A holiday in Taiwan

The reason we decided to venture to Taiwan was that Gary worked there for a year; in 2007 he completed his industrial placement year for a company called SHL (Scandinavian Heath Limited). He had previously contacted the SHL and they offered us free accommodation. Our stay in Hong Kong was the same as our last encounter expensive, dirty and claustrophobic accommodation. During the morning we left HK We had to change our remaining flights dates on our round the world tickets which rendered us short of time, as Gary waited at the bus stop I ran quickly to the ATM, the airport transfer bus had come and gone in the 5 minuets I was away, we got on the next half an hour later. On the way we didn't seem to realize how close we were pushing time to make the flight. We ran to the check in desk with 20 minuets till the flight was due to depart, the lady said: "sorry you're too late there's no way we can get your luggage on in time". The flight had cost £100 and I really couldn't afford another! Unbelievably the women followed with: "its ok I'll just stick you on the next flight it leaves in 1 hour", we couldn't believe our luck, this would never have happened on BA .

As you scoot along in the traffic you can observe the locals pulling up to these small road side shops to purchase "Betel Nuts." (a small snack usually for chewing, the nuts are chewed with betel leaf for their effects as a mild stimulant) the funny thing was that they are sold by many extremely cute girls all wearing the shortest skirts I've seen in daylight hours, I loved Taiwan instantly.

Our luck hadn't ended there when we arrived at SHL and Gary had done his reuniting with his ex colleagues one of the directors gave us a key each to our new home for the next week. When we arrived at the SHL apartments I was pleasantly surprised at how luxurious they were: king sized bed each, lounge area, satellite TV, large modern kitchen, massive balcony and one of the rooms had a spar, and just to top it off free food. Having stayed in some of the dives we have experienced I new this was going to be a treat.

I was given a great tour of the 'SHL' factory and saw some of Gary's old projects in production, I also saw the company tool room and molding shop which was interesting for me to see how technology has developed since my apprenticeship. They even seemed keen to recruit me.

It was great fun living in the apartment especially being able to cook for myself again trying out all the weird foods available in the supermarkets. I was shopping once and was looking at the milk (often deprived of this in Asia) when three girls tried to sell me different brands and sizes, I realized that these stores had so much staff, really they did everything for you it really showed how minimum wage is lower. Having sat TV was a treat I managed to catch one of those disaster investigation shows which happened to show a plane crash, it really didn'thelped my fear of flying.

Taiwan is a volcanic island and there are some hot springs near the capital Taipei, we decided to take a day trip to bath in them. 'Hot springs' when I here this word I image this: 'a large volcanic lake in the open with steam rising from it and signs explaining what medical issues it heals', this is far from what I found. And it did take some time to find we paid the fee to get in the building which reminded me of our local swimming pool 10 years ago then they pulled the curtain back and sent us in. I was so surprised what I saw a very small room, two very small shallow square pools and about 25 very old naked Chinese men all staring at us 'too nakedwhites' (bearing in mind we had traveled quite far to do this). I got in the probably diseased water and had to jump out it was so hot, there was silence and it was full of cigarette smoke, we didn't hang around long was a funny day though 'just wish there had been some of those betel nut girls in there!!. After this adventure we hopped back on the metro and made our way to Taipei 101 formally the tallest building in the world, I didn't go up having leant from the world financial building in Shanghai that it's not worth the money at night however I got some great pick's from out side. That night one of Gary's old colleges invited us to her friends' birthday outing in Taipei and we had a great night.

Taiwan was great fun and a rest from s***ty accommodation and although the Taiwanese were better at English than the Chinese I could still use the mandarin that I had learnt in China. When we flew to back to Hong Kong we flew on a really tatty old jumbo it had few seats so we had stacks of space which was weird on such a small trip.