Ilha Formosa - The Beautiful Isle

Taiwan, 19-28 Nov 2005



The first trip I took with CY and Kel, who didn't know each other beforehand, and no, it was not a matchmaking trip! Hoho!

Click here for my itinerary.

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19 Nov - 你不是日本人吗？

That was the first thing a local said to me when I asked for directions to my hostel - strange cos I thought I looked less Japanese after cutting my hair.. Anyway, that was when I started re-learning the Taiwanese accent; perfected it by the next day. No one can tell I'm foreign unless I stumble upon some phrase I'm used to saying only in English, eg it's 公车 for cab, not 德士 or however you write that, which exposed me as a foreigner!
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The trip with a sacrifice

San Francisco, 11-20 Apr 2005



I might as well just call it my Stanford trip - I went to the city twice. The rest of the time, I was watching Kenshin in YX's room!!

The sacrifice? Sighs, read the second post..

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It's 450pm SF time now. Just back from a late lunch of enchiladas and banana berry smoothie from campus. Took a 40min slow walk to get back to YX's place, could be faster but I hollanded at one point :p

Anyway, this is my third day in Stanford, haven't seen SF city cos I've been lazy!
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Back for the day! Morning we went out to fetch YX's friend Erwin from airport; he's here for some conference in San Jose. We drove straight to Taqueria Cancun in SF city for lunch, satisfying mexican food :) Then we started our adventure from Bay Bridge, after which we made a quick stop at Fisherman's Wharf - I was there on Thurs but Sun was horribly crowded! - before turning to Golden Gate Bridge.
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桜の夢

Japan, 31 Mar-10 Apr 2005



This is the very first time I blogged about my travels in mf-ism :) A couple of my earlier travel logs were on my Frontpage web archive but I don't remember if they were ever published on my now-defunct Geocities webpage!

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Day 1 - 初めて、東京！

I have to start with the flight, which itself was interesting. The big screens with the usual flight info were showing live feed from a camera outside the aircraft. We saw the runway from a totally different angle: the lights were white as the plane cruised along and turned to a whole new set of pink as the plane got ready for take-off. We both saw and felt ourselves soaring into the night skies!

By the time I reached Ryokan Kangetsu, it was already late morning. After a short rest, I set off for Shinjuku from where I would embark on a trip to see an old friend: Kitty-chan!
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