St Swithen Lives

Well I made it back to Taipei ahead of the typhoon. Actually that's not true the typhoon just decided to head south after dumping about 35cms of rain on me while sight seeing this morning. My shoes were soaked and I was in danger of getting trench foot. Nowthe other typhoon is now causing torrential rain in the north of the island. What's more exciting is that I need to fly somewhere between both of them tomorrow afternoon. i am expecting a very bumpy flight and I forgot to bring my drugs.

Pity you can't travel on the train back to Australia. the trip bck from Khaosiung today was fantastic. I managed to change my ticket from the normal express to the high speed train. It's actually a shinkansen bullet train from Japan and boy is it quick. About 350 km/h according to my calculations. The 400 odd kms from the south to north took just under 90 minutes, including all the stops at stations on the way. Bloody amazing. The trip that took me three hours on saturday took 26 minutes today! Every country should have one, imagine Kalgoorlie to Perth in 2 hours with no bloody airport to deal with.

There is a lot of Japanese influence here actually, as it was a colony of their's until 1945. so that means lots of japanese food, japanese department stores, japanese cars and lots of japanese style tv shows. That last one is not such a good thing though believe me. I can normally identify what sort of show I am watching even in a foreign country but here it's impossible. It could be a chat show, a talent show or the antiques roadshow for all you can tell from the chaos in the studio.

The Taiwanese have also got a soft spot for those totally bizzare japanese boy bands, the ones that give new meaning to "non-threatening boys". Actually their taste in music is pretty atrocious, every taxi has been playing either boyz2men, kenny G or celine dion. and worse is they all have tvs in the dash so you have to watch the horse faced canadian as well as listen to her. I suggest you bring ear-plugs.

So last night in Taiwan and I am off to find some food. to be honest I am in the mood for a burger as there is nly so much stinky tofu I can cope with. I'll try and update tomorrow from singapore otherwise see you all back in Perth (All? like there is more than just one person reading this!)