near Gangshan
I visited my good friend Nick in the dinky (100,000 pop) town of Gangshan. It's a small town by Taiwan standards (only 10 7-11s!). It's always nice to visit him, as he always has an interesting place to show me. This time, we went over the mountains east of Gangshan to this mud volcano, then to a small hakka town. It was really hot and humid, but on top of the mountain, it was lovely and cool.
On the way back, we stopped at a small temple where the guy only spoke Japanese and Taiwanese. He was pretty surprised to see me, speaking to him in Mandarin. I ended up lighting some incense in the temple and I got a really mediocore fortune (it said that travelling would be bad luck).
We went to Gaoxiong (Kaohsiung) twice in the evenings. It's a city I totally don't understand. I think part of it is that the locals use Taiwanese. When I speak to them in Mandarin, the respond in Taiwanese. I'm not sure if they think that one through, though. I can't speak Taiwanese, so if you speak to me in it, I only get a little bit of the meaning. It's kind of crazy.
I went through 1 1/2 typhoons down south... it was a bit rainy and annoying, but the weather was fascinating. Plus, I got my wish of getting to go through typhoons again. Dumb wish on my part, eh? Eventually, I headed north, and got wet from another typhoon... then flew through that typhoon... and got wet from that one when I was in Hong Kong. :-( Tough.