Taiwan last round

Publié le 8 avril 2008 par Carouche

It is almost the end of my trip. I’ve come back to Taipei after these three weeks spent in Perth. I decided to learn Chinese in a kind of Chinese courses organization (Guoyu Ribao), placed in Taipei downtown. This place is really good if you want to learn Chinese for a cheap price. You have to pass a preliminary test to evaluate your level, and then go to the class attributed to you. Since I already got some Chinese courses in my home university, I already knew how to read pinyin. At Guoyu Ribao you have also to know how to read and use the phonetic alphabet symbols. I learnt them a bit with my aunt. It’s really difficult! Chinese is a really tough language… I am in the class 213, and we are 4 students. The first two weeks I was with one Turkish guy and two Japanese guys. It was one of the funniest class I’ve ever had, I enjoyed it a lot! The Turkish guy is older than us, about 50, and the Japanese boys about my age. We had two teachers, one woman on Monday, Wednesday and Friday (phonetic) and a man on Tuesday and Thursday (pinyin). I have 2 hours of courses everyday, 5 days a week. And I only pay 150 NT$ one hour, which is like 3 euros!! There are many foreigners, especially from the Canada, the States and many Asian countries.

Since my Japanese classmates were about to leave Taiwan, we decided to visit a bit Taiwan together. We’ve been to Danshui, one of the most beautiful places close to Taipei. We can see a long river boarded by mountains, eat many specialties from there, enormous ice creams for 0.3 euros, take the boat to go to the other side of the rive.

We also went to Chiang Kai Shek’s garden at Shilin, it worth seeing it, this garden is amazing!

We also went to a famous and huge night market in Taipei, Shilin night market. You can find whatever you want, even some animals. We played billiard there, it’s much easier with a glove!!

We also wanted to taste a strange ice cream called ‘Dabian pingqilin’, which is an ice cream with the shape of shit. The place is also very funny, with WC seats instead of proper chairs. Unfortunately we didn’t have the chance to taste them, because it was closed, but I’ll try to get there with my aunt. It’s really… interesting.

I was quite sad when my Japanese classmates went back to Japan. Now we are still 4, with 2 new girls replacing them. One from Thailand and one from Canada. It is a pity they are very shy…

I still continued to visit Taiwan. I have seen Lungshan Temple in Taipei, located in the oldest part of the city.

I went to Yingge, a famous place in Taiwan where you can find handmade dinnerware.

I went to Xinbeitou in Taipei, to try the delightful uncovered hot springs. Well, actually the first place I went to was quite horrible, covered, with a water about 40°C burning my skin, and make you feel dizzy. But the other one was just a great time spent under the light of the stars (ok, we can't see the stars in Taipei...)

I went to Yang Ming Shan, a great mountain with geysers and beautiful flowers (I don’t know the name of it in English, if somebody has the answer…).

I went to see the very North sea.

I went to Kaohsiung again, and took the brand new High Speed Train, with a speed of 300 km/h, and enough space in front of you to lay down your legs, and even put your… luggage in front of you.

We’ve seen the enormous Fo Guang Shan Monastery, a peaceful place in the mountain with many nuns and thousands of buddhas in gold.

We also walked along the so-called Love River, completely illuminated at nightfall, and full of couples.

We finally visited a house on a hill built by an English man, with an unusual architecture compare to the rest of the buildings in the surroundings. The view offered from there is Kaohsinug city.

Small bonus to finish this post, with 2 pics from the 20^th anniversary celebration of the primary school where my aunt works…