One of the things I miss about Australia is the availability of late-night ice-cream. Taiwan’s climate is perfect for it yet when the sun goes down, for the most part you’re restricted to Taiwanese ice-dessert places or 7-11 prepackaged icecream.

There is the odd icecream parlour around but it’s mostly overpriced Haagen Daz or some other brand starting at around $80 TWD ($2.70 USD) a scoop.

McDonalds is also a workable alternative and is pretty cheap but sometimes you just want something that tastes a little more like traditional icecream. If you’re lucky to live near an area that has one, that’s where places like Yofroyo come in. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Having lived on my own for quite a while here and there, you soon learn that cooking is an essential skill to have, or that being broke all the time from eating out sucks.

Here in Taiwan with the abundance of cheap cooked food available my own cooking skills have been somewhat neglected but from time to time the kitchen calls. Try as they might, there are just some dishes it seems that Taiwanese food vendors are just never going to get right (spaghetti bolognese vendors, I’m looking at you!).

With that in mind a good cook knows that a kitchen has to be welcoming and functional. You need to have what you want in there and have it readily on hand. A cluttered kitchen is a surefire turnoff for an evening of cooking and so is not having what you need.

And then of course there’s the little things… like this: [Read the rest of this entry...]

Whereas most of the houses and architecture in general of Taiwan seems stuck in the (18)80s, wander around long enough and occasionally you’ll run into some delightful little gems.

I was cycling through Miaoli County’s Toufen Township one day when I happened across what I can only describe as a wonderful little moat house. [Read the rest of this entry...]

I’d been using my trusty “RJays Vortex” helmet for a good four or five years but over the last twelve months or so had been wanting to change it out due to the helmet starting to slide back while I was wearing it due to wear and tear of the fit mechanism.

I was going to retire the helmet at the end of the year but after a ride around a few months ago I was inspecting the straps of the helmet when I noticed that the rear plastic securing frame had actually snapped off clean on one side and was close to buggered on the other:

Almost guiltily I hit the internet in search of a replacement, finally settling on a 2012 K-10 helmet from Kask. After a few months of riding around with it on, here’s my review. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Taiwan is full of enterprising people who hold a diverse tapestry of employment positions. Most however are overworked, underpaid and in the face of rising living costs, increasingly struggling to make ends meet.

And then there’s this guy:

You can’t really see him in the photo, but tucked away in that blue truck is a guy sleeping. [Read the rest of this entry...]

With Leela almost going on a year since we found her up in the mountains of Miaoli, we figured it was time to start investigating our options on getting her neutered.

Thankfully we hadn’t had to take too many visits to the vet thus far. Apart from the usual vaccinations a puppy needs and some upset stomach problems, vet wise we’d gotten off rather lightly.

That said there was a regular guy we’d been visiting who we’d asked a few months ago what the procedure was pretty straight forward. All we had to do was bring Leela in to get weighed and then we’d sort out a day to get her neutered.

About a month ago now we walked into his store and as he was busy with a client, took a seat. As is common with vets here in Taiwan the consultation area is wide out in the open and this particular vet had no reception staff, it was just the one guy. Prior experience meant that we knew that if he was busy, there was nothing for it but to sit and wait.

On this particular occasion though after the woman’s dog was off the consultation table a conversation dragged on between the woman and the vet for what seemed like ages.

Originally I thought it was something to do with her dog but my girlfriend later told me the vet was bitching about his kids and how his wife controls them too much and keeps them too busy with study all the time (as far as stereotypes go I wish I was making that up but that’s what they were discussing…).

Not in a hurry to be anywhere and not the type of people to get irritated easily we waited patiently until they were done. Make no mistake, this conversation went on for roughly twenty minutes and both the woman and vet clearly knew we were sitting there waiting to see him.

Finally, roughly twenty painfully long minutes later they finished up and the vet went back to wipe down the consult table.

“what do you want?” He asked, sounding much more impolite when translated to English then the question sounds in Chinese.

My girlfriend told him we were looking to get Leela neutered and mentioned what he’d told us a month or so prior. To this we got a short quick answer.

“I’m busy, come back in a few months”.

And that was it. Over in a few seconds, he then addressed the next woman waiting with her dog leaving us with no other option to leave.

I know he was most likely having a bad day and previously he’d been a decent enough vet but as we left I made a mental note that I was never going to return. On its own his response might have been acceptable, hey if you’re busy you’re busy.

But making us wait that long while he indulged in conversation about family issues for nearly half an hour? Yeah, that’s some pretty shitty customer service right there.

Thankfully though, not all vets in Taiwan are dicks. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Yesterday I was out and about exploring the mountainside of Xindian in south Taipei when all of a sudden a roaring hum blasted through the relative silence I’d been enjoying.

Instantly throwing me back to my Command & Conquer days, the familiar air raid siren noise was something I hadn’t heard in a long time.

The siren went on for about two minutes and I was actually having a break with Leela when it went off so I managed to shoot some video during the test: [Read the rest of this entry...]

I hate using public toilets for number two as much as the next guy… but when the unavoidable time comes and there’s no other way – the last thing on my mind has been ‘do I have any toilet paper?’.

A question that, if I’d bothered to ask myself, would have time and time again saved me that humiliating walk through the wash area to the waiting toilet paper dispenser outside.

Being a guy I don’t like to carry bags so everything I take out with me has to fit in my pockets. With limited real estate on offer this usually equates to keys, coins, a wallet and phone.

Whereas my girlfriend is a walking 7-11 (her coin purse alone is thicker than most books I read), I’m equipped with just the barest of necessities. For anything more than paying for stuff and showing my ID at various places, I’m the wrong guy to call.

Now whether it’s a cost cutting measure, laziness or just a stop-gap attempt to curtail some multibillion dollar illegal toilet paper trade I don’t know about, for some freaking god awful reason Taiwan is full of toilets that require you to BYO paper.

As a newcomer to the island and nonethewiser to the Chinese sprawled all over them, I initially thought the little vending machines outside were condom dispensers.

A few ‘WHY THE HELL IS THERE NO TOILET PAPER IN HERE??!’ experiences later however, and I soon came to realise these machines served a much more vital purpose. [Read the rest of this entry...]

One of the big tourist attractions of Wulai Township are the hot spring baths that heavily populate the main township area.

Ranging from just a few hundred TWD to a few thousand an hour, on a cold winter night we decided to try out a mid-range looking hot spring bath called YuFuin. [Read the rest of this entry...]

Health safety in Taiwan is often reduced to deciding whether or not a place looks clean enough to eat in. More often than not… this is even further reduced to ascertaining just how clean a venue might be based on its popularity.

Like anyone else, Taiwanese people generally don’t like eating dirty food. As for restaurant and cafe owners serving the food though… well, that’s an entirely different ball game.

Down in Chiayi in Taiwan’s south last Saturday night, nurses working at Chiayi Christian Hospital  were enjoying bowls of soup they’d ordered from a nearby vegetarian restaurant named ‘Yuan Fu’ (緣馥素食).

Once the soup arrived the nurses tucked in. Unfortunately for them, about halfway through their meal this happened:

[Read the rest of this entry...]