Tuesday, March 10, 2009

day 6

So here is a picture of the hotel i am staying in Taichung   It is a night shot from inside the van, so it is not great! The hotel is really nice...and quite pretty at night.  The view of the city of Taichung is also very pretty. I get to see it every night on the way home from work....

so some more fun facts about Taiwan.. This country has around 24 million people...i am not sure of the size...but i do know that it takes around 6 or 7 hours to drive from end to end...so what?.... that is about how long it takes to drive from portland to idaho, or about 3/4 of the way across pa....so it is very densely populated!!!!




So of those 24 million people, almost 10 million people own and drive SCOOTERS!!! yes I said SCOOTERS...here is a shot of a woman and her two dogs on the scooter.... they are actually 
driving on the sidewalk.  So in and around the towns and cities, scooters are everywhere, all over the place.  Not sure why this lady is driving instead of walking her dogs..but who knows?  
by the way, is that Spuds Mckenzie??? did he move to Taiwan?

Ok, here is another fun one, so you will hardly ever find ice water over here.  You wont find chilled bottled water or any type of cold water really.  So having noticed this, some of the expats informed me that, the culture here believes if you drink cold water, your body will make fat to help insulate your insides from the cold water.  So basically you will get fat if you drink cold water......uh WHAT?  are you kidding me?  
Since i couldnt believe this, i tried to confirm with several of the locals.....Well I wont say that the locals say it is true..but they do believe that you should not drink cold fluids because your insides are warm and if you drink the cold fluids then it disrupts your system...so its much better for your health to drink luke warm fluids or warm to hot fluids....so there you have it!  watch out for those ice cold drinks!!!

In case you were wondering, oh i don't know?...about convienence stores? well,  here in Taiwan all i have to say is 7-eleven, 7-eleven, 7-eleven, 7-eleven and 7-eleven....................................
 
unbelievable, there are around 40,000 7-elevens in Taiwan ....basically one on every block and you really cant travel too far without finding one....there is 1 7eleven for every 4000 people!  
Can you imagine there being 40,000 7elevens in pa, or in Oregon? no way!!!!
There is even a 7eleven at work, within the office buildings....truly surreal.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey Tiff, did you get a slurpee or big glup yet?? Oh ya, maybe you can get it warmed up so the cold drink won't make you fat!!! Ha Ha!!!!! Love ya, Chris