Ley ho from Hong Kong

Hello everyone,

I'm safely in Hong Kong and finally settled. I arrived on Sunday to find out that the place that I'm staying at messed up my reservations and didn't leave a set of keys for me with the security guard. Luckily I printed out a copy of my communications with the office and the guard let me put my stuff in the room. I ended up staying at my grandmother's that night because the next morning I had to go get my Chinese visa at the office closer to her house. Even though Hong Kong is a relatively small island area, it still takes a while to get anywhere. It took me a little over an hour to get from HKU to my grandmother's house. I got to have dinner with my maternal family still in Hong Kong so that was really nice.

Today I went to the Department of Anatomy to start my work. My hosts spent the whole day showing me around and going over the procedures and protocols so I get to start work tomorrow. The department is really nice and I'll be working in the gross anatomy lab which doesn't smell at all!

I haven't taken any pictures of Hong Kong yet, but I will soon. I'll include some of my remaining Taiwan pictures with this post and I'll talk to you soon!

So here we begin with the Asian obsession with Hello Kitty. This is an actual Hello Kitty gate at Taoyuan International Airport in Taipei.
This is a Hello Kitty Sweets store in Taipei where they have Hello Kitty shaped hamburgers.
This is the stained glass ceiling at the Taiwan National Museum. It was a pretty small but fascinating museum.
This is outside the National History Museum and the site of those nasty midges that bit me.
Here's a picture of the food at a good tonkatsu (Japanese fried pork cutlet) place in Taipei. There was weirdly a pig outside the restaurant which I felt a little guilty about eating pork inside the restaurant.
Here's a picture of a famous 100+ year noodle restaurant.
Here's a picture of people making Din Ta Feng's famous xiao long bao (dumplings with soup).
Here's a picture of one of the famous Maokong Tea plantations where they grow Taiwan tea.
So that's it for now. I'll write more soon.

Last Day in Taiwan

Hi all,

It's been a hectic two weeks and my last day here has been pretty relaxing. However I discovered a little biting insect that won't stop pestering me so I have over 50 bites from these tiny biting midges and they itch like hell.

Tomorrow I have a 6AM flight to Hong Kong, then I will be collecting data for 3 weeks there and my parents arrive after that.

This past week my aunt and cousin came to Taipei and we went around to see the sights. I have lots of pictures of our adventures, so I'll post some here now. Here's a picture of the MRT here in Taipei. It's really clean and cheap!
Right before they came, I went to visit the Miniatures Museum of Taiwan and took a bunch of pictures. Here are some pictures of the museum.


Here's a picture of us at a Crab Shabu Shabu restaurant, which was yummy and a lot of food.We also went to Taipei 101 one of the tallest buildings in the world.
We also hit of Yeliu Geological Park, where there are all these interesting rock formations that were formed by geological processes. This is one of two dogs kissing, can you see it?
This is the famous rock formation everyone comes to see. It's called the queen's head. The park is next to the water, so I thought I would take a picture of the park.
Here's me on a boat on the way back from the Museum of Archaeology.
Here's the first exhibit in the museum of archaeology.
Here's me in front of the museum.
After sightseeing, we would often go to night markets and get some yummy food.
This is us in front of the National Palace Museum. It's one of the alrgest museums in Taiwan.

I have more pictures to post but I'll do it when I arrive in Hong Kong. Talk to you all then!

Zoo Day

Hello all!

I had a really fun but tiring day. I finished my data collection yesterday, so I decided to do some sightseeing. Today I went to the zoo, which required me to take a train and bus. I managed not to get lost on the way there and that was awesome. The Taipei Zoo is really large and they have a lot of animals there so I spent the entire day there. There are lots of primates at the zoo and I managed to get lots of good pictures there. It was quite hot today so I was sweltering by the end of the day. I had a massive craving for french fries so I went to McDonald's at the zoo and it was delicious. Without further ado, here are some really cool animal pictures.They mist the greenery along the zoo paths every 5 or 10 minutes and I thought it looked neat.
There are lots of orchids along the zoo path so I thought I would try out the macro setting on my camera. Here are some regal looking king penguins.There were two different species of rhinos there, the regular and white rhino.There were at least ten hippos in the zoo! They are actually really active animals. There were at least three different species of zebras at the zoo. I love the giraffes. There were so many there.This is what everyone comes to the zoo to see, giant pandas! The zoo has two that were gifted from China recently. There are lots of macaques at the zoo.Here's a chimp enjoying his fruit and hiding in the shade. I love tapirs, they are one of my favorites animals at the zoo. I was bummed that I didn't get to see any elephants in Thailand, so here are some Asian elephants at the zoo. I have a lot more zoo pictures but I didn't want to overload my posts, so here's the gist of them. Tomorrow I meet my cousin and aunt in Taipei so we'll be going to see more sights. Talk to you all later!

Ni Hao from Taiwan

Greetings all!

I've arrived safely in Taiwan and have been exploring a bit but most of the places were closed on Sunday. Traveling to Taiwan from Khon Kaen was kinda long. I had to get up at 5AM to catch my first flight to Bangkok. I arrived at my hotel at close to 10PM. Then I was off to Kuala Lumpur where I had to run to make my connecting flight. Once in Kuala Lumpur, I had to go through security at the gate again, where everyone is patted down at the gate, kinda annoying. The flights were pretty enjoyable but it gets a little lonely traveling by myself. On the Kuala Lumpur to Taipei flight, there was a little girl that was walking up the aisle next to me (I was in an aisle seat) who was vomiting in a bag up the aisle. She projectile vomited on the guy in front of me and across the aisle from me. I felt so bad for the guy and I was also so glad that she missed me. Other than that, nothing too out of the ordinary happened.

I started data collection today but to my dismay/disappointment, I won't be able to use this data in my dissertation. The curator had gotten confused or something because the collection I wanted to use had been returned to the National Taiwan University Medical School over a decade ago. The collection that I'm looking at now is prehistoric and the same one looked at by Howells three decades ago. So I'm measuring these skulls to test my measurement variability and all is not lost. Most of the skulls are badly damaged and fragmented so I don't have much to measure. It also means that I will have 50 less individuals to analyze, so less numbers. Yay! Thankfully, my aunt and cousin arrive next week for a week or so and we'll go sightseeing. Otherwise I will have wasted a lot of time and money being here. The collection is very well protected and I'm constantly being monitored by all the security measures. It's kinda scary.

Enough about my disappointment and onto the fun sights and sounds of Taipei. I'm excited to be in Taipei since there are a lot of sights to see. I should be done with my data collection by Thursday or Friday and my aunt and cousin arrives on Saturday. So far, I managed to walk around the area where I'm staying and have taken a couple of pictures. I'm getting my languages a little mixed up since I forget which is Thai and which is Mandarin. I took a bunch of pictures from around the area. I'm excited that there are sidewalks here!Here's my room. It's a lot nicer than the one in Thailand but it's also smaller.
There is a river that runs through the campus and the surrounding areas that is filled with tilapia.Here is a picture of the fountain and the front of the Academia Sinica activity center that I'm staying at.
Here's a picture of the building that I'll be working in.
Food is also cheap here, but not as cheap as in Thailand. I've eaten some pretty tasty food here and I've managed to find a McDonald's also. I have been craving french fries lately.

So that's all for now. I will be able to see more sights in Taiwan than I did in Thailand, so that will be fun. I'll post again when I get to see some more of the sights. Also, no mosquito bites in Taipei yet!