måndag 18 mars 2013

Changed my mind

I figured out that rekindling this blog was not the ideal solution for reporting on everyday occurrences and my life in Taiwan. So, I decided to try Twitter instead. Follow me @RenegadeTourist for little snippets of life and general Tweety style observations.

torsdag 7 mars 2013

Republic of Chocolate

I know it’s a bit late to pot this, but I forgot it until now. Since I am going to work in another City, me and Yini decided to go there last weekend, and check the place out.

Even though it was rather cold outside and a bit rainy, we took my scooter, just to see what it would be like. Turns out, it took longer time and was a lot colder than I thought it would be. When we finally arrived in Taoyuan, we really did not know what to do, so we just rode around for a while until a sign caught my eye, it pointed down a road to a place called Republic of Chocolate. That seemed like an interesting place so we followed the signs.

When we got there, the place was closed for the day, so, we  headed back to town, found a hotel (it was too cold to ride a scooter back to Hsinchu in the dark)  then went to IKEA and had meatballs for dinner.

The next day we headed out in the morning and went directly to this place:

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It turned out to be a chocolate factory come museum with exhibitions on the origins of chocolate, how it is made and so on. The best part was the DIY section where we were allowed to make our own chocolate.

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Time to make some chocolate

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Here is the equipment

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Preparing the mold

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A bit of decoraation

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Yini decorates some cookies

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Time to let it cool down

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Done!

Leaving the republic we decided that the weather was unlikely to get better and the city was pretty boring, so we headed home, stopping on the way to stretch our legs at Xinfeng old street.

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That’s it for now.

fredag 1 mars 2013

Lantern festival

The Lantern festival, a kind of extension of the Chinese new year celebration started about a week ago. This year the main celebration is here in Hsinchu. We have seen some lanterns in the city center, which were pretty nice, but nothing spectacular.

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The best lantern in the city center

However, on Saturday last week, me, Yini and Kai went to the main festival grounds just outside the city, and boy was it overwhelming.  There were lanterns absolutely everywhere, lanterns in all shapes, sizes and colors. Some where made to look like well know characters while others were more artistic. Along with the lanterns was a mass of people milling about, looking at lanterns and buying street snacks and souvenirs

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Two panoramas to give you a general impression

There was nothing for it but to dive right in. We walked around on the main square for a while, then discovered that the exhibit continued along one road and followed that for a while, finding even more lanterns. It was crazy, such a big area just full of lights and people, and more over, some of the lanterns were really spectacular. There’s not much more to say really, except showing a bunch of pictures of these amazing creations of light.

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Title display

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Tong flower

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An enormous gate

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Life size? lantern elephant

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A representative for the year of the snake

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Some well known cartoon characters

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These two were the absolute best, I love them.