The World Is Not That Big

It seemed like I went everywhere during the year of the Tiger.  It was easy to travel for the first six months because I didn’t have a job.  Of course I didn’t have any money either. In January I took a trip to Thailand.  I started near the Burma (Myanmar) border visiting Thailand’s tallest waterfall (Thee Lor Sue).  On that trip we stayed at a remote but often visited Karen hilltribe village.  After traveling through Laos I returned to Thailand and had a great time at Erawan Falls and Elephant’s World.  Elephant’s World is a sanctuary for elephant’s that are no longer able to work and would be used as beggars.  I also traveled to Cambodia and I still haven’t posted the pictures yet.  The trip did have an exciting end when my now ex-girlfriend had visa trouble re-entering Thailand but everything ended up working out after some difficulties.

A young Karen villager

An Angkor Wat era temple in Cambodia In February I returned to Taiwan optimistic that I would find a teaching job quickly.  That did not happen.  So I did a visa run to the Philippines in March.  And a visa run to the Philippines in April.  And a visa run to Hong Kong in May where I finally got a 60 day visitor visa.  The Philippines were outstanding especially my trip to the Caramoan Islands (pt2).  I’ve actually ranked the Caramoan Islands above Macchu Pichu and Angkor Wat.  For three days we rode in bangka’s (outrigger boats) out to deserted islands with perfect beaches.  Sadly I fell in the ocean and destroyed my new camera on this trip.  I did have an old P&S to take photos with luckily.  Strangely even though I didn’t have a job during the spring I only did a little traveling other than the Philippines and an 800 km bike ride (photos) to Haulien and back to Kaohsiung.  It was an outstanding trip and I’m now planning a long bicycle trip in the future instead of using the bus.  You get a much different view of a country going slower.

Caramoan Islands, Philippines

The bicycle ride After my trip to Hong Kong (pt2) I started taking steps to move to South Korea for teaching while still applying for jobs in Taiwan.  Not long after that I interviewed for and landed a good job in Taiwan.  For an unknown reason I started traveling a lot after getting the job.  This was the same time that I got a new (used) Pentax camera though.  In July and August I discovered a talent for photographing waterfalls.  First I went to Taipei and hiked Elephant’s Mountain at sunset and the Wulai/Neidong waterfall tour.  Next I had a few vacation days and took a motorcycle trip to Taiwan’s east coast.  I saw the ocean at Sansiantai and 3 more waterfalls.

Neidong Waterfall

Sansiantai, Taiwan

In October I celebrated Taiwan’s 100th birthday with a trip to Taipei and took pictures of everything (pt1, pt2, pt3 , pt4, pt5, pt6).  It’s really hard to believe that all of that happened in 3 days.  I returned to northern Taiwan in November to hike the Caoling Trail (and camp) with Phil, Stu and Neil from the Taiwan Adventures group.  I was also able to visit Wufongci waterfall on that exhausting trip.   At the end of the year I started taking pictures of people.  Cosplay girls (pt1 and pt2) were an easy target because they look really good and they want to have their pictures taken.  I also found an excellent indie music venue at The Wall in the Pier 2 Art District (pt1 and pt2).   But I continued hiking (JinShui Trail) and visiting waterfalls (Lover’s Gorge and DeenGorge).

Guangdu Bridge

At Lover’s Gorge Waterfall

The year of the Tiger was a good year but the year of the Dragon should be even better.  I’m sure my plans will change a lot during the year but I will be traveling to a lot of waterfalls as part of my waterfall project.  Here is the website that I started to document Taiwan’s Waterfalls.  I also am planning to go to Japan for a couple of weeks this summer.  Maybe I’ll start a similar project in Japan…

It’s been a pretty busy week and I had no idea that I had so many photos to process.  It’s Chinese New Year and finally we get a week of vacation.  I was able to find a nice, cheap used car just in time for my camping trip this week.  I feel a little scared taking a car that I’ve barely driven into the mountains but I’m leaving tomorrow regardless.  We put it through a pretty thorough inspection and I couldn’t find anything wrong with it other than the idle is a little rough.  I only have a vague idea of where I’m going and my maps aren’t that good (and in Chinese) so I might make many unplanned detours.  But the mountains in Taiwan are pretty amazing and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to pop into a 7-11 and use the wifi everyday to upload a photo.

A thick cloud of pollution has formed over Kaohsiung and I need some clean mountain air.

This was a giant grasshopper and I’m not sure if I really needed a macro lens for him.

The Love River Bridge, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Kaohsiung Film Archive, Taiwan

Old Hanshin Mall, Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Here are a few from last weekend in Kaohsiung.

Strange weather this year

I’m not sure what to think of this

On fire

Have a nice day (night).  I actually have no idea what the Chinese says though.

I started my photo of the week project in late July and I found time to take random photos in 17 weeks (out of 26 or so).  My intention with the project was encouragement to take random photos during the middle of the week that didn’t deserve their own entry.  But I haven’t found a lot of time to take photos during the week so the POTW usually includes stray photos from the weekend that didn’t have anywhere else to be shown.

Here is a 2.5 minute long exposure from my walk home on New Year’s Eve.  I ride my bicycle over this bridge 3 nights a week on my long bicycle ride (20-25km) after work.  This is the Love River near Kaohsiung Harbor.

A macro photo from Monkey Mountain on a Tuesday hike.  There are not too many flowers currently but the cherry blossoms will bloom soon (March I think).

I’ve known about the secret beach for a long time and I had a pretty good idea how to get there but I never went until Sunday.  The secret beach is located north of Jhongshan University beneath Monkey Mountain.  It was much larger than I expected and beautiful.  In front of you are picturesque rocks along the shoreline and behind you are cliffs covered in green trees.  It was a cloudy overcast day on Sunday so I will have to go again to take better pictures.  But these are also pretty good.

This was an experiment using a black glass filter (10 stops).  It is designed to take long exposures.  In this picture it changed the crashing waves into a foggy mist.  I would consider this picture a mixed success.

It’s been a big year for me.  Thailand, Cambodia, Philippines, Hong Kong, 800km bike trip, waterfall photographer and a new job.  I’ll recap the year photographically later this week but first some fireworks from tonight.

A big party in Taiwan isn’t complete without dancing girls.  Unfortunately the dancing girls were about the most interesting thing at Dream Mall.  The fireworks were a rushed mess that ended quickly and the next best thing was an extended trailer for a Taiwanese action movie.

I saw another indie band at The Wall in the Pier 2 Art Center.  These guys just jammed for 2 hours in the freezing cold.  There wasn’t a singer and they maintained the same pose for the entire show.  I’m not sure why the middle guitarist had his back to the audience but I guess it’s their thing.  A sample of there can be heard here.  These only have the first 1.5 minutes and they usually picked up the pace near the end.

We had two 1.5 hour Christmas parties for our students instead 3 two hour classes on Friday.  This meant that at 4pm I walked out of our school for a 2 hour break and saw the beginning of a perfect sunset.  I went straight home and grabbed my camera stuff.  I remembered last year I took a great sunset photo (My day off) at Siziwan Bay.  I had to wait until the winter solstice this year for the sunset to line up with the sea wall.  And of course I need some fisherman to silhouette.

The clouds behind a church near my house.

A ship leaving Kaohsiung Harbor

I was pretty disappointed when the sunset never happened.  I cheated on the computer…

50F might not sound cold but it is on a motorcycle.  Brrr…  I took several Christmassy photos in Kaohsiung but everything looked boring on the computer.  So I picked a photo from my August motorcycle trip to Taiwan’s east coast.  It was actually a photo reject from that trip.  I tried to silhouette two pine trees against the black sky.  Not surprisingly it didn’t work.  But some crazy post processing produced an interesting photo that has been growing on me for 4 months.  Merry Christmas.

Yesterday I took a trip with Mark Roche’s Blue Skies Adventures.  It’s pretty difficult for someone like me to pay to hiking/camping because hiking is almost free.  But sometimes it’s nice to completely unplug from the logistics.  It’s so much easier to sit in the back of the van instead riding my motorcycle and constantly checking maps (or getting lost).  Our trip on the JinShui crossed the Taiwan’s mountain range about 10-15 km’s north of the highway 9 crossing.  It starts in in the small village Lili near Fangliao and luckily you can drive almost to the top of the mountain.  Then it’s 16-20 kms of downhill hiking with only a few steep sections.  The unfortunate thing is that Taiwanese prefer to travel in tour buses and walk in packs.  At the start of the trail our scattered group of 8 + a small dog had to pass a pack of 40 Taiwanese hikers.  It’s kind of bizarre to see how closely they travel together.  Once past this group it was easy walking with great views.

It’s pretty easy to follow the trail.

This might be BeiDaWuShan but I need to do a little more research on this.

A steep section of the trail

The DaWu River (I think) near the Gualun Suspension Bridge

The DaWu River again

Getting close to the end.

Later I went atop the precarious photographer’s perch to take the following photo.

The Pacific Ocean in the distance.