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!

Farewell to Thailand

It's hard to believe that I'm leaving Thailand tomorrow morning and it's already been four weeks. I've made some good friends here and I've collected lots and lots of data. I measured 435 skulls and nearly finished measuring the entire collection. Data collection was finished on Tuesday and I spent Wednesday and Thursday working on my presentation that I gave. It turned out okay, the staff appeared to be really interested in my work. Today I'm taking it slow and not doing much except packing.

Last Sunday I managed to go do a little sightseeing so that was a lot of fun. I took lots of pictures during that day. There isn't many sights to be seen in Khon Kaen, but there's a large Buddhist temple (Phra Mahathat Kaen Nakhon) that overlooks the lake (Bueng Kaen Nakhon) in the city. It's all very pretty. A large rainstorm was threatening in the distance and it was quite ominous.
This is a view of the lake from the top of the temple.
This is a statue on the second floor of the temple. There are a total of nine floors. Nongnuch's daughter Plankton was with us that day and she and I have become quite friendly even though she doesn't speak English. I thought her how to play thumb wars and she's getting quite good. Can you believe that she's only eight years old??!! She's nearly my height.
I took a picture of the flooded streets when we were coming back from the temple, and some of the smaller cars were getting stuck. I couldn't believe that people on motorcycles would try to get across in the flooded streets since it was at least knee high.
I really enjoyed my time in Thailand, despite all the mosquito bites and the doxycyline doing quite a number on my stomach and the constant heartburn. I hope to return someday and see Dr. Panya, Nongnuch, Ann, Dewkey, and Plankton again. So tomorrow morning I fly off to Taiwan. Talk to you all there!

One more week in Thailand

Happy Independence Day! Hope you're all having a fabulous holiday with lots of picnic food and fireworks.

There's not much to report here, I think I'll finish my data collection Tuesday/Wednesday. That will leave me with enough time to work on my presentation on Thursday and time to relax on Friday. I have worked on my presentation but it's not up to snuff yet.

I leave for Taipei on Saturday morning and will be there for two weeks. I think I'll be done with my data collection in a week or a week and a half and my aunt and cousin are coming to Taipei for a couple of days while I'm there so I get to see the sights with them.

Nongnuch took me to the student night market here at KKU, which is an outdoor market with lots of food and goods vendor. There was so much food! It's not the most sanitary, but it was delicious. I had heard about all the night markets in Thailand and I was excited to go see one for myself. I took a couple of pictures of the market but I couldn't get any of the food.

I was excited about eating sticky rice and grilled corn, along with oyster pancakes and I'm happy to report all of it was delicious. I would have like to have dessert too but I was too full. They had a lot of ice-cream, dessert soups, sweet waffles, etc. They even had a sushi vendor that patrons picked the pieces they wanted and boxed it away.

Here's Nongnuch ordering a soup broth noodle meat dish. Much of the food was cooked there on the spot.There's a covered area with tables for eating and it's surrounded by food vendors.
There was quite a bit of people walking about even though it had just rained before and some of the vendors did not show up.Later today Nongnuch is going to take me around Khon Kaen so I can see some of the sights. I don't know where she's taking me but I hope to have some good pictures of it all. Have a good weekend!