Eight Smoke Hot Spring

I went to a "wild" hot spring. means free, out in the nature, no one owns it. this one however is very well kept by frequent goers. they even plant flowers and tree, put up curtain so people can change, and well up the spring water into pools. but it's "illegal" because it's in the Yang Min Shan National Park. so we had to go there early in the morning before the park rangers start working.









i stayed over at my friends house. we got up at 3:40 in the morning and left the house at 4:15. we drove up the volcano and got to the entrance about 5:30. it was all dark the moon still hung bright.












we sneaked pass the gate and walked for while, crossed a brook on log, and arrived at the hot spring when the sky started to get bright. the area was like a dream. greeneries and clear water coming in and out of curtains of steam. very beautiful.













there were a hot spring river and a fresh mountain river side by side. the hot spring river was block into small pools but the water was constantly flowing. we soaked in the perfect temperature milky white hot spring water , breathed the fresh morning air, watching the sunrise. my friend's wife is pregnant and unfortunately couldn't enjoy the water. so most photos were taken by her.






then jumped over the cold mountain river. the pressure of the stream felt great.










there was even a waterfall to stand under. very zen.

frequent goers we met there (very friendly) even told us a different path to get the hot spring from the roads. we got back to the car around 8am.

since we were not too far from Jin Shan (Gold Mountain, it's a city), where there is a famous sculpture museum, my friend (a sculptor) decided that we should try to go there. when we got there, we found out that it's closed until after the lunar new year. we drove back to taipei on the coastal highway. gorgeous. (no photos...)

now after i've seen my own photos, i think i need to loose some weight... but that's another business.

noh drama nod off

i went to see a open air noh drama performance at the national palace museum. it's part of NPM reopening celebration. there were a lot of people. i couldn't get a seat and was way in the back. due to my height or the lack of there of, i couldn't really follow anything on stage.

i fell asleep standing.

now i can't really say what i think of noh drama.

Cake!

Very pretty cake with gold dust on it. i always want to eat a cake with gold dust on it. DELUX.

japanese style western pastry shop are all the rage in Taiwan. (talk about culture bastardization...) i see this as an improvement. gorgeous (and tasty, with quality ingredient) cakes are to be had for 1-2 Canadian dollars. the cake in the picture was $50 New Taiwan Dollars which is about $1.5 Canadian, tax included. $1.5 in Toronto won't even get me a muffin at starbucks, but here i can get a coffee mouse cake, coated with caramel on one side, caramelized sugar on the other side, filled with fresh banana mash and nuts, sit on a wafer thin layer of dark chocolate and a layer of dark chocolate cake, decorated with baked banana dipped in dark cholcolate, caramel almond, chocolate shaving, choclate sauce and GOLD DUST.

Ahhhhh.....

my secret lesbian identity

I have to cosplay at my award ceremony (for those who are not into manga/anime, cosplay is... *sigh* too long to explain, please look it up on wiki) and because my character is male with an off the shoulder outfit, i went to buy a "chest restricter". i don't know if this thing exists in North America, but its basically a piece of elastic material designed to bind the female chest to look flatter. mmm...sounds 1920's.

i went to Lala Love Boat Lesbian Fashion. great customer service, very cozy little shop. i was invited to a lesbian social, signed on for their newsletter, and got 2 stamps on my frequent buyer card, and a coupon for a movie. i also learned that "T" means butch and "P" means femme. somehow i feel embarrassed about telling the owner that i am straight, so as we were chitchatting, i made up a "studied-abroad-newly-returned-to-taiwan-single-bohemian-student" lesbian identity.

West Gate District

This is on the wall in an alley of the West Gate District. i like it.

Mayday Concert

I went to a Mayday concert in HsinChu city.

Mayday is a highly popular Taiwanese band, the first indie band in Taiwan to achieve mainstream popularity. They broke the mainly boy bands, idol-type singers pattern, and wrote songs that really resonate with Taiwanese youth. (like songs about scooter racing or instant noodles...)

So i bought their new CD and there is a voucher inside for entrance to their concert tour. i missed the Taipei one because my boyfriend was in Taiwan earlier on and i was hanging out with him. so since HsinChu is not very far from Taipei, i decide to go to this concert instead.

I left on the 6:13 am train and got to HsinChu 7:48 am. when i got to the venue, the line for the mosh pit was ridiculous, circled around the venue a couple times then snaked around the square. So i lined up for the balcony.

The line for the balcony was rediculously short compared to the mosh pit. i was about the 300th person for blacony. They handed out braclet with numbers on it at 10am. The number system is to insure orderly and fair entrance (so the people who came first can get in first. no pushing!).


HsinChu is a nice city. quite pretty and well planned city centre with big squares and riverside park. I returned to the venue at 5pm. The worker counted and counted the number making sure that the audience are in the right order. I got a glow stick. Blue. Apprarently that's the perferred colour.

The opening band was Champion. They are kind of Mayday's portege, couple of them worked as Mayday's technicians before. The day of the concert was the bassist Cola's birthday. A cake was brought on stage for him and just when the audience was chanting for a pie-in-face act, they pulled a BL. (for those who are not into Manga/Anime, BL stands for Boy Love, male to male intimacy that makes girls squeal. very popular in Japan.) The singer kissed the cream off Cola's face, the gitarist licked the cream off his cheek, and the drummer fed the strawberry to him mouth to mouth. I can't believe things like this actually happened in reality. seemed to come straight out of a shoujo manga.

Champion's music weren't bad but they lack certain depth that Mayday has. but at least they are the best opening act i've seen (in my rare concert going experience...).

Mayday opened their act with four old songs from their previous albums progressing from 1999 to 2005. I cried when they got to "Stubborn" (2005). The song really touched me and suited where i am in life. "If I compromise, if I lie to myself, even if i am forgiven for that, i cannot forgive myself." "Against the wind I fly better, I am not afaired of thousand people stopping me, only afraid of myself surrender." (but then in Chinese and rhymed...)


Half way through the concert, the cieling fell down. Really. Four cieling panels fell during the concert. No big injury but I heard that someone was sent to the hospital. the band made the audience promise to NOT JUMP under any circumstances, because the venue floor might caved in under the moshpit. Maybe this place needs a renovation...

The guitarist Monster do a cartwheel every concert as part of thanking their sponser Le Power(an energy drink that sent them to Tunisia to film their MV). Because his dad was in the audience, he did four cartwheels.

I had a great time. If i had someone to go with that might even be better... kind of hope that they will sing "Call me number one" (Family in Labour theme song) or "Okay la" (KK's theme song). oh well, next time.

Christmas eve sponsered by Amway

My friend Ming the sculpter got a new set of Amway cooking set, he invited me to his house for an Amway cookware demonstration / Christmas dinner. The pots and pans are really cool, you can stack them and cook 5 dishes on one stove. The person cooking is his Amway mentor. The food was good.

Then he showed us his Captain Hook Buddha in progress. The hat is removable. It's heavy.

the day before the last day of the year

This is on Dec 29. They have a battle of band in front of the Warner Vieshow movie theatre. some of the bands are good.

haven't updated for a while...

i am bad with journal keeping, but that's no excuse. i am going to post a bunch of pictures from the last couple of days in 2006. my camera's batteries died just a couple second into 2007. i wanted to get some rechargeable batteries but havn't done so yet. so all the around the island 2007 pictures are on my boyfriend's camera, and he flew back yesterday without leaving me a copy of those. so... here are the last day of 2006.It was also the first Kevin's here. So we went to climb the Elephant mountain over looking Taipei 101, the world tallest building.

later that night Taipei 101 exploded (into a display of beautiful fireworks).