to be there.

Cake. Is naic.

A picture not as blurry as the yootoob clip. Also in Taipei Main Station.

Fancy light at the entrance to "The Wedding House" where I went to another rotary meeting. Indeed a fancy place I tell you. Mirrors, windows, aluminium bars and lights everywhere inside so that you could barely find your way out again.

Okay. That's another random post for you. See you.