Taiwan: My Home Away From Home

You're probably starting to think that I spend a lot of time in Taiwan. Well... that's true. For the last 1.5 years, I have been dating a local (Avy), so I have a bit of a bias towards visiting her! Unfortunately, my work doesn't take me there particularly often, but I can usually pick up my own cheap-ish flights when I finish in a job in Thailand or Vietnam, for example. Now that we are engaged, my other half will eventually move to Australia, so I have to take advantage of her tour guiding while I can!

Royal Seasons Hotel

I sat here, trying to come up with a more interesting title for this one, but I have failed to do so!

Following on from my previous post, I had a job in Taichung during the 2nd-last week of October. As I'd mentioned, this was smack in the middle of Bike Week in Taichung, so hotels were full to the brim. However, I was very lucky to snag a room at the Royal Seasons Hotel.

Taking it Easy in Taichung

On 17 October 2015, we found ourselves in a bit of a predicament. Originally, my girlfriend and I had planned to head away for the night to see a famous traditional town in northern Taiwan called Jiufen. However, on the day, we struggled with long lines for buses and trains, and eventually decided not to go. So then, we began trying to book some accommodation very last minute for the night in Taichung. The problem was it was Taichung Bicycle Week (which seems to go for, like, 17 months), and so the masses of foreign bicycle industry companies had descended on Taichung and booked out all the decent accommodation well in advance. It took a bit of scrounging on TripAdvisor and CTrip, among other websites, but we eventually found a place to crash for the night in Taichung Ease Motel.

A Little Taste of the High Life

It's been a while between posts! But I had a bit of a lull in my work travel over the past two months or so, and as such, I didn't really have a lot to write.

However, this morning, I rolled out of bed at about 4:20am to head to the airport - ahhh the joys of travel to Asia! When I arrived at the airport, I lined up in the fancy-pants queue, as I'm now a One World Emerald member. I asked the Cathay check-in staff member if there were any exit rows available - gotta put my 6'3" legs somewhere. He smirked a little as he handed over my boarding pass, explaining that I had been upgraded to Business Class for the flight through to Hong Kong.

Well... I suppose that will do!