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.

We left the sour taste of the experience permeate in our mouths for about a week before seeking out alternative vets in the area. After a bit of internet research we found another veterinary not too far off and headed down there one afternoon for a consult.

These guys were much more interested and told us all we had to do was bring Leela in before 12pm and they’d get her done that afternoon at a local veterinary hospital. They’d then keep her overnight for observation and we could pick her up the next morning.

Sounded perfect so we booked Leela in for surgery in a few days time.

Costwise we were looking at around $1500 TWD for dogs under 10kg and above 10kg, around $100 TWD per kg they are over.

Leela weighed in at 17kg so this amounted to $1500 + $700 for a total of $2200 TWD ($75 USD). Considering neutering usually cost over $100 AUD in Australia, I thought it was pretty reasonably priced.

We were also offered a blood test which from I gathered was to test if Leela was allergic to a certain type (types?) of anesthetic for an extra $1200 TWD ($41 USD), but figuring if she was allergic they’d find out anyway, opted not to do the test.

Prior to getting neutered Leela had an early dinner and then no breakfast. On the morning of operation day I took her for her usual morning walk and then headed down the vet shortly after they opened at 9:30am.

After paying the set price they herded Leela into one of their cages and that was it. Knowing she’d be spending the night there I made a deliberate attempt not to say goodbye or draw out me leaving.

Having had to walk Leela nightly for nearly a year that night I found myself a bit stumped on what to do and definitely the house felt that much more emptier.

Usually we’re restricted to eating out on weeknights at places within walking distance to our house so that we can knock off Leela’s evening walk and getting our dinner in the one go. Now with the freedom to eat anywhere it was all a bit overwhelming.

In any case, cycling down to a local nightmarket we usually wouldn’t bother walking to, we had a nice dinner and enjoyed a night relatively free of pet responsibilities (I imagine the feeling is akin to how parents feel the first time they hire a babysitter).

The next morning I went to pick Leela up and lifting her head up from her nap she seemed eager enough to go home. With no complications and a belly with some stitched, all in all the procedure was a success.

So that she didn’t lick or pick at her stitches we had to keep a collar on her, but rather than opt for one of those dorky plastic “lampshade” ones we instead bought an inflatable collar attachment from the local petstore (I’ll do a separate writeup on that at a later point).

Leela spent most of the rest of the day and the next sleeping it off and looking a bit depressed,

but after that she was pretty much back to her lively self:

We had to keep her on the leash though during walks to stop her running around and possibly bursting her stitches open, which became all the more challenging as the week wore on.

Then, a week and two days after the initial operation, it was back to the vet to get the stitched removed. This took a whole 10 seconds (no charge) and then we were good to go.

To get a dog neutered in Taiwan behaviour wise you’re looking at about a week of downtime and cost wise easily under a $100 USD. All in all well worth it for the piece of mind of not having to worry each time a horny looking male dog approaches her.

Thankfully with Leela being a stray whenever a dog looks like it wants to get frisky Leela starts to get aggressive (she thinks ‘hey babe wanna get it on?’ is an attack) so it hasn’t been a problem but still, there’s a hell of a lot of un-neutered male dogs in Taiwan (strays and pets) so if you own a female dog getting it neutered is pretty much compulsory.

If you’ve got any further questions on getting a dog neutered in Taiwan by all means leave a comment below and I’ll do my best to get back to you with an answer.

Despite my efforts, it still looked like a dirty beat up old coin… not exactly something you’d carry around for good luck – or put on display with our clean $2000 and $200 banknotes.

In the comments for that particular article, reader Jet suggested I try some Coke on the coin. As luck would have it, I had a 2L bottle of Coke sitting in the fridge that had reached the ‘there’s only a little bit left in here but it’s probably flat so nobody is ever going to drink it’ stage.

Figuring I had nothing to lose I poured it into a mug (about half a cups worth) and let it sit for a week.

Well, at least that was the plan, about one and a half weeks later my girlfriend informed me that my little experiment was ‘growing mold’. Although with the sugar content this should have been a given… but for some reason mold growing on Coke still surprised me.

Anyway, tipping the moldy coke down the sink I retrieved my $20 coin (secretly relieved the Coke hadn’t dissolved it away into nothing… or is that just teeth?) and gave it a look over.

Does Coke clean coins?

Here are the results:


Before Coke cleaning:


After Coke cleaning:

As you can see, there’s quite a noticeable difference in the after shot and while the coin isn’t as shiny as a newly minted coin, it’s more than passable for a lucky coin.

I suppose if I really cared I could investigate further chemical options but considering the expenditure would probably negate the $20 TWD value of the coin… not much point I figure.

Cheers for the suggestions guys and here’s to shiny lucky coins!

When we first found Leela in the mountains of Miaoli County she was small and cuddly and fitted nicely inside a bicycle pannier.

And then she grew…and grew… and grew.

At around 11kg I decided she was getting too big for my bicycle pannier and constructed a bucket DIY pannier for her that gave her a bit more room.

This worked well and allowed me to get on with the job with exploring Taiwan by bike.

Unfortunately for me, Leela continued to grow… and grow… and grow.

At around 15kg, it was obvious that whilst she still easily fitted into the bucket pannier, her body weight was having too much of an adverse effect on the handling of my Long Haul Trucker.

Despite being tightly and securely hooked to my rear rack, I could feel the back tire occasionally sliding around under her weight (700×37 tires) and the sway of so much weight on one side was beginning to ruin my rides.

Finally I got home the other weekend and after complaining to my ever-patient girlfriend about how I was sick and tired of having Leela ruin my ride quality the entire ride home, decided it was time to kick it up a notch and buy a bicycle trailer.

Knowing nothing about them I hit the internet to do some research. What I quickly found was that there’s pretty much no information online in English about bicycle trailers in Taiwan.

There’s a bunch of manufacturers, but as for actually buying them retail here… well that’s another story.

Most of the factories are down south as such you’ve got to head down to Kaohsiung and Taichung to look  at the trailers these guys make. With Taiwan being so small you’d think it’d be straightforward shipping some dealers your product but that’s not the case.

My girlfriend found that most people were ordering their bicycle trailers overseas (wtf?) but she eventually found one company that had a few distributors in Taipei, ChengYi – or AiBike as I believe they’re more commonly known as (?).

Calling up every distributor in Taipei we kept getting the same story, they were happy to order a trailer for us… but they didn’t have one we could look at first.

Having never used a bicycle trailer before or even seen one up close… I wasn’t prepared to buy a bicycle trailer blind. And mind you, at this point I didn’t even know what AiBike’s trailers looked like – let alone how they functioned.

I believe my girlfriend tracked these trailers down via text forums… and we didn’t find out the actual brand name until after we’d bought it and saw the warranty card.

As we made our way through the store list… it wasn’t until we called the last store in Danshui that after a few weeks of searching we finally got a break.

They had a trailer we could not only go and see… bu they were willing to give us a discount if we bought it.

Saddling up our bicycles we headed out and three or four hours later… were the owners of a new bicycle trailer (I’ll do a writeup on the store at a later date and link to it here incase anyone else is trying to track down a bicycle trailer and doesn’t live down south).

Pretty much upon arriving at the store I’d decided that if the trailer wasn’t total crap I was just going to buy it anyway. After two weeks of stuffing around and trying to find anyone who even sold a bicycle trailer and had viewable stock… whatever this store had was probably going to be good enough for me.

That said, we really scored a break and the ChengYi trailer was bigger then we’d hoped for and super light.

I’d read that the mechanism to secure the bicycle was super important and was more than happy to see a big beefy rubber-covered clamp that attaches to the left rear chainstay.

One of the things I wasn’t looking forward to was having to remove the rear axle everytime we went for a ride to explore (I don’t use quick-release).

With the trailer attaching to the chainstay, this potential hassle was completely avoided and the trailer can be attached and re-attached within minutes.

Tire wise you’ve got 20″ wheels on there which functionally appear to the be the same as your basic foldable bike wheels. The stock tires seem good enough for now but when they wear I’ll replace them with the widest and most bulletproof tires I can fit.

As for storage, the trailer is easily folds down upon removal of three clamped pins:

Once collapsed, being super light the trailer is easy to carry around and store.

All in all we only paid $4500 TWD for the trailer and I couldn’t be happier. I’ll do a future writeup on how the trailer handles and some other stuff as this is all new to me and I’m still getting used to riding around with a trailer.

I’ve lost count of the times my heart has stopped as I’ve sailed through a gap only to realise I’ve got a wide trailer behind me that’s probably going to get snagged and send me flying – thankfully that hasn’t happened yet!

Leela is also adjusting to the trailer too but seems happy enough:

You’ll have to excuse the pink towel thing. It’s the only “rag” we don’t mind getting trashed and stinking like dog as neither of us use it. It does tend to fuel the “wow that dog is so lucky” and “princess dog!” comments we keep getting though, so might have to do something about that at some point.

Expecting to pay $7000+ TWD, the ChengYi AiBike trailer is pretty much a steal at $4500. Highly recommended.

A search-engine works by cataloguing content available on the internet by third-party publishers.

Some of those third-party publishers may indeed by subsidiary companies of the search-engine itself, but by and large the content is produced and hosted by publishers and web-hosting companies that have nothing to do with the search-engine company indexing the material for their search-engine results.

This process is largely automated through the use of web-crawler bots and ever-increasingly technologically proficient search result algorithms. All serving one single purpose: To give you, as the end-user, the most relevant and useful search-results possible.

Like a phone book, or a street directory, search-engines are hardly responsible for the content they index. It’s not like they’re creating it or publishing it, they merely catalogue it so that if others are searching for the material, they might better find it.

At least that’s what common sense would dictate.

Today the Victorian Supreme Court disagreed, holding Yahoo liable for cataloguing a website in its search-results to the tune of $225,000 AUD ($235,000 USD).

The landmark case between Michael Trkulja and Yahoo centered over Yahoo’s search results displaying a link to the now-defunct website, ‘Melbourne Crime: A journey into the Melbourne Underworld’.

This website in turn had a page on it that reprinted a Herald Sun (a local Victorian newspaper) article on a shooting involving Trkulja.

This article is still online and published ‘as is’ by the Herald Sun, dated November 20th, 2007.

To put things into perspective here, the Herald Sun published a news story about a shooting involving a hitman and a website about crime in Melbourne reproduced said article on their own website. Yahoo, a search-engine provider who catalogues content on the internet then indexed the ‘Melbourne Underworld’ site and Trkulja then sued Yahoo for publication of the offending material.

Neither the Herald Sun nor the owners and operators of the Melbourne Underworld website had legal action taken against them.

In his lawsuit, Trkulja pleaded three imputations (statements attributing something dishonest):

• the plaintiff is a criminal
• the plaintiff was so involved with crime in Melbourne that his rivals had hired a hit man to murder him
• the plaintiff is such a significant figure in the Melbourne criminal underworld that events involving him are recorded on a Web site that chronicles crime in Melbourne.

In a catastrophically stupid move, Yahoo

pleaded that, subject to the plaintiff establishing at trial that any person had downloaded and read the matter using the Yahoo! 7 internet search engine, they admitted that they published the matter to such person.

In order to establish that ‘any person had downloaded and read the matter’ on Yahoo, Trkulja simply supplied two witnesses who testified as such.

Thus accepting liability for entire publication of an article that was hosted on a website that had nothing to do with Yahoo, that in turn merely reproduced a newspaper article, the matter then turned to the three imputations listed above.

The jury rejected the first imputation because they were ‘not satisfied that the material conveyed‘ that Trkulja was a criminal.

They were however convinced that the second and third imputations held merit. That being the implication that Trkulja ‘was so involved with crime in Melbourne that his rivals had hired a hit man to murder him‘ and that he ’is such a significant figure in the Melbourne criminal underworld, that events involving him are recorded on a web site that chronicles crime in Melbourne‘.

Despite not having authored, published or hosted the material themselves, Yahoo was today ordered to compensate Trkulja $225,000 in damages.

A decision that will no doubt have far-reaching effects on how search-engines operate in Australia.

What Yahoo’s lawyers were doing I have no idea but accepting publication of an article they indexed on their search engine? Has Justice Stephen Kaye or Yahoo’s lawyers even ever used a search-engine before?!

The original article by the Herald Sun describes the 2004 shooting incident involving Trkulja (alias Milorad Trkulja) as follows;

Former music promoter Michael Trkulja was shot in the back by a hitman wearing a balaclava while dining at a St Albans restaurant in June 2004.

A Victoria Police document reveals detectives dropped the investigation because of a lack of evidence.

But Mr Trkulja, 58, claims he now knows the identity of the hitman and those who hired him.

He says he has passed the names to police.

“He (the hitman) was offered $10,000 to kill me. I know who sent him and they know that I know who they are,” Mr Trkulja told the Herald Sun.

Is it really such a stretch to suggest that $10,000 hired hitmen has something to do with Melbourne’s criminal underworld?

Especially when you consider that the same Herald sun also named Trkulja as ‘an associate of Mick Gatto‘ in 2010.

Who’s Mick Gatto you ask?

Domenic “Mick” Gatto (born 6 August 1955) is an Italian-Australian criminal and is known for his involvement in the Melbourne underworld.

Yet somehow cataloguing a website for a search-engine that merely reproduced a news article on an apparent assassination attempt on an associate of Mick Gatto, prominent member of the Melbourne underworld, involving hitmen and $10,000 bounties is defamation…

Again, I have absolutely no idea what Yahoo’s lawyers Allens Arthur Robinson were doing, but I can only surmise that they must have been asleep at the wheel.

Otherwise if anyone can explain to me how a search-engine is liable for indexing a third-party website (and a snippet of the website at that), that merely reproduced a news article published by yet another third-party, I’m all ears.

Looking forward, it’s noted that Trkulja is also suing Google for indexing the ‘Melbourne Underworld’ in their own search results. No doubt Google will be analysing today’s Melbourne Supreme Court ruling quite closely as they’ll have to defend themselves on the same allegations Yahoo failed to defend themselves against.

The Trkulja vs. Google case is set to kick-off in early June of this year.

Personally if I was running a search engine that was accessible in Australia I’d be seriously considering pulling out of the market until this nonsense was cleared up. I’m not sure whether Yahoo can appeal today’s decision but you’d want to hope that they are able to that they do.

And this time y’know, actually play the role of a search-engine rather than publisher of material they never published, authored or hosted?

The scenario as it stands now means that anybody can approach a search-engine available in Australia and demand that material they think is defamatory be removed.

Trkulja himself attempted this when he got in touch with Yahoo in late 2009 and ‘demand(ed) (inter alia) that the defendants (Yahoo) immediately remove all copies of the material from their search engine’.

Standard operating procedure for search-engines is to protect the integrity of their search-results and refuse to remove anything without a court-order against the allegedly defamatory material (not the search-results themselves).

The defendants responded by a letter dated 3 December 2009, stating that they did not accept responsibility for the images, which, by being linked through an algorithmic search, appeared on the Yahoo! 7 search engine.

The defendants suggested that the plaintiff should contact the operators of the Melbourne Crime web site directly, in order to have the material removed.

After the content is removed, typically within a few months (worst case scenario) the content is removed automatically from search-engine results as it no longer exists.

Furious at this response and alleging that ‘the material could have been easily eliminated from the defendants’ search engine by using a device known as an “abuse filter”‘ (whatever that is), Trkulja then went after Yahoo themselves and here we are.

An Australian Supreme Court decided to hold a search-engine liable for content they never published, authored or hosted. God forbid what appears in search-results are now dictated to Australian internet users by self-appointed defamation police.

If search-engines operating in Australia simply decide it’s easier to deindex material anyone complains about, then what? Even Stephen Conroy’s once proposed internet filter never held that much censorship power.

Words simply fail me when I try to further elaborate on the utter stupidity and technological ignorance evident in today’s decision.

The entire judgement against Yahoo can be viewewd over at the Victorian Supreme Court website.

Small things that flap around and move erratically irk me but after getting used to him and his antics, Hank became a welcome addition to my daily writing routine.

Perched on my shoulder for most of the day seeing over my daily writing efforts (when he wasn’t nipping my ear because I wasn’t paying attention to him, or bullying the other animals of the house around), I’d become quite familiar and attached to Hank.

Sadly, a few weeks ago we came home after a day-long riding outing only to return and find Hank dead.

My girlfriend had just had a shower and was drying her hair in the bedroom. I can’t remember exactly why but I’d gone into the bedroom and in one of those weird moments it struck me that Hank wasn’t making his usual ‘HEY GUYS, YOU LEFT ME IN HERE ALL DAY OMG LET ME OUT ALREADY’ ruckus.

Looking at his cage my heart sunk when I couldn’t see him, and walking closer I already knew something was wrong and as the floor of the cage entered my visual horizon – it became apparent Hank was on the floor of his cage on his side with his eyes closed.

I’m not sure when he died or exactly why, but I think it might have had something to do with his food. We initially thought maybe it was stress from Chinese New Year fireworks but they’d never really seemed to bother him too much so it was a weak theory.

Hank’s food had been changed earlier that week to another brand (the cheap emergency food my girlfriend had brought Hank home with had run out), and I’m thinking it was that.

Cloud (our cat) had long since given up annoying Hank and he didn’t appear to be injured, nor had the cage moved or disturbed (that and it’s out of Cloud’s reach) so short of it having something to do with the food, I’m at a loss to explain what happened.

Found in a park in Ximen, I guess one of the drawbacks of taking in stray or abandoned animals is that you never really know their history or what they went through before you found them.

I’d like to think in the months we had Hank we gave him a good run. We buried Hank the next day in a garden at the foot of the mountains leading up to Linkou Township, just west of Taipei.

I’m kind of missing his daily antics and pint-sized dominant personality around the house…

The above photo was taken a few weeks before he died, after I’d just installed a nice new shiny toy for him to bite and play with.

Naturally of far more interest than the toy itself was the twine and tape I’d used to fasten the toy to his cage, so Hank spent the next few hours defending his cage from the large wooden invader I’d introduced into “his” territory.

Eventually he got over it and learnt to ring the bell when he wanted attention (“I DEMAND YOU LET ME OUT NOW!”) or furiously flap his wings to assert his dominance over the inanimate cubes of wood he also liked to gnaw on.

With Hank’s cage now empty the thought of getting another budgie has crossed my mind, although I probably should read up some more on budgie care if I’m going to try to bring a new baby budgie into the house.

I do miss Hank but part of me is kind of relieved my there’s not a constant supply of bird dropping being deposited all around my work area… that and his sudden death has left me a bit wary about how quickly you can lose a feathered friend.

Not to mention the complete lack of pet care that seems to exist for birds in Taiwan. Our regular vet doesn’t do birds, nor know of where to get them checked up.

In any case, here’s to you Hank – I hope you’re flying free.

One of the most difficult decisions I knew I had to make before moving Taiwan was what to do with my pets.

With a heavy heart I decided to give my goldfish to the pet store I frequented in the hope they’d find a new home in someone elses aquarium. I don’t know if that eventuated but I’d like to think I gave them as good a chance as any at being rehomed.

My cat Cloud was a much more delicate matter. I’d picked him out as a kitten five years prior and for his entire life I’d been all he’d known. People had come and gone but I was his constant. Both of us knew eachother’s entire behavioural spectrum and both of us had been through whatever the last five years had thrown at us together.

Giving him up was simply not an option.

The possibility of bringing him with me was always there but moving to a strange new country I decided against initially bringing Cloud over because the reality was that I didn’t know entirely what life would be like here, or where I’d initially wind up.

The last thing I wanted was to have to face uncertainty whilst trying to lug a cat around a country I myself was learning to navigate.

In the end I gave myself a six month timetable to settle down into a routine and create a stable enough environment to introduce Cloud into. In the meantime he was to temporarily stay at my mum’s, where the two cats there would hopefully stave off any anxiety he had about me leaving.

At least that was the plan. Two days after I left Australia, Cloud went missing.

What’s worse is that I only found out on Christmas eve. Wholly distracted by the experiences of life in a new country over the first few weeks of being here I hadn’t thought to ask about Cloud since I’d left.

And when I did… that’s when I found out he’d gone missing. My mother had sought to keep this from me for the time being as she figured I’d probably have enough on my plate without worrying about Cloud having gone missing.

That in itself was fair enough, but the weeks turned into months and gradually I came to accept that Cloud was gone.

Having moved on with my life and made peace with Cloud’s disappearance… it was roughly ten months later that I got a phonecall informing me he’d been found.

A woman who had been caring for Cloud had brought him into a vet and upon scanning his microchip, contacted my mother wondering why her name was on the chip of this lady’s cat.

Long story short, I then had to make the call on whether we left Cloud in the care of this woman or, although delayed, fell back on my original plan to eventually bring him to Taiwan.

Somewhat feeling like I’d already let him down, mixed with some of my own selfishness at the thought of other people looking after him, I decided to stick to my original plan and have him brought here.

For anyone else wondering what the rough process is or the costs involved with bringing a pet to Taiwan, having gone through the experience myself, today I thought I’d share my experience.

First and foremost the process of importing a pet into Taiwan can be broken down into four components:

• preparing your pet for travel
• arranging travel for your pet
• collecting your pet at the airport
• post-arrival checkups

Preparing your pet for travel to Taiwan

Depending on where you’re bringing your pet from, I’d strongly suggest directly contacting Taiwan’s Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine.

Although they have a website in English, it might be best to get someone to contact them in Chinese rather than rely on whoever you get on the line to give you accurate information in English.

Despite contacting the Bureau in Chinese initially, we still got two different answers in contrast to the information on the Bureau’s website when we contacted them on two different occasions for clarification on various things.

Coming from Australia, the main things I had to worry about were getting Rabies and Hendra vaccinations done.

Even though Taiwan and Australia are both officially rabies-free countries, vaccination was still required.

Hendra virus testing was a pain in the arse in that your cat gets the shot, and then has to be tested twice with a duration of at least 21 days between both testings. Oh and during this time the cat has to be quarantined between Hendra tests, although we were able to do this quarantining at my mum’s house.

Naturally all of this has to be signed off on with a vet certificate and general check by an accredited vet for the export of animals (which in Australia is a vet certified by Australian Quarantine and Inspection Services (AQIS)).

I’m not entirely sure if the cat needs to be neutered too, but Cloud was already neutered so it wasn’t a problem. I do note that all the official documentation regarding his health and shots mentions the fact he is neutered.

Finally I believe a microchip is required too. This is so that the cat can be tracked when it leaves and again when it arrives. Also it is used to identify the cat during post-arrival check ups.

Arranging travel for your pet

Once you have all the health stuff sorted and receive your certifications you can then apply for an import permit from the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine (BAPHIQ).

I’m not entirely sure what the process is for this but I believe my vet in Australia got in touch with BAPHIQ and after providing the relevant documentation obtained a permit.

The permit we were given was valid for two weeks and it was up to us to organise transport during this period.

We went with EVA Cargo and although the booking side of things was once again handled by my vet, on my end I had no problems dealing with EVA.

Transport wise your pet will need to be put into an airline approved crate, which for us this blue and white crate (seen here being used by us at one of Taipei’s MRT stations):

Despite my vet writing ‘Please water me!’ on the crate, when Cloud arrived the water bowl attached to the crate door was dry. Thankfully Australia isn’t too far but if your pet is coming from a great distance I’m not too sure what the rules and regulations are on water and/or food.

All documentation must be secured to the crate too, my vet did this with strong packing tape and a plastic folder. There’s a lot of it so make sure you’ve included everything and it’s secure.

I also believe a copy is handed to the airline when you drop off your pet at the airport.

Collecting your pet at the airport

We opted to pick up Cloud from Taoyuan International Airport. Although BAPHIQ have offices in Keelung, Hsinchu, Taichung and Kaohsiung – we figured it’d be easier to just go and get Cloud ourselves straight from the airport and avoid any additional quarantine/transport fees.

I also believe if you opt to pick up your pet from one of BAPHIQ’s offices you yourself are responsible for feeding it, meaning you have to do so on BAPHIQ’s (if the office is closed they won’t let you in).

Coming from Australia Cloud didn’t need to be quarantined upon arrival so picking him up was pretty straight forward (although admittedly I was nervous about the paperwork). Armed with copies of everything the vet had faxed me beforehand, we rocked up to Taoyuan airport.

The cargo area is separate from the passenger terminals and for EVA it wound up being off to the side of this large green building:

The above photo is looking at the green cargo building from the front. To get to the EVA cargo area head to the right side of the building:

and once you turn the corner of the main building you should see the EVA Cargo area:

As you head towards it with any luck the plane carrying your pet will have already landed:

The guys at the EVA cargo depo don’t speak any English but even with Chinese there was a bit of initial confusion as to what happened next. We showed them our documentation (mainly the permit) and they redirected us up to EVA’s cargo office (which is physically located in the big green building just a short walk away).

The cargo office initially sent us back down again telling us to collect something from the cargo workers. They sent us back up again and we waited whilst the cargo office worker called them up.

I’m still not sure what the problem was (I think it was that the cat hadn’t been processed yet) but we had to wait upstairs in the office till some paperwork was faxed up from the cargo workers.

When that was done we were handed some more paperwork which we then had to take down to the cargo workers and show them.

Happy with whatever was on the paperwork the cargo workers told us to wait and after about twenty minutes I caught my first glimpse of Cloud’s blue and white crate.

This was pretty emotional for me as it’d been now over a year since I saw him last, not withstanding the fact that I’d thought he’d been dead for ten months.

My glimpse of Cloud’s crate (and hearing a few meows) was only brisk though as he was hauled off for a vet check by one of the quarantine staff. Another one of the staff (customs?) took us away up to the customs office where we spend the next hour and a half or so signing all sorts of paperwork and running around different sub-departments within customs.

Again, English was pretty lacking here and I really had no idea what all the different forms I was signing were for. At times the customs office felt like the set of a 70s sitcom…

The final process was pretty much  be led by some guy to this office, sign some papers, wait, go to the cashier, pay some money, get led to some other place, sign more papers, wait, go back to the cashier, pay more money, go somewhere else, get more papers, go back to the cashier, etc. for a good nearly two hours.

The thought that we were just paying a whole bunch of bribes to different departments did cross my mind but we did get receipts for everything so I suppose it was all official.

All up I think the Taoyuan Airports Customs office charges wound up being close to $3000 TWD ($100 USD).

Finally, once all the paper work was done the guy who’d been leading us around picked up a microchip scanner and went off somewhere. About twenty minutes later he returned and we were led down back to the EVA cargo area.

Five or so minutes later one of the cargo staff walked up carrying Cloud’s crate, handed it to me and we were free to go.

After fifteen months of being separated I opened Cloud’s cage and gave him a big hug. I’m not usually an emotional person but that was one of the happiest moments of my life here in Taiwan.

Riding my scooter home with a big smile on my face… despite the massive hit to my wallet importing Cloud to Taiwan had made,

waking up the next morning to the sight of Cloud sitting on the couch reassured me that it had definitely been worthwhile.

Post arrival checkups

As Cloud began to settle into his life in Taiwan, the only thing left as far as the authorities were concerned were two scheduled visits by someone from BAPHIQ to check up on Cloud.

These visits were scheduled roughly a month after Cloud’s arrival date with a few months between the two visits. There was no charge to myself for the visits.

The first visit I believe all the guy really did was check Cloud’s microchip and tick off some boxes on the paperwork he’d brought along.

The second woman who visited actually gave Cloud a quick look over and again after confirming his microchip number was satisfied.

Since then it’s been smooth sailing and we haven’t had any problems.

The total cost of importing a pet into Taiwan

All in all the vaccinations set me back just under $700 (with Hendra being the most costly), the flight to Taiwan was about $1000 and the customs fees at Taoyuan were roughly $100.

Once I’d paid the vet’s fees I think we came to a grand total of just under $60,000 TWD ($2000 USD).

Not exactly chump change for a domestic short hair cat of nondescript pedigree, but being attached to the animals we keep sometimes leads to irrational behaviour.

Although I’m somewhat loathe to admit it, having had Cloud since a baby I’d have easily spent double that to keep him by my side.

So there you have it, that’s the story of how I imported my cat into Taiwan. Although I can’t specifically comment on the different import/quarantine requirements for countries other than Australia with any degree of authority, if you yourself are looking at bringing in a cat or dog, feel free to leave a comment below if there’s something you need more clarification on.

To be honest I found the whole process quite daunting and know how you feel. Thankfully my vet was happy to handle most of the paperwork from within Australia and all I had to do was front up the money to get it done.

Regarding getting a professional service to handle the whole affair, we found most places were charging in excess of $2000 AUD and even then, once the pet left Australia we ourselves were going to be entirely responsible for collecting it.

Ultimately this meant there wasn’t much of an advantage in going for a professional pet transport service as we’d have to handle everything once Cloud arrived anyway.

Definitely shop around and get some quotes though, personally however if you can find a good vet who’s willing to handle things this should work out cheaper for you in the long run and having gone through the process myself I’d happily recommend it.

The annual Taiwandeful Taiwan Blog Awards are on again this year and voting has opened today.

OzSoapbox is up for the Central Taiwan and General categories so let’s see how I go this year. Last year I ranked 11th overall so I’m curious to see if there’s any change.

Like last year at the conclusion of the 2011 blog awards I’ll be reviewing the winners blogs and doing a writeup.

You can vote once per 24 hours from the same IP address and voting runs from today till December 30th, 2011. All you have to do is visit the OzSoapbox Taiwanderful page and click the little + icon below the voting number (example button on the right there).

Cheers for any votes thrown my way and thanks for reading and sharing my adventures through Taiwan.

When we found Leela the in the mountains of Miaoli County, one of the things I knew I had to accept was that sooner or later she was going to grow too large for my regular Deuter Rack Pack bicycle panniers.

Enjoying her time as a small puppy being carted around in one of my pannier bags, once Leela hit about 10kg or so last month sure enough I had to make the difficult decision to start leaving Leela at home.

After a few trips without our dog I realised that I had to come up with a solution to carry her. I was willing to invest in a dog trailer if need be, but having a Surly Long Haul Trucker, a touring bike designed for carrying heavy loads, a figured there must be some way to carry her along.

My first attempt at a medium-sized dog pannier involved a lot of chain and one of those metal baskets you use to hang garden pots off a balcony railing or some such.

The idea here was that the metal frame would be strong enough to carry the dog and the chain adequate enough to tie the basket to the rear rack.

Unfortunately upon rigging up the basket I soon realised that it was just too long in design to offer a stable platform for Leela to sit or lie down on. The metal frame was having trouble coping with her 11kg body weight and as such was bending towards the rear. The chain offered little support here due to the basket running past the length of the rear rack by a good 5-6 inches or so.

Additionally having the weight so high up resulted in quite a wobbly ride and the bike was nowhere near stable being wheeled around.

I realised that a ‘flat’ design wasn’t going to work and I had to go for a much deeper basket. Wanting to stick with metal for strength, I searched high and low for a deep metal basket but couldn’t find anything. At least nothing strong enough to withstand carting 10+ kg of dog around.

Giving up on a metal basket I decided to see what I could find in plastic and that first led me to laundry baskets. Plastic laundry baskets were the perfect size and depth for the dog pannier project but unfortunately being for laundry, every basket we found had holes in the exterior making the walls of the basket way too weak.

Any attempt at rigging up one of these baskets to the rear rack and placing Leela inside would inevitably lead to a collapse in the basket wall.

Kitchen bins were also another idea but again the ones we found were not designed to carry weight and had ridiculously thin walls that would also no doubt buckle.

Searching high and low, eventually I stumbled across a perfectly sized plastic tub that felt sturdy enough to carry some weight. It’s a storage tub and set me back around $350 TWD ($11.50 USD)  from Carrefour.

Already having a rear rack compatible with hooks, I hit up Hola hardware store and purchased two hooks along with a T-shaped metal bracket. I felt uneasy about a screw not digging into the plastic and over time slowly enlarging the hole it made in the wall of the tub until the wall cracked under pressure.

The T bracket I felt would take some of the load off the tub wall and prevent the hole in the plastic from cracking or growing.

I didn’t have access to a drill so but thankfully the screws the hooks came with were pointed so I just patiently turned them in with a screw driver until they’d punctured a hole through the tub wall.

Note that before you puncture the sidewall get on your bike and have someone hold up the basket along the rear rack where you want the tub to sit. This is to make sure you have adequate heel clearance when riding.

I decided not to use the pointy screws included with the hooks and instead opted to use 3/16″ x 1/2″ bolts with nuts to secure the basket. The bolts were thicker than the screws and had a flat end. I didn’t like the idea of pointy bits of the hook screws sticking out of the tub.

I had to slightly enlarge the hole with the screwdriver to fit the bolts, but after that they slid easily through.

I used the T brackets on the inside as the base of the hooks themselves acted like a washer on the outside of the basket.

I suppose if you want you could saw off the excess in the hooks for a cleaner design, but I don’t have access to a saw so I just left them as is.

I’ll also mention the design of the hooks themselves. On the rear I used just a standard one prong hook, but for the front I found this nifty two prong hook.

If you place the rack bar between the two prongs of the hook as shown, you can stop the basket sliding back along the rack railing.

Mind you, I’ve tested the tub with the two hooks towards the rear of the rack bar and noted that the tub only slightly inched it’s way back. I have my Kryptonite ‘Fahgettaboudit’ lock strapped to the front of my rack and this provided adequate pressure on the top of the hooks so that they didn’t slide around.

Finally, the last part of the design was a stabilizer around the bottom of the basket to stop it swinging around and/or lifting as I took turns.

The hooks I’ve used are quite ‘open’ in design and whilst they do securely fit the tub to the rear rack, they aren’t as secure as proper pannier hooks on my Deuter panniers. As such there’s plenty of swing movement to be found.

To secure the bottom of the tub I used a simple elasticated flat strap with hooks on either end.

Clipping the hooks onto the rear rack was resulted in adequate enough tension in the strap to keep the tub in place and stop it from rattling around.

The end result?

One very happy 12kg medium-sized dog who can now rejoin me on my travels around Taiwan.

Handling wise due to the deep design of the tub and the fact that it sits low like a pannier, I haven’t had any wobbling or steering trouble.

Even with a much lighter load on the otherside of the rack there aren’t any weight problems and the bike is quite steady to ride, even when coming to a stop at traffic lights and hopping off the seat to stand.

Wheeling the bike with the tub is a bit risky as it’s quite easy to lose the rear wheel if you turn the bike too far in either direction. As such when we stop I simply stop the bike and hop off my seat. After the girlfriend has lifted Leela out of the tub I then swing my leg over to dismount.

This system has thus far worked well and I’m happy to report there was no troubles on the recent 150km test ride we took to the Old Caoling Bikeway and back.

The pannier exceeded my expectations and performed brilliantly.

Luckily for us Leela has pretty much stopped growing and apart from putting on a bit of weight and filling out her frame I don’t see her outgrowing this set up. Weight wise the tub is quite sturdy and I think dogs up to 15kg shouldn’t be a problem. Anything over that and it might be worth thinking about adding an extra hook along the top to help distribute the weight more.

There is notably no rain protection with this setup, although the tub did come with a cover with a small square cut out of it. I suppose I could enlarge the square so that Leela’s head would stick out, but ultimately she’s still going to get wet.

I guess if it did start to bucket down we’d just have to pull over and wait it out. These days I don’t really carry my rain gear around so it’s not too much of a concern.

Total cost for the dog carrying tub setup is as follows;

• Tub – $350 TWD ($11.60 USD)
• Bolts – $30 TWD ($1 USD)
• T brackets (came as a pair) – $50 TWD ($1.65 USD)
• Flat strap – $150 TWD ($5 USD)
• Hooks (2) – $100 TWD each ($6.60 USD total)


Total: $25.85


Considering I was looking at trailers coming in at a few hundred USD… I think this solution was quite economic.

As a final note I’ll mention that this set up isn’t going to work on just any bike. For starters heel clearance is going to be an issue on smaller frames. The Long Haul Trucker has long rear chainstays so it wasn’t an issue for me.

Additionally the Trucker is built from steel and being a touring bike, is built for hauling around heavy loads like this whilst still providing the rider a steady ride to get around on.

If you have any handling issues with a single loaded pannier (load it up past 10kg to check) on your bike, this tub probably won’t work too well on your bike and will compromise the ride quality.

Here’s a roadtest video of the dog pannier in action;


If you’ve got any questions about the design or parts used, feel free to leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you.

Happy riding!

‘I’ve got something to show you’ she said, ‘it’s a bird I found’.

My eyebrows went up as I expected her to pull out some dying roadkill she’d plucked from the streets of Taiwan.

I love animals but bloody messes of feathers hanging on for dear life just isn’t my thing.

Then as she slowly opened the box, much to my surprise, this little fella jumped out;

Meet Hank.

Rescued walking along the ground at a park in Ximen, Hank appears to be the lost pet of someone. My girlfriend thoroughly checked around for an owner but couldn’t see one.

Meanwhile Hank took quite readily to following her around and was quite tame, hopping up onto her shoulder and not afraid of perching on her finger.

If she walked away he’d walk behind her and then try to fly up onto her shoulder.

Getting dark, she figured he was either going to get eaten or run over if she left him there so decided to bring him home.

He’s quite a handsome bird and has a pretty feather color scheme going on.

I only ever had a pair of budgie growing up years ago and that was a brief stint, lasting barely a month before the pair mysteriously died in their cage.

As such we thought about finding Hank a home (not hard to do) but he’s kind of grown on us since then. We haven’t spotted any ‘missing’ posters in Ximen so figure we’re probably not going to find the original owner either.

Hank’s turned out to be quite a chatty little fellow, especially first thing in the morning when the sun comes up and he’s sitting in his cage.

We drape a towel on the cage overnight but he still chirps away to wake us up.

During the day Hank spends his day perched on my shoulder as I write, chattering away. He’s a great conversationist and can seemingly keep himself entertained by chattering away for hours.

Leela seems to have taken a shine to Hank too, although perhaps that should be the other way around. It usually starts with Leela minding her own business and Hank flying over to annoy her;

This can lead to Leela looking quite nervous at times, which is pretty amusing.

Completely unphased however by the fact he’s annoying an animal fifty times his size and whose natural instinct is to gobble him up, Hank then proceeds to groom Leela with his beak.

Leela being the trooper she is just sits there calmly and lets him get on with the job.

Sometime’s though, Hanks antics can get a little tiring;

But usually Leela seems pretty happy about it

And once Hank’s done, a quick thankyou kiss…

…and the two of them go back to watching tv together.

…of course they’re always under the evil eye of Cloud.

Cloud I believe just sees Hank as a moving toy and at first couldn’t wait to catch him. Over time he seems to have mellowed out but I still wouldn’t trust them alone in a room together.

A dog, a cat and now a bird. I think I’m getting ready to give Taipei Zoo a serious run for their money here.


Update 20th February 2012 – Unfortunately Hank passed away in late January. We’re not sure entirely why but believe it might have been something to do with his new food.

Largely closed off to the internet population at large (for now, the web is still dominated by English), these countries tend to evolve a unique internet culture of their own.

Looking at blogging in particular, in Taiwan if you’ve got a vagina, can write reasonably well, pull off the Hello Kitty look that appeals to the masses of lonely males on the island but at the same time aren’t too pretty to evoke jealousy in Taiwan’s women, and know how to start a blog… there’s a very lucrative market out there for you in the form of paid-per-post advertising.

But… as with all things solidly built on deception and the shallowness of an evaporated puddle, if Taiwan’s Legislative Economic Committee has its way – perhaps not for much longer.

Employing primarily females who would otherwise no doubt be flogging betelnut from roadside aquariums, paid-per-post blogging is where an advertiser partners with a blogger and gets them to praise the product for cash.

Get enough readers and companies on board, and a blogger can earn enough money to quit their day job. Hell, the whoriest most succesful bloggers who do this actually make quite a decent living out of it.

‘But why on Earth would anyone want to read a bunch of paid for marketing crap?’ I hear you ask…

Well, in a similar way to how betelnut is marketed, these girls almost universally are halfway attractive and aren’t afraid to show a bit of skin, albeit much more subtly then their oft sluttishly dressed betelnut selling counterparts.

This sex appeal is usually delivered by means of photo or video footage and if the blog owner publishes frequently (which all the succesful ones do), they appeal to that ‘I like eye candy’ instinct of guys which in turn leads to online popularity and a following.

This creates fans and celebrity culture which then equates to real world dollars via authority and financial partnerships with companies looking to flog their products.

Pretty much you’ve got both female and male demographics covered right there. Guys stare at the pictures and fantasize, and women rush out to buy the products featured. To say that this relationship works particularly well in Taiwan’s at times rampant consumerist society is an understatement.

Some of these bloggers make a reported $50,000-$100,000 TWD (per article written. I think part of the success model is due to the largely celebrity orientated advertising model used here.

Venture out into the streets of Taiwan and you’re instantly bombarded with cut outs of Taiwanese celebrities flogging everything you can think of. 99.9% these ads are nothing more than someone holding a product with a smile but their sheer persistency and frequency.

It’s not uncommon to walk down a street and see the same celebrity four or five times on massive billboards infront of completely unrelated shops flogging completely different products and brands.

Combine that with the internet, some racy photos and an appeal to the cute… and you might just be Taiwan’s next biggest paid-per-post blogger.

So what’s wrong with all this? Bloggers make money, people read and enjoy the pretty girls content and companies sell products.

Well, nothing would be wrong with it… if it wasn’t most of the time just a giant scam.

To illustrate the inner works of these sham paid-per-post blogs, I’ll share with you an example I first read about over at My Kafkaesque Life earlier this year.

‘HoneyQueen’ (林哈妮) had enough fans such that when she promoted a company or product, ‘her readers would flood the shop or store she would write about‘.

This is naturally a wet dream come true to companies looking to hire blog whores and as such it’s estimated that HoneyQueen (on the right there pulling ‘duckface’) was bringing in around $30,000 TWD ($1000 USD) an article.

With thousands of readers and fans, companies lining up to get their products featured on her blog and thousands of dollars to be made – it all came apart when HoneyQueen was exposed to be a fraud.

(HoneyQueen) wrote a product review about a skin care product that supposedly removes pimples and she posted before and after photos.

But one of her readers found out that she used a makeup foundation in her after photo to cover the pimple for the (nonexistent) effect.

HoneyQueen claimed the before and after photos were 4 days apart, but the data proves that she first put make up on and took a photo and later used it as the after photo.

Then she gradually removed the make up from the pimple and took more photos, which she used for the before photos.

All photos were taken within few minutes.


An innocent once off mistake? Not likely!

people started to check her older reviews and found out that she’s done similar things in the past.


Here was a blogger earning a considerable amount of money to write bullshit reviews that duped the thousands of readers who followed her blog.

Given the sort of money we’re talking here, you’d have to be incredibly naive to think this fraud wasn’t going on at a major level amongst Taiwan’s more popular paid-per-post bloggers.

Infact, so out of control has the deception of bloggers whoring out faked paid reviews that the government has decided to step in.

An amendment to Article 21 of the Fair Trade Act, approved by the Legislature’s Economic Committee, includes recommendations by bloggers in the law’s definition of advertisements.

Under the amendment, bloggers who offer baseless recommendations will also be held liable, as advertisers who put out false advertisements already are.


Facing fines ‘capped at 10 times of the amounts they are paid’, the obvious question is ‘how is this going to be policed?’

I mean, in the case of HoneyQueen she was exposed by a reader… and even then that was only after years of writing fraud reviews for cash. Is the government seriously expecting police to patrol Taiwan’s blogs and search out fraudulent reviewers?

This is where my dilemma over the Taiwanese government’s decision resides. Make no mistake, I think these whores (female and male bloggers) are the scourge of the blogging world and are nothing more than scam artists that should be held accountable.

If money is paid for a review, it ceases to be a review and is instead an advertisement. Advertisements are already held up to scrutiny and advertising laws so why should misleading ‘girl next door’ reviews on the internet be any different?

But then it comes down to ‘well what are you going to about it?’ The problem is obviously large enough to warrant policing of the issue (although part of me wonders if whether or not these bloggers are or aren’t paying tax has motivated the government), policing individual reviews is a logistical nightmare.

Ultimately I think that if the public at large are stupid enough to believe these blogging shamsters, anything intervention by the government isn’t really going to achieve much.

As entertaining as it was to read about HoneyQueen being caught out (who doesn’t like a good scandal?), perhaps therein lies the answer. These scammers rely on trust and authority to perpetuate their lies, and quite honestly these paid whores deserve neither.

Expose their lies and you effectively kill off their business model.

Then again, despite HoneyQueen’s fraud getting nationwide media coverage, all it took was an apology published on her blog (now removed) plus a short hiatus and it wasn’t long before she went right back to publishing her paid-per-post garbage.

And evidently HoneyQueen’s blog is still wildly popular with her readers…

Not being familiar with dogs and worms, we took Leela to the vet and he ended up giving us two bags of medication.

When we got home, I had a look at one of the bags and started to scratch my head;

‘Front feeding’? Well duh, how else am I going to feed a dog?

It wasn’t until I looked at the second bag that I realised what the vet meant…

Not a bad attempt I guess… and better than Chinese which I wouldn’t have been able to make heads or tails of.

Thankfully Leela’s worms seem to be all but behind her now and apart from growing too big to fit in my bicycle pannier (meaning she has to stay at home when we go riding which is sad), things seem to be going well.

For those of you who read about the original rescue, here’s some photos of Leela I took recently at age approximately 6 months;

She was 2kg or so when we found her and now she’s sitting on 10.5kg. We think she’s pretty much as big as she’s going to get.

My girlfriend also found a lost parrot in a park last week so we’ve now welcomed ‘Pete’ into the family too. But you’ll have to wait for a separate writeup for him later in the week.


Tackling the global economy woes another great episode by Farrant and Nanni.

I dunno how these guys are funding their Rap News but I hope they’ve got a revenue model up and running so that they can keep releasing their vids, they’re too good to lose.

Here’s to the next one guys!

My bicycle helmet isn’t heavy enough to cause any permanent deformity to my hair so when I take it off, a quick razzle with my fingers and I’m good to go. Well, so long as I don’t forget to thoroughly dry it before I set out, otherwise the air holes in my helmet can leave ridiculous bumps on the hairline like the guy on the right there has.

My scooter on the other hand is now primarily used when I’m going out. Not drinking of course, but if I’ve got a dinner to go to or am meeting someone and need to look decent – the bicycle doesn’t quite cut it. Unlike a bicycle helmet though, a scooter helmet can utterly crush your hair and mold it into the perfect box shape.

We’re talking paper-thin squashed ‘I look like the biggest nerd who spent 35 hours combing my hair to perfection’ type hair here.

DISASTER!

I’ve since resorted to carrying around a tube of hair stuff in the scooter’s luggage compartment… but surely there’s got to be an easier way to deal with scooter helmet hair?

HALP!

1. Carrying hair product around

As I said, this is what I’m currently doing and whilst it works it has two major downsides.

a. You look like a complete tool getting off your scooter and styling your hair (even for like a minute) in your scooter mirror in crowded places. With Taiwan having 3 million strong rent-a-crowds on every corner… this is hugely problematic.

b. Afterwards you need to wash your hands. Hair product leaves a sticky residue on your hands and on the off chance I need to shake hands with someone or (more commonly) eat… washing your hands is mandatory after doing your hair.

Now bear in mind these aren’t major downsides… but when the alternative back home was just jumping in my mini and driving to wherever… it’s starting to become a freaking headache.

I have thought of some alternatives myself… but they mostly suck.

2. Use the MRT

The big bonus in using the MRT is that you probably won’t die on Taiwan’s roads (yes, I accept it’s only a matter of time before I’m steamrolled by a blue truck or bus).

The problem with the MRT is that, if you live outside of Taipei – THERE IS NO MRT (from what I hear Khaosiung’s MRT is like a joke with no punchline).

That and in Taipei you’re kind of limited to where you can go… and that the last MRT trains leave around 12-12:30am’ish depending on where you’re catching one from.

Oh and did I forget to mention the giant crowds and waiting times during peak?

Taiwan’s road traffic can often be no better but it’s much more satisfying to cruise around on a scooter and feel like I’m having a direct impact on my arrival time.

That and the scooter is a lot of cheaper than the MRT. A standard round trip will set you back $50-90 TWD ($1.70-$3 USD) whereas this alternatively gets me about 100kms on the scooter.

As retarded as it sounds in Taiwan it’s actually cheaper to use a scooter than ride the MRT (or national TRA network for that matter).

3. Style my hair an hour or so before heading out on the scooter

This method kind of works, but not really. If you style your hair about an hour before heading out when you arrive at your destination you can revive something of a decent look, but more often than not the weight of the scooter helmet has permanently crushed the effectiveness of the product your using.

This means that no matter how strong it is, after twenty minutes or so your hair is probably going to revert back to its natural post scooter trip utterly flat state.

And the longer you ride, the less effective this method becomes… oh, and it also means you’ve got to regularly clean your scooter helmet as product+sweat dirties up the inside pretty quickly.

4. Don’t use product

Hahahahahhahahahhahaha.

When I first got to Taiwan I noticed that a lot of the guys here had really boring $2 job looking haircuts. At the time I just assumed it was because they simply didn’t care what they looked like because they had better things to do, like play computer games and hang out at 7-11.

Since then, I’ve started to appreciate that it’s more out of necessity than want. When you’re riding a scooter around daily (something I thankfully don’t have to do), I imagine maintaining a hairstyle becomes a downright chore.

And I’m not talking metrosexual fifteen minutes to style haircuts either… just something simple that doesn’t leave you with the straight hair boring look that everyone in Asia seems to have.

Personally I rub the product in my hands and run it through my hair for about a minute and then just rough it up. It’s cut to style and does the work for me.

I can’t be the only guy suffering from stupid looking scooter hair or the first to think about tackling it… anyone thought of something I’ve missed or got a better idea?

If I have to stand at a busy intersection styling my hair in my scooter mirror one more time I think I’m going to die.

For some people it’s home, for others it’s China… without the crazy China’ness, a great place to learn Mandarin, a land of cheap delicious foods, a relaxing lifestyle, a place to retire, the last line of defence against China’s aggressive territorial expansion, a place to explore…

…and then there’s this guy.

Subject: Looking for Taiwanese girl for marriage

Message Body:

I am Ron, from New York City, USA. I am a simpleman down to the earth, I am looking for a Taiwanese girl who is single, nice, kind and social and who can take care of me.

Out looking or age is not fact, just need a person.

Rahman Moh


Apparently somebody turned OzSoapbox into a matchmaking website and forgot to tell me.

But what the hell, anybody up for it? This Rahman guy sounds like a real catch… he’s ‘down to the earth‘ (short??) and all he wants is a Taiwanese girl who is single (well, duh?) and can take care of him.

Evidently Rahman is unable to take care of himself and needs a Taiwanese slave kind and social wife.

Oh and he’s not too worried about looks or age either so all you old fuglies are welcome to apply.

All he needs is a body person.

Applicants can apply for the position at whatthefuckamIsupposedtodowithshittyemailslikethis@nobodycares.com

Best of luck Rahmon!

(photo supplied)

Weighing in at just over 2kg, Leela is now just over 6kg and is her size aside, is turning out to be quite the well behaved and mannered dog.

Not quite the Pug I wanted in August but I don’t have it in me to just give up on her.

The other week me and the girlfriend were out and about again down in Hsinchu County (just north of Yonghe Reservoir), this time exploring Emei Lake Recreational Area (also known as Dapu Reservoir).

Our main reason for heading back to Emei was to check out the lake itself but also to pay a visit to the giant 72 meter tall Maitreya Buddha statue and accompanying temple.

I was last in Emei in early 2010 and at that time the temple still had a long way to go construction wise;

Over a year later I wanted to see how things had progressed and, as you can see, progressed they had!

We wanted to get a closer look at the temple and statue but despite the grounds looking finished the security guard wouldn’t let us on site.

It was whilst trying to bargain our way in that we then met Tiger.

Skinny as hell and stumbling around the security guard told us Tiger had randomly showed up just the night before. Not sure what to do with him the guard had given him a bowl of water with some crackers and hoped for the best.

Despite having skin problems and being so tiny, it wasn’t long before Tiger was following us about as I took photos of the temple from a distance.

At that point I pretty much decided we’d have to take him in.

Otherwise I figured he had a few days at best living off water and crackers with the security guard before he died of malnutrition or something worse.

To date I’m not really sure what breed Tiger was. He has distinctive mountain dog colouring but fits in the palm of your hand.

There’s definitely some chihuahua there but he certainly doesn’t have the head or eyes of one.

Age wise the vet we took him too put him at over 2 months old so, despite being so tiny, he was well on his way to growing into a nice young dog.

One thing I’ve never liked about chihuahuas is the noise that they make. Whether it’s due to shitty training and dog ownership or the fact that as a breed they just can’t shutup, chihuahuas always annoy me.

Sadly, Tiger was no exception and over the last few weeks I really struggled with looking after him.

Being so tiny, Tiger’s protests were so high pitched and whiny that it sounded literally like a toddler screaming at the top of their lungs.

Put him in a crate – squealing.

Close the door behind you – squealing.

Take him for a walk with a leash – squealing.

Try to force him to potty in a particular area outside he doesn’t want to – squealing.

And on and on it went.

I’m all for not caving in to a dog’s demands but not being house trained, trying to train Tiger was really testing my patience.

Additionally, despite being about a fifth of her size, Tiger liked to shitstir play with Leela and get her worked up.


Problem was that he’d keep at it till she’d had enough and when she put her foot down or started to play back he’d bark and get all defensive.

Thankfully due to his size, like Pogo the pug he got lots of ‘oh,how cute!’ action everywhere we went.

As such, it didn’t take long before we found a suitable home for him.

One day as we were walking him home our neighbour’s daughter started asking my girlfriend questions about the Tiger and she replied and threw in the now obligatory ‘we found him in the mountains, do you want to adopt him?’

After asking her dad (they already had one dog) he agreed and after making sure they knew about his annoying yap, the fact that he wasn’t quite toilet trained yet and skin problems (we had medicine from the vet), they were happy to take him in.

Out time with Tiger was short and we’ve still got Leela, but at least one of the dog’s we’ve rescued now has a happy permanent home.

Mind you, I’ve pretty much accepted now that nobody is going to adopt Leela. Black mountain dogs are a dime a dozen here and she obviously doesn’t have the adoption power that a small cute looking chihuahua type dog has. Then of course there’s the whole white tipped feet ‘if you adopt me I’m probably going to bring you years of bad luck’ thing.

Still, maybe one day…

Monday we should be good to go and back to our regular publishing schedule. Comments will still function as normal in the meantime but I might be slow to approve them when applicable.

Cheers guys and thanks for reading.

Sometime in the last few hours Google have gone and changed what used to be a fully functional, efficient and easy to read mail application and have completely ruined it.

Adding a 2.0 bloated flash feel to the iGoogle application, Google have gone and made all the navigation bars HUGE.

Working primarily on a Asus EeePC, this is bloody hopeless as now I can see about half as much information as I was able to read before on about half as much space.

Design wise there’s simply way to much white space and do I really need giant freaking stars next to every email taking up valuable real estate?

Some clown has also decided to move the delete button to the bottom of the gadget so now if I want to delete anything, I have to check it and pysically scroll down. BRILLIANT GUYS!

The only new useful feature I can see is the ability to compose mail from the default iGoogle homepage whereas before I had to click on the little mail text which enabled the Gmail application to take over the browser window completely to compose anything.

Not happy Google, gimme back my original iGoogle Gmail interface!

In my current apartment, despite my best efforts to make sure nothing is left out, invariably the odd thing gets left out (I don’t have a big bin here so I have to use the communal bin outside).

Just the other day the ants took over a juice box I’d left out (it was almost empty but not empty enough for the ants), as I was using the laptop I was wondering why there was a few of them about and then realised my mistake.

Realising it was getting a bit ridiculous what with the speed in which these little opportunistic ants were appearing (sometimes whilst I was eating dinner itself), I decided to go down to the local supermarket and purchase some ant pest control.

Being in Taiwan, all the products were labelled in Chinese so apart from the universal big red circle symbol with an ant inside it, I didn’t really have any idea what I was buying. In the end though I settled for this brand;

With ‘Boric acid S100′ printed on the packet, but no other English, some quick research at home revealed that this was a common ingredient used in ant pest control.

Apparently Boric acid doesn’t instantly kill ants but rather messes up their metabolism slowly causing dehydration and eventual death. Basically you want the ants to carry back the Boric acid to their nest and eventually take out the queen.

Eager to see my unwanted visitors die off, I busted open the box, here’s what was inside;

What you’re looking at there is a shell shaped plastic container and a sealed packet of Boric acid bait. This particular brand came with 3 shell containers and four packets of Boric acid.

Setting up the trap was relatively easy. The shell traps are openable and you simply open a sachet of Boric acid bait and pour it inside.

The trap itself has seven holes (3 at the back, 2 on the side and and 2 at the front) from which the ants can easily get in, grab some bait and get out.

By putting out the juice box I’d saved from before, it was about an hour before the ants had figured out where it was and mobiles to harvest the juice. After enough of them were around the box, I removed it and placed the Boric acid trap in its place.

Evidently it’s quite difficult to snap a decent shot of ants running around like headless chooks with a mobile phone camera, but I’ve done my best to highlight the activity with some big shiny red arrows.

Expecting to see some initial confusion followed by one of them figuring it out and signalling to others about how they just found tons of food inside, to my dismay this simply didn’t happen.

Wondering if perhaps they needed a little more time to ‘get it’, I went out for a bike ride and a few hours and left the trap to do its thing. A few hours later when I returned, expecting to see them ravaging the bait inside I was disappointed to see that the ants had completely abandoned the trap (despite their being tons of them around there before) and disappeared.

I left the trap out overnight and the next day, despite a few of them walking around looking for food – none of them took the bait – they just simply ignored it.

With Boric acid having been used for over a century for pest control, it seems Taiwan’s ants have either grown wary of it, are extremely fussy or this particular brand of Boric acid ant control is just crap.

To test, I found some different ants around outside (feasting on a dead insect on the side of the road) and same thing. None of them were interested in the Boric acid bait.

Does Boric acid bait work on Taiwanese ants?

I’d have to go with a big resounding no. Meanwhile I’m going to have investigate some other options to take care of these little annoying bastards.

By buying the triple plain yogurt pack (3 litres of Easiyo yogurt) that came in a box for $7 or so, I was still coming out miles ahead of paying $5-6 for 1 litre of yogurt from the supermarket.

When I moved to Taiwan however, I quickly found out that not only is Easiyo not really readily available here, but also that price wise, there’s no multipacks available and also you’re looking at around $3-6 just for one sachet. $3 a sachet for plain Greek and upwards for flavoured yogurt.

After a few months of this I began to investigate making Easiyo by blending the starter yogurt base with milk powder.

After a few months of trial and error, here’s how it went.

Thankfully my base recipe worked right off the bat and I never had to change it.

What you’ll need:

• a measuring cup that measures grams
• a tablespoon (measured or rough)
• milk powder
• an airtight sealable plastic container
• paperclip (optional – I think)


Instead of using the complete yogurt base sachet, use the tablespoon to measure out 1 tablespoon of yogurt base.

Then mix in 300g (1 and a half cups) of milk powder into the Easiyo jar.

I’ve only thus far used ‘KLIM’ brand which I think is just bog standard full cream powder, but I don’t see why other types of milk power wouldn’t work. So long as it isn’t some gourmet crap with additives you should be right.

After combining the yogurt starter and milk powder you then set about making the yogurt as you would normally. Add water about halfway, shake like crazy and then fill the jar with water to the top line before putting it in the thermos with hot water.

Whereas I’d normally leave a full sachet of Easiyo yogurt base out for 24 hours and find it was enough, with only a fraction of the bacteria to get you started in a tablespoon, I’ve found that a day and a half (36 hours) is about right with this method.

Any less and you tend to get watery yogurt. Leaving it longer doesn’t hurt but you do tend to get more of a slightly sour taste (too much bacteria?).

The finished product does look a bit lumpy in the photo I took but there’s absolutely no lumps or hardness to the milk powder yogurt. Whether you use milk powder or the whole yogurt base sachet, after sitting in the jar Easiyo yogurt always looks a bit blocky when you scoop it out. Taste wise it’s exactly the same. If you use Greek plain you get Greek plain yogurt, normal plain makes you normal plain etc.

I was initially skeptical that the milk powder might alter the taste but believe me it’s just as rich, creamy and delicious as using a whole Easiyo sachet.

One final note, I was disappointed to find that this method doesn’t work with the flavoured versions. You still get yogurt but it is unflavoured (due to there not being enough ‘flavour’ in only a tablespoon of yogurt base). I don’t know if I was imagining but when I tried milk powder with a strawberry (sweet) base, I felt the yogurt it made was more sour then when using plain yogurt base.

Anyway, to get around the flavour problem I just add a tablespoon of jam to each tub of 200g yogurt I make for the week (added after it’s made).

Storage wise my yogurt base sachet was fine in the fridge sealed in an airtight plastic tub with a paperclip over the opening (I rolled the bag down a bit before clipping it shut).

The main advantage of mixing milk powder with yogurt base is obviously the cost and this is where this method shines.

I go through 1kg of yogurt a week (200g a day Monday to Friday) so I went from using one sachet a week to months on end of fresh yogurt from just one sachet.

The photos from this article were taken back in March (after a few weeks of trial and error) and the sachet I was using only ran out a few weeks ago – that’s how long we’re talking here.

Compared to using a sachet a week for 3-4 months, pairing Easiyo yogurt base with milk powder is a no brainer cheaper alternative. Even with milk powder costs, roughly three yogurt base sachets a year is unbeatable value for money when compared with burning through 52.

Enjoy your cheap Easiyo milk powder yogurt!

My girlfriend recently got a Pinnacle Expede 1.0 cyclocross bike (more on that later), and along with my Long Haul Trucker we’ve been tackling mountain trails around Taiwan with the hope of completing a tour around Taiwan by year’s end.

Last weekend we found ourselves cycling up and around the Yonghe Mountain Reservoir in Miaoli County just off the sleepy township of Sanwan.

We were supposed to be following the Yonghe Mountain bicycle path just south of Toufen Township but it was proving to be quite difficult. As you get into the mountains the path is poorly signposted and you soon start to wonder if you’re still on it, or just riding random roads through the mountains.

Anyway, after feeling like we were lost for the umpteenth time, we pulled over at a busy crossroads to check our bearings.

It was then that this crawled out of the bushes with a big happy smile on her face;

Wondering what such a small puppy was doing seemingly by herself right next to a busy road intersection

(and half expecting a mother dog to run out and try to bite our faces off if we tried to touch it), I went and had a look to see where it had come from.

It was then I realised that it had been abandoned;

Left with nothing more then the bare essentials (which in hindsight I guess was better than nothing) a plastic container of green water, a bowl of putrid rotting food and a flattened cardboard box to sleep on… I immediately realised I couldn’t in good conscience leave her there.

Given the daily downpours we’ve been having due to Typhoon Meari I’ve got no idea how this little pup has survived on her own, especially in the mountains. I’ve noted that whenever she hears another dog bark she immediately goes into defense mode and wants to run – so I’m assuming by keeping her wits about her she made it.

As to why she was abandoned… you’re guess is as good as mine although I have been told that having white tipped feet is a sign of bad luck in Chinese culture so that could explain it. Go figure.

Anyway, after four flea baths (she was absolutely ridden with fleas and ticks) and some TLC she’s scrubbed up rather well;

Age wise she’s tiny, smaller I think than Pogo when I got him and he was two months. Thus I’d guesstimate her age to be at either 2 months or younger.

My original plan was to give her up to a local shelter as I thought she looked rather like a Labrador with her big floppy ears and webbed feet (thankyou Wikipedia research).

A more likely scenario I’ve been told however is that she’s part Formosan Mountain Dog and then a general mishmash of whatever lives out in the mountains.

Now with my writing commitments and dependency on my bicycle (I want to save the scooter for just long trips by the end of the year), a dog of Labrador size is simply just not feasible.

A Formosan mountain dog mix on the other hand, might just work.

But I digress. I really have my heart set on another Pug – and I still plan to go ahead with that in August.

Being a stray, I decided to keep this dog for a week and show her some care. Who knows what she’s been through and following adoption I can’t guarantee she’ll be looked after properly so at least I can make her feel welcome for a short time.

On Friday we’re taking her to the vet to get checked out and as I said earlier the original plan was to put her up for adoption. Of course there was always the worry in the back of my mind that she wouldn’t get adopted but that seems to have been taken care of with an offer from one of my TA’s relatives from work to take her in.

In the meantime whilst I keep reminding myself a Pug is more appropriate for my lifestyle it’s hard to put up resistance;

Temperament wise she’s much more relaxed than Pogo and is definitely more loyal. Pogo was an attention whore with steroid like energy who’d dump me for a wandering ‘oh how cute!’ passing female anytime, anywhere.

She hasn’t quite got the idea of walking (or a leash yet) but I’m working on it. Training wise she seems ready and keen to learn whereas Pogo (and Pugs in general I think) were always going to be an uphill battle – not that I mind.

That said, whilst I did take Pogo into the mountains on some longish walks (I got away with it in late autumn and winter when it’s cooler), I have no idea how Pugs go during summer in the outdoors. From what I’ve read they overheat quickly and I’d be risking it (even with copious amounts of water) when it’s 30+ degrees outside, as it has been for the past few weeks or so.

I do however miss Pogo’s clownish antics ever so much. Personality wise he was adorable whereas this mountain dog is much more reserved. She’s started to shadow me around the house and follow me around – but I think that’s more out of insecurity than a genuine interest in what I’m doing.

Then again, even with Formosan mountain dogs not being as big as Labradors, I’m still going to struggle with the whole bike and dog thing. Whereas with a Pug they just happily fall asleep and ride in one of my panniers.

Meanwhile Friday rolls closer and I’m all too aware of the decision I’ve got to make. I suppose it’s not all that common to find a readily available home for a stray in Taiwan – but then I can’t help wonder if I’m giving up a dog that might in the long term turn out better for me than a Pug.

Being a puppy and needing frequent walks for toilet training, I think in the last few days I’ve had about ten hours total sleep. Just this morning I went to bed at 1am and was back up at 6:30am for a toilet run.

Same deal with Pogo till he got it after a few weeks but at least with him I was prepared. This unexpected drop in has completely messed up my week!

Still, how can you be mad at a face like that.