Taiwan

Welcome back! Let's talk about Taiwan now or Formosa as it was named by the Portuguese navigators that first discovered it. I arrived there on the 9th of December and left on the 14th. I stayed in Taipei, the capital, though I also briefly visited the nearby city of Beitou.
Taiwan is a very interesting country. Firstly, it's a bit hard to know if it even is a country, as China claims it to be part if its territory, even though it's quite independent. Second it has influences from both China and Japan (who also controlled the territory), which makes it quite interesting culturally and historically.
My father knew people here too, and they were nice enough to provide me with a good hotel, where I stayed. I also had someone who drove me around, which was quite nice.
In Taiwan I visited Taipei 101, the 3rd tallest tower in the world and the one with the fastest elevators, and also the World Trade Center and commercial areas around it. I also visited a Buddhist temple, a botanical garden, and a night market, where I got to try some snake soup (which seemed to have the taste of chicken and the texture of fish, at least in my opinion).

Taipei 101

The temple

Snake soup

Lake at the botanical garden

I visited museums too, of course, such as the National Palace Museum (with many expositions ranging from jade sculptures to calligraphy exhibitions), the National History Museum (with different historical artifacts), and the Taiwan Science Education Scenter (with a lot of interactive exhibitions covering most areas of science).

The National Palace Museum

Buddha statue at the National History Museum

Heat powered ferris wheel at the Science Education Center

As I said before, I also went to Beitou, a place with a lot of natural hot springs, where I went to a traditional Japanese bath. It was quite nice, and I will definitely go to one of them when I'm in Japan.

Philippines-3: Boracay and Luzon

Hello again. Today I will relate what I did from the 2nd to the 8th of December.
On the 2nd I flew to Boracay, where I stayed until the 5th. Boracay is a small but nice island, mostly famous for its nightlife and beaches. According to Travel+Leisure Boracay is considered the second best island in the world, Palawan (where I went the previous week) being the first.
I mostly went to the beaches, visited the mall, and I went ou at night. The beach is actually quite nice, the water is calm (which is also nice sometimes, even though I personally prefer big waves) and the sand is white. The bars, next to the beach, are also quite nice. I tried to do other activities, such as kitesurfing and flyboarding, but the first was too expensive and I needed more people for the second one.
The most interesting thing about it was probably the blackout: apparently the electricity in certain parts of the islands is cut out periodically, and when I was there my hostel was in that part. Because it was quite new, it didn't have a generator there, which means that my whole stay in the hostel was without electricity (except for 30 minutes after they finally installed the generator-it broke down again afterwards). Which was quite hard at night, as the only light we had was from candles, an also when we had to take a shower, as we had to decide between complete darkness or showering with an open door.

The hostel at night

On the 5th I flew to Manilla, the capital of the Philippines, located in the island of Luzon . There I met the son of the business associate and his friends, and stayed in his apartment.
In Manilla we went to a theme park (Star City), filled with rides and whatnot, and also to Intramuros, a district filled with structures from the Spanish occupation, where we visited forts, a museum, and prisons in the Fort Santiago, where the Filipino hero José Rizal was imprisoned.
We also took a bus to the Taal Volcano in the same island. This is a very interesting volcano as it is located in a lake, but also contains a lake inside its crater. We took a boat to cross the bigger lake and then swam in the smaller one.

Statues at Star City

Canon at an old wall in Intramuros

Statue of Rizal in his own cell

Our boat, sailing on the outer lake

The volcano (the whole island is actually)

Me with the crater lake in the background (the small island in the lake is an island in a lake in an island in a lake in an island)

Philippines-2: Palawan and Cebu (again)

Hi, welcome back to my blog, where I will describe what I did from the 25th of November to the 1st of December.
On the 25th ( a Monday), I flew to the city of Puerto Princesa, in the Palawan Island, and I stayed there until the 29th.
Palawan is a very nice island, quite isolated from the other islands in the Philippines. One of its main attractions is probably the Puerto Princesa Underground River (apparently one of the new 7 Natural Wonders of the World), which I visited of course. I took a day trip (which also stopped in a place where I did some caving). The Underground River is exactly what its name suggests: its a river under the ground, in a cave system, filled with geological formations (and bats, loads of bats-we were in fact told not to open our mouth while looking up in the cave, because some drops of liquid might get in our mouths: if the liquid was cold it yould be water, but if it was warm, it probably came from a bat). We had to take a boat to the beach were the cave entrance was, and another to enter the cave. Unfortunately, only a part of the cave is available to tourists.

Me, doing some caving

Me, with the entrance to the cave with the river (not the same cave as above)

A geological structure inside the cave 

Puerto Princesa is also the first place where I did scuba diving since I started this trip. It was a nice dive, and I saw a lot of tropical fish.
I also took a city tour, which was also quite interesting. I saw a church, some monuments, I visited some markets (where I got to buy crocodile meat, which they even cooked for me), a crocodile farm (where I saw other animals apart from crocodiles, such as the strange bearcat), Baker's Hill (with many restaurants and statues, a place with many insects and a local tribe. At night I visited Baywalk, which was a place next to the sea with lots of restaurants selling seafood.

A church

Crocodile meat

A crocodile at the farm

A bearcat

Statues at Baker's Hill

Millipede on my hand

Native about to remove the snake from me

Fish at Baywalk

On the 29th I returned to Cebu ant to my father's business associate's family. There I saw a movie (Catching Fire), met the business associate's nephews (with whom I played Just Dance and went out) and even went to Church (being an agnostic, it's not something I normally do).

Philippines-1:Cebu and Bohol

Hi, and welcome back. Today I will talk about what happened on my trip from the 21st to the 24th of November 2013.
On the 21st (a Thursday) I arrived in Manilla, the capital of the Philippines, and flew directly from there to Cebu, an island approximately in the center of the country. There I was picked up by one of my father's business partners and his family, who took care of me.
In Cebu I visited some churches, a monument dedicated to Ferdinand Magellan (the Portuguese explorer who was captain of the first round-the-world expedition, which he never finished, due to a small inconvenience-he was killed here), supposedly located in the spot where he was killed (this spot is actually in the island of Mactan, but it's the same region and it's so close to Cebu Island that it's basically the same). Next to the monument is a statue of the person who killed him, Lapu-Lapu.

A church, partially damaged by a recent earthquake in the Philippines

Magellan's Monument

Lapu-Lapu's statue

But I did many other things in Cebu besides visiting monuments, of course. I ate the traditional dessert from the Philippines (Halo-Halo), I went to a restaurant in a mountain where I could enjoy a view of the city, I slept in a house in a poor area, and I snorkelled with whale sharks.

Halo-Halo

View of the city from the mountain

While I was in Cebu, I also took a day trip to the island of Bohol. I went by boat there and someone drove me around the island, taking me to places where I saw and did different stuff: I saw the tarsiers, some very small primates with big eyes, I also saw the Chocolate Hills, which got this name because they are brown during a certain time of the year (they were unfortunately green when I was there), I ate in a floating restaurant (a restaurant on a boat), I visited a native tribe, a small zoo with a big python, a ruined church and a monument.

A tarsier

The Chocolate Hills

View from the floating restaurant

Me with members of the tribe

The python

Church ruined by the earthquake 

Me next to a sculpture representing europeans and natives drinking each others blood (to become blood brothers, not because they're vampires or something)

Thailand-5

Hi. I know I haven't posted in a long time, but I can explain. the problem lies in the fact that I had problems with Internet connection, and also wit time, in the Philippines, which meant that I couldn't post. And as the days passed, the number of things I needed to post got bigger, which made my task even more difficult. So i have decided to start posting now, because I have more time, and instead of posting everything at the same time, I will gradually write posts about different locations. And I will not follow my usual formula of saying what happened each day, but give overviews instead.
Let's start with my last days in Thailand. Tuesday and Wednesday (19th and 20th of November) I didn't do anything special, like in the other days. Now you might have gotten the impression that I have been doing nothing and just slept on these days, but it isn't exactly like that. I just haven't done anything out of the ordinary, live visiting new places or doing new things. Instead I have done normal things like watching movies, series, playing games, reading, exercising... The main reason I haven't done anything special is because I had already been to Bangkok before, so I had seen most of the interesting stuff.
Thursday (21st of November) I left Thailand and flew to the Philippines.
You might be wondering why I stayed so long in Thailand, especially considering that I had been there before. Well, this was due to two factors: first one was the Chinese Visa, which took me longer than I intended, and the second one was the typhoon in the Philippines, due to which I decided to stay a bit longer in Thailand until things weren't as messy there.
But as I was saying, I went to the Philippines on the 21st of November, and I will be talking about that country on the next post.

Thailand-4

Hi, welcome once again to my blog, where I'll continue to describe my adventures in Bangkok.
Thursday I didn't do anything special, just stayed at home. Friday was similar, though I did go to a shopping center.
Saturday we went to the Ayutthaya Province (the family I'm with has another house there). The house was next to a river, where I sailed a bit around. We went to a place where I saw an elephant show and even took a ride on one, while appreciating the view of some old buildings.

Elephant in the show

Old structure

We then visited Bang Pa-in Palace, which has a lot of buildings and structures with different styles.

Thai-style structure

Chinese-style mansion (Phra Thinang Wehart Chamrun)

Classical Roman-style statue

Me in front of a Buddhist temple (Niwer Thammaprawat Temple) that looks like an European Christian Church

Sunday night we went to a river in Bangkok where we celebrated the Loi Krathong festival, by placing floating decorations (Krathongs) with lit candles on the river, firing fireworks and releasing a sky lantern
 (basically a small hot air ballon).

My Krathong

Krathongs floating in the river 

Firework being fired

A sky lantern

Monday (today) I got back to not doing anything special and just staying at home (I'm getting lazy).

Thailand-3

Hi. As you might have noticed, it's been some time since my last post, but I'll explain why. As might be expected, I have a lot to talk about, so let's get to it.
Last week's Wednesday (6th of November) I was expecting to deliver all the documents for the visa, but couldn't because of ONE document (that visa was really starting to get on my nerves at that moment). So I had to go back home and get it. But before that I had lunch in a shopping center, where I also got to use a very useful TOSHIBA product.

Thursday I was finally able to deliver all the documents and apply for the visa. I also got ready for my trip to Chiang Mai.

Friday I went to Chiang Mai by plane. I didn't want to bring too much stuff, so I only brought my small rucksack, which has limited space, with solely the necessary stuff inside. This excluded my laptop, and that's why I haven't been able to write on my blog while I was there (I could have written before going, but I didn't think it was worth it). I arrived at the airport and took a red taxi to my hostel, where I met my roommates. We decided to go out and have some fun, so we went to some bars and discos, where we sang karaoke and danced.

Me, with some people, at the entrance to a disco

Saturday, I decided to visit the old city. The city has a huge amount of temples, so I only visited some of them, notably Wat Chedi Luang and Wat Phra Singh. I also visited the 3 Kings Monument and the Chiang Mai Historical Centre.

Wat Chedi Luang

3 Kings Monument

Wat Phra Singh

Sunday I went to the Doi Suthep mountain, and visited the temple on its top, Wat Phra That Doi Suthep, from where I had a nice view of the whole city.

Stairway leading up to Wat Phra That Doi Suthep

The temple

View of the city 

Monday I took a Thai massage course, so I would just like to tell all the ladies out there that Mathias Ajami is now a very skilled masseur (or as skilled as you can get after a two-hour lesson), and is ready to use those skills on you ;). In the evening I visited the Night Bazaar, which was also quite interesting.

The Night Bazaar building

Tuesday I went on a bike trip, where I got to feed catfish and visited some rice fields and a very nice lake (Huay Tung Tao lake).

A catfish

Me next to a rice field

The lake

Wednesday (today) I flew back to Bangkok. I was picked up by my friend in Bangkok, and had lunch with him and two other prople he knew. The most interesting thing about this meal must have been the dessert, bread with ice cream (not kidding).

My dessert

I am now in his home again, writing this.