• Travel

    Taiwan’s High Speed Rail

    September 16, 2024 - By 

    The Taiwan High Speed Rail was a very exciting thing back when I first rode it in 2007, which was also the year it opened. It cut the travel time between the two major cities of Taiwan, Taipei and Kaohsiung, from ~4 1/2 hours to ~1 1/2 hours. It is usually roughly US$50 to travel one-way from one end to the other, so many older people thought and still think it is an unnecessary expense and would rather take a much slower (and cheaper) train or a bus. Tickets can conveniently be purchased online, at the station, or at a…

  • Life

    How to Trade Gold for Gold in Taiwan

    May 17, 2024 - By 

    Before we begin, when we talk about gold here, we are talking about 24k gold specifically. Taiwan, being part of Asia, prefers 24k gold. There is often a cluster of gold shops in larger cities in Taiwan. They will display their gold buying and gold selling price prominently. I think it is per gram, but I have forgotten for the moment. Any gold piece in a gold shop has two numbers: a gold value listed as weight and an artisan cost in Taiwanese dollars. Because the cost of gold fluctuates day to day, they multiply the listed weight and the…

  • Food - Tea Things

    Sugi Bee Garden Honey – Flavoured Honey for your Water

    April 6, 2024 - By 

    Sugi Bee Garden honey has been around for decades and presumably popular, given the number of locations they are sold at in their home country, Japan. In Taiwan, this honey seemed to be a popular souvenir gift for older people from their relatives who had stopped in Japan. I usually saw one of these containers in my grandmother’s fridge in Taiwan when I visited. To enjoy adding this to your drink, you should like honey and fruit flavours. Yuzu is the most common type you can find from other brands, so Sugi Bee Garden decided to set their honey apart…

  • Finance - Travel

    What are the QR codes I get with my receipts in Taiwan?

    December 14, 2023 - By 

    Whenever you buy anything in Taiwan and are given a receipt, you may receive a physical printed out QR ticket along with your receipt. If you are a resident, you have the opportunity to not take a physical printout but instead have it added digitally to your collection. These are entries to a government lottery that was started to incentivize reporting sales and therefore allow the government to collect more of the sales tax owed to them. These QR lottery entries are done as a straight entry into the lottery, not a multiplier. It has led to silly situations such…

  • Travel

    Train: Taitung to Nanzhou / Kaohsiung in Taiwan

    December 11, 2023 - By 

    We bought our tickets for the Taiwan Railway online while in the United States without issue and chose two meals, one vegetarian and one regular, at the time. The train tickets would take us from Taitung to Nanzhou, which would place us conveniently for my Kaohsiung aunt to pick us up. For our money, we received a very low quality QR code that we were doubtful about. At the station, we walked up to the counter and attempted to change our dubious QR code for the tickets. Unfortunately, the man at the counter was unable to scan the low quality…

  • Travel

    Nomad’s APAC eSIM for Asia

    December 4, 2023 - By 

    The short version is that Nomad’s APAC 20 Countries Plan was usable in Japan other than remote Hakone and was not very usable in Taiwan. I was always able to reconnect within a minute in Japan. In Taiwan, not only was data slow but I also was unable to connect to the network for more like 3-5 minutes at a time. I decided to try those eSIMs that you purchase ahead of time instead of at the airport. The downside is normally that data SIMs purchased in the airport usually have better coverage and eSIMs bought online sometimes put you…

  • Travel

    TPE to SFO to EWR with United

    November 18, 2023 - By 

    For this trip in 2023, I was with family, including my daughter! The daughter part made it more difficult to take pictures freely. The Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport (TPE), like many other places in Taiwan, gave us preference because we had a /wah-wah tsuh/, or a baby stroller. In this case, we got to go through a screening line with no one else at all. The person manning the gate seemed excited to have anyone going through his not-really-a-line at all. (My father later explained that all the preference I had received was probably because the birth rate in Taiwan…

  • Food - Tea Things

    Afternoon Tea at the BL. T 33 / InterContinental Kaohsiung in Taiwan

    November 14, 2023 - By 

    Afternoon Tea at InterContinental Kaohsiung in Taiwan ended up being in the back area of what looks like a bar. The BL. T 33 seemed to share space or be right next to the SEEDS Restaurant, but that could also have been because I brought a 2-year-old with me. They allowed me to place her stroller behind the seats. My cousin phoned to make the reservation for me at the BL. T 33 the day before. It is also possible to make a reservation online. The cost for one set of afternoon tea in November, 2023, was NT$1680 before the…

  • Travel

    Free iTaiwan Wi-Fi in Taiwan

    September 29, 2023 - By 

    Taiwan provides free public Wi-Fi with 8Mbps bandwidth in government-run indoor public areas with the SSID (Service Set Identifier) iTaiwan. The main site to learn about this service is 首頁 | iTaiwan無線上網服務. You need to be near a government office or near some government-run area during operation hours to find the network. For example, the township building probably only runs 9-5 but the train station should run 24 hours a day. It is meant to be indoors, so signal is often weak when outdoors. (And it could be a bad actor trying to imitate iTaiwan to steal your data.) I…