Soufriere, Dominica

We woke up from the sunrise before our 7am alarm. The hummingbirds were busy flitting about the flowering trees around our front deck. We had a snorkeling excursion this morning though so had no time to birdwatch and instead got cleaned up and headed to the restaurant for breakfast.

The restaurant was pretty empty except for other guests who also had morning excursions. We were seated by the window with a great view of Soufriere Bay where we were snorkeling later this morning. There was a nice breeze coming in from the ocean. (There’s no actual glass window, just wooden louvres).

It’s a buffet breakfast, with mostly local Dominica / Creole options such as saltfish, smoked herring and callaloo, as well as fresh fruit from their gardens: passionfruit, guava, soursop, bananas, pineapple, papaya and custard apple. They also had scrambled eggs for my provincial breakfast tastes :) the coffee was the same local Dominica coffee that we had yesterday afternoon! Although I stuck with my black tea (Liptons).

We got back to our room and got our snorkeling gear together. Luckily we were in one of the closest rooms to the main lodge - otherwise it’s up to a 10 minute walk or a wait for the golf cart shuttle.

We met up with Weefee, our snorkeling guide, right at 9am. We loaded our gear into the hotel van for the short five minute drive into Soufriere.

We were about to gear up when I realized I’d forgotten my camera in the van. So sort of ran back best I could in my dive boots to get it. On my way back I ran into one of the local characters who chatted me up for a few minutes. Heather and Weefee were wondering what was taking me so long, until me and my new friend rounded the corner and Weefee figured it out.

Anyways we entered the water from the shore at Bubble Beach. Soufriere Bay is a submerged volcano from which geothermal activity still bubbles to the top. The bubbles are more prevalent at the nearby Champagne Beach, but so are the cruise ship tourists.

Weefee led us around the bay, generally heading north. Almost immediately we spotted a couple leatherback turtles, and stingray, and some other type of ray. Not a bad start at all!

We turned back towards land and snorkeled alongside a wall where the rocky outcrop drops straight down into the water. Soufrière Bay has the calmest water in which I’ve ever snorkeled - perfect for taking pictures. Unfortunately it was an overcast day so the lighting wasn’t that great.

Towards the end, we saw an octopus! Neither of us had seen an octopus previously. It was really cool.

Just before we got back to shore, we warmed up by snorkeling through the bubbles. Haven’t done that before either :)

We had been out in the water for over 90 minutes and worked up an appetite. Weefee stopped in at a snackette in town for freshly made chicken roti, and then to another place for a local juice.

We drove back to the resort and had a very tasty lunch :)

That was it for our day, the rest of the afternoon we relaxed in our lodge, had a local coffee and ice cream, watched the birds closer to sunset.

For dinner I had the stewed goat and Heather had a plantain lasagna. Both were quite good. We’re preferring the a là carte menus here as opposed to the three-course set menu at Manicou River which was too much food for us. They also have Kubuli on tap (the local beer) so I had a couple :)

Mero Beach, Dominica

It was warmer this morning at Manicou River cause the winds had died down. We were glad we were moving to a place with a/c for the next few days.

We had breakfast, packed up and drove down the steep driveway one last time.

The road south follows the coast, about 90 minutes from tip to tip. The road was in pretty good condition and well-marked. It gets a bit of traffic, as you might expect between the two largest towns in the country.

We stopped for lunch in Mero Beach, based on a recommendation from Kayola, our host at Manicou River. Mero Beach is a cute little beach community, hidden from the main road. We parked at the first place we saw, Vena’s Snackette. Snackettes are typically take-out places, but Vena’s had a few tables in the shade. Got our food (fried chicken, plantain and a deep fried dough) and asked Vena what she had for drinks. She asked us if we wanted a local juice, sure! She ran over to her home across the street and got us two cherry drinks, made from cherries from the tree in her front yard. Later we figured out ‘local’ means homemade.

Anyways the food and local juice were excellent. Washed our hands using the tap on the street, and paid up. For some reason, Vena gave Heather a free package of cashews :)

Got back on the road continuing south. It got progressively busier as we approached the capital, Roseau. Google maps showed some of our route as red! This is normal in a capital, just a bit of a shock compared to the north.

The stop-and-go traffic in the heart of Roseau allowed me to sightsee from the car. It’s a very lively city, with brightly painted colonial buildings and busy sidewalks.

The road becomes narrower about 10 minutes south of Roseau, no longer a major thoroughfare. We passed through Loubière and Pointe Michel (cute little communities) before cutting inland, winding up and down a rocky outcrop. Finally we reached Jungle Bay! It was about 90 minutes driving time from Portsmouth, just as Google maps had predicted.

We checked in, and sorted out our snorkeling excursions over the next couple days. We had originally tried to book with Nature Island Dive, but they were swamped with divers. It was easier all around for us to just organize with the hotel. So they texted Simon at Nature Island and it was all good.

Our room was available so we got ourselves situated and relaxed for a bit. Caught up on laundry. Manicou River is a truer eco lodge and had a limited water supply based on rainfall, so we held off on doing our laundry there. We could have got laundry service but we’re nervous about our dryfit and merino wool stuff getting shrunk.

We went down to the restaurant in the main building for a coffee around 3pm. They had local Dominica coffee on the menu, from beans in nearby Giraudel. It was slightly muddy and excellent.

There’s lots of birds in the trees outside our front deck. I took a lot of pics. I started tracking our sightings in the Merlin app. We recognized a few based on our birdwatching excursion a couple days ago.

Later we went down for dinner. It was packed in the restaurant, with a lot of groups chit chatting away. Quite a difference from the last place where we were the only guests!

We went to bed early-ish. We heard some wings flapping in the dark and thought maybe a bird had flown in earlier. When it flew around it sounded like a bat. Turned out to be a black witch moth, with a wing span of 7" (!) Set up the mosquito net to keep it away from us.

The a/c was nice :)

Calibishie, Dominica

We finally had a day to sleep in, so of course we were up shortly after sunrise at 6:11. We’re west of Tete Montagne (301m) and Morne Balvine (303m) so the sun doesn’t hit Portsmouth until an hour later, and almost 8am before our hotel was in the sun. It was really pleasant in the shade.

We had a leisurely breakfast, including oatmeal which was really good. We then packed up for our day’s excursion to the north east of Dominica, in and around Calibishie.

The road from Portsmouth to Calibishie cuts through the mountains and is constant blind turns and narrow roads. It’s not for inexperienced drivers, that’s for sure. It does get very scenic once the road gets back to oceanside - driving through Bense and Calibishie is really atmospheric, one of the prettiest drives I’ve done. The buildings are painted a mishmash of bright colours, with hand painted signs for grocery stores and restaurants and the like.

Our first activity for the day was a trek to Chaudiere Pool. Various blogs had described it either as a 15 min walk, or a 45 min trek, depending on how far you drove in. We chose the 45 min trek, parking where the paved road ended. We were glad we did as the dirt road is in terrible shape, I’m not sure our little RAV4 would have made it. Also I could enjoy the view atop the ridge as we walked instead of focusing on the road.

There were a few friendly goats along the way, munching on grass. It took us about 30 minutes to walk to the cutoff to Chaudiere Pool, it’s well marked.

From the cutoff it’s a somewhat steep descent down for about 10 minutes. There was vehicle parked at the bottom, probably a guided tour & local driver. It’s then about a 5 minute walk through the forest over a maintained path to Hampstead River, where the crossing on big rocks is marked with painted arrows.

At first we thought we had to cross the 2nd half of the river as well, but the pool is just 50m further upstream. It’s a nice little destination. Most people have a swim in the pool, but we were just in it for the walk and the view.

It’s not busy at all at Chaudiere Pool. We ran into less than 10 people in total, including a couple with a driver/guide who were the ones with the vehicle we’d seen at the bottom. On our way out we saw a solo traveler who had also driven all the way in.

On the walk out along the ridge, the couple and guide passed by in their vehicle. One the goats had crossed the road with their rope around their neck, blocking the road. Heather had to help herd the goat back across so the vehicle could pass. The goat gave Heather a nice friendly look after.

We made it back to our car, about 1h30 walking in total. We weren’t quite hungry yet so headed for Red Rocks. As you might guess from the name, these are rock formations in varying shades of red, eroded by the ocean and rain. There’s lots of signage but still a bit confusing to get to. It’s a 5 EC (about 2 USD) per person to enter, as the access path cuts through private property.

It’s cool to see, different from the other sights here. The red rocks contrast nicely with the blue ocean. We ran into the same couple & guide from Chaudiere Pool.

We then headed back into Calibishie for lunch. We had planned to eat at Unique Seaview which gets great reviews, but it wasn’t open for lunch :( so we went next door to Coral Reef, which has a restaurant tucked in behind their grocery store. It has great views of the ocean, and is literally right beside Unique View, which makes me wonder about their name.

Anyways it got really busy just after we ordered, including our favourite couple and guide. It’s a common itinerary so it’s not unusual to run into the same people again and again.

Our food came out very quickly, and it was excellent. The restaurant was mostly filled with locals, which was nice. Calibishie is probably the furthest you can get away from the cruise ship port, and so one of the least touristed areas in Dominica.

For dessert we drove back towards Red Rock, to visit Pointe Baptiste Chocolate Factory. The tour itself (20 EC / 10 CAD for a group) was short yet informative, and covered from cocao pods to grinding the nibs to packaging. We got multiple samples cause we were just a group of two; my favourite was the chocolate with lemon grass (it’s commonly seen growing here). We bought a bar for later.

Last on our itinerary for the day was Batibou Beach. They charged 5 USD per person to access it and we just wanted a quick view, so instead called it a day and drove back to Manicou River.

Back at the hotel, we cooled down as best we could without a/c. It was less windy today and felt warmer. The forecast called for low winds the rest of the week so good thing we were moving south to Jungle Bay for the rest of the week.

We had dinner enjoying the view one last time, and then called it a night.

Syndicate Nature Trail, Dominica

The temperature was really pleasant in our cottage from about 4am onwards, after we turned on the fan. It’s an open cottage (there’s no walls on the front half facing the ocean) and it was really windy, so I didn’t think we’d need the fan, but it made a difference.

Unfortunately we had to get up at 7am for our birdwatching trek today. (We’ll finally get to sleep in tomorrow for the first time on this vacation). Breakfast was super quick - we had fresh fruit, yoghurt, scrambled eggs and toast in about 30 minutes. It helped that we were the only guests.

We drove down the steep driveway which didn’t seem as scary today, now that we knew what to expect. We were meeting Dr Birdy at the Rubis gas station near the National Bank, a typical small-town direction. The bank is in the centre of Portsmouth which was lively at 9am. The popular Indian River cruise departs nearby and the parking folks tried to flag us into their parking lot.

Dr Birdy arrived a couple minutes after us. We followed his car to get out of Portsmouth, and then parked and joined him in his vehicle, along with a couple other folks on our excursion. Shane and Nya were from Florida and Shane was a serious birder.

We drove towards Syndicate National Trail. Once we turned off the main north-south road, Dr Birdy lowered the windows so he could hear the bird calls. We stopped a few times along the way to spot an endemic species or two.

Dr Birdy’s real name is Bertrand, and he is the foremost expert on birds in Dominica. He’s like royalty here - other guides would stop their car to get out and say hello to him. He’s super knowledgeable - we were lucky he had availability for the time we were here.

It was cool spotting the hummingbirds and other species. I was able to get some good pics, and then my battery died from all the zooming in. My spare was also dead :( I had charged the spares about a month ago but they tend to lose their charge over time even when not in use. Oh well. I could at least enjoy the birds without trying to take pics too.

We arrived at the trail head for Syndicate where there was a check for our passes (all four of us had a weekly pass). You need a pass to enter some of the National Parks here ($5 per park, or $12 for a weekly pass) but they’re not always sold at the checkpoints. If you know about the passes, it’s easy to buy beforehand (our hotel sold them for example).

Dr Birdy knew all the places to spot the various species. We had seen three of the four hummingbirds found in Dominica, and he knew where to stop to see the blue-headed hummingbird. Right on cue, and exactly where he had pointed his scope, a blue-headed hummingbird appeared. Dr Birdy said it’s its favourite perch after feeding on nectar. Shane was pleased to check that off his list.

We made our way further into the park, and to a viewpoint across a valley. We saw several red-necked amazon parrots fly by. We waited for about hour trying to spot the rarer imperial amazon parrot but to no avail. I think Shane would have waited out the afternoon, as any self-respecting serious birder would. The rest of us were more interested in lunch, and so eventually he gave in. An excuse for another trip he said.

We made our way back out, with both Dr Birdy and Shane on the lookout for a ruddy quail-dove which tend to scurry along the forest ground. Over the course of the morning we spotted 34 species of birds (at least Shane saw that many, our total could be lower).

It was about 2:30pm, and most lunch places recommended by Dr Birdy had closed, except for Infinity Restaurant so that’s where we headed. It appeared closed but the person outside said it was indeed open. So we parked and made our way into the restaurant. It was a nice setting overlooking a river. We both ordered a shrimp dish which came out almost immediately, and both were excellent!

Drove back to our hotel. Yesterday we had figured out how to cool the cottage down - lowering the blinds and opening the door for a cross-breeze. We also had a cool shower. Much better than our arrival yesterday!

Towards sunset we made our way down to the restaurant for a sundowner, followed by too much dinner :)

Portsmouth, Dominica

Breakfast was pretty slow at our hotel in Antigua, enough so that Heather left to finish packing up while waiting for our food.

There was another guest (Nik) also waiting for a taxi at 10am, turned out he was on our flight to Dominica! We were both surprised as not many people travel there.

Our Caribbean Airlines flight was full, although it continued on to Trinidad where we figure was where most people were headed. (It’s actually the same leg we’ll be taking at the end of our trip).

It was really hot in the plane while we waited to depart. The flight attendant was using the safety instructions as a fan. The flight itself was only 45 minutes, with a great view of Dominica as we approached for landing. It’s completely covered in trees and volcanic peaks, Jurassic-park like.

It’s one of the smallest international airports we’ve flown through, smaller even than Sāo Tomé. (The population of Dominica is only 72,000).

For those trivia buffs out there, Dominica is one of four countries in the world with purple in their flag.

Immigration was straightforward, and then we waited for our luggage. They showed up on the conveyor before the AirTags could register (maybe not enough iOS devices around).

The car rental booths were a couple minute walk down from the airport. Our rental place (Courtesy Cars) was waiting for us. It took a bit longer than I expected cause they had to fill out the paperwork to issue a temporary local drivers license for me.

And so we were off in our Toyota RAV4, an hour drive to our hotel, Manicou River Resort. I had booked a standard but we ended up with an automatic :( and a rather beaten up one at that. At least we won’t have to worry about any minor nicks or bumps!

We had read poor reviews of the road conditions in Dominica. I didn’t find it that bad, about like Troödos Mountains in Cyprus, narrow roads, blind corners and steep drop offs.

We took about an hour to get close to the hotel, just as Google maps predicted. But there was no signage for the cutoff to the private road up the hill. We made a u-turn and on the way back asked someone for directions (across a small bridge and then turn left. Or maybe before the bridge). We took a left after the bridge, and from there I guessed directions based on satellite view in Google maps. The road sometimes disappeared in the tree coverage so guessing was involved.

The road was extremely steep, we couldn’t see the road in front of us at points. It was also single car width, fortunately no cars were going in the other direction as I’m not sure how we would have passed each other.

Finally we saw a sign, Entrance by invitation only, and we knew we were on the right track.

It was a little confusing as we arrived, as one of the hotel folks said to just park in the driveway and then helped us with our luggage. The mystery cleared up when we found out we were the only guests tonight (only three cottages survived the hurricane in 2017) so they were expecting us.

It’s an off the grid eco-lodge, solar powered and the like. (But with wifi in each cottage, lol). It’s built on the side of a 45* hill, with the downslope side of the lodge completely open. It was also facing the sun in the afternoon, and the combo direct sun and reflected sun from the ocean made it very hot. The overall effect was a bit more rustic than we’d prefer. But the view is amazing and it’s one of the top rated hotels on the north side of the island (the lesser touristed half). (Spoiler alert, we figured out how to keep it cooler the next day).

We showered and then headed over for dinner. There was a table of five other guests (just here for dinner) so it made for a livelier restaurant. We had a sundowner, watching the sun set beside Cabrits National Park, with lights from yachts in Prince Rupert Bay dotting the horizon. Very atmospheric.

We were really hungry when dinner was served, as we had missed lunch and didn’t want to mess with the access road again today to get into town for food. It was tasty, grilled chicken and a smorgasbord of other stuff. There were no bugs at all, which was surprising to us and also made it very pleasant out. It was still very hot in the room and it took us a while to fall asleep.

St John’s, Antigua

We had a 10am flight to Antigua which seemed like a reasonable hour, except the Caribbean still counts as an international flight :( so we were up at 5ish, took a taxi to Union and then UP Express to Pearson. We find the UP Express more relaxing than a taxi ride straight to the airport.

Air Canada Rouge had pretty decent food on the flight down. They also had free wifi so I checked the location of my AirTags, they showed in the North Atlantic Ocean so all good :)

Customs and immigration in Antigua was more about administration, as long as all the boxes were filled in I’m not sure they cared about content.

We got some cash from a CIBC (!) bank machine in the airport. Both Antigua and Dominica use the East Caribbean Dollar and it’s easier to get cash in the larger Antigua. I think USD and Euros are mostly accepted everywhere we’re going but it doesn’t hurt to have some local currency.

There was a well-organized shared taxi service just outside the airport, $25 USD flat rate for the two of us. I forgot to bring small USD bills so the driver got a larger tip than normal (likely, this is by design).

We booked overnight at the Weatherills hotel, a restored 17th century estate house. It has lots of character, and a windmill that you can climb up.

Checked in, got ourselves situated, and walked around the grounds. We had a drink at the bar in front of the lawn bowling area. There was a nice breeze and it was really relaxing, plus the bartender made a super refreshing non-alcoholic cocktail. There were some cattle grazing in a field in the distance; we couldn’t see that far so had to ask what they were (sheep).

Cleaned up back in the room and then headed down for dinner at 7pm. There was just one other table but we were just early. The hotel restaurant is popular for non-guests and by 8pm it was full. The food was pretty good. Our favourite was the marlin crudo.

We were tired from our early start so were in bed and asleep by 9pm. It didn’t seem like a transit day though.

Toronto, Canada

And we're back on the road! this time just for a week in Dominica. The trip came together rather quickly compared to most of our other trips -- we first discussed the trip back in January after returning from Seoul.

I'm not really sure how we picked Dominica. It's more known for its waterfalls and trekking and snorkeling, and less so its beaches. It's part of the Lesser Antilles (that doesn't mean anything to me, my geographical knowledge of the Caribbean is poor). The airport is small so you need to fly in from other nearby islands, and so it's fairly under-touristed -- they only get about 60,000 overnight visitors per year. It is part of the cruise ship circuit so there's lots of day trippers near the port in Roseau, but it's easy enough to get away from that if you're staying overnight. We have a layover in Antigua on the way in, and Trinidad on the way out.

I've always pronounced the country incorrectly, thinking it sounded like the Dominican Republic. It's more of a French pronounciation, similar to Dominique, with an 'a' at the end.

We're renting a car to get around, and of course as with any country where we rent a car, they drive on the left side. We've rented cars in 10 countries over our travels, of which 8 of them were left-hand drive. I was able to book a standard (yay!), so it will be fun to drive around the curves and hills. We had a standard in South Africa and I really enjoyed driving in and around the Drakensberg. The offline Google map for the whole of Dominica takes up 65 MB (by comparison, my default Home offline map of the GTA takes up 128 MB).

Packing for this trip was pretty easy, as we're only dealing with one climate. Mostly it's what we packed to get around Fiji, including all our snorkeling gear. The temperature for the week is highs of 28C and lows of 24C which sounds good to me :)

Hopefully the next time I update we'll be in Antigua!

Toronto, Canada

We're back home, mostly recovered from the jetlag. It was a nice little trip over the holidays.

This trip was about the food almost as much as the sites! So I have two lists of highlights. First, our favourite eats, in order of eating:

• Ramen at Oreno Ramen in Seoul *
• Ise-ebi lobster lunch combo at Payao Fish Market in Okinawa
• Steamed buns on Dihua Street in Taipei
• Pineapple buns in Tonghua St Night Market in Taipei
• Bào bīng (shaved ice cream and fruit) in Tainan
• Dumplings at Hang Zhou Xiao Long Bao in Taipei
• Xiao long bao at Din Tai Fung in Taipei *
• Beef noodles at Tien Hsia San Chueh in Taipei *
• Twisted doughnuts in Gwangjang Market in Seoul

* Michellin rated

And our favourite sites, in no particular order:

• Gyeongbokgung Palace in Seoul (#84 on my Top 100)
• Castles in Okinawa *
• Tsuboya Pottery District in Naha
• National Palace Museum in Taipei
• Dalongdong Bao’an Temple in Taipei
• Taipei Confucius Temple in Taipei
• Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall in Taipei (#83 on my Top 100)
• Mazu Temple in Lukang (#78 on my Top 100)
• Lukang old town at night
• Sanfong Temple at night in Kaohshiung
• Grand Matsu Temple in Tainan
• Tiantan Tian Gong Temple in Tainan
• Anping old town outside Tainan
• Gwangjang Market in Seoul
• Ikseondong hanok village in Seoul
• Tuned mass damper inside Taipei 101 in Taipei
• Changdeokgung Palace in Seoul *

* UNESCO World Heritage Sites

There were lots more temples and museums and markets that we liked, I've just noted the highlights above. There would likely have been more UNESCO sites on our list but Taiwan isn't recognized by the UN.

Google translate makes it much easier to travel where you don't speak or read the local language. Google Maps and Uber also make it easy to get around. We didn't use any of the Korean we had tried to learn through Duolingo, although we did recognize when someone asked us if we were students when buying a ticket to enter some museum. (Student (학생) is one of the first Korean words taught in Duolingo).

We planned out about the right amount of time in each place we stayed. There's much more to see in Seoul but it was more of an extended transit stop on this trip; when we have a trip focusing on Korea we'll get to see more of Seoul. We also just changed trains in Taichung (Taiwan) — it looked like a cool place to visit, and not on the tourist map even though it's the 2nd largest city in Taiwan. The eastern mountainous side of Taiwan also looked cool. It takes a bit of time and effort to travel through there, and generally anything less accessible we find more interesting.

We used masks quite a bit in Taiwan, especially on transportation and in museums. We also used masks whenever traveling through airports. In Seoul and Okinawa, mask usage wasn't that prevalent. In Taiwan about 75% or more folks wore masks, in particular almost all hotel and restaurant staff. (It was odd to us when we arrived back in Seoul after two weeks in Taiwan and the hotel staff weren't wearing masks!)

The subway system in Taipei was super easy to use, with very frequent subways (I think we waited at most three minutes). We just bought single-trip tokens which was pretty easy, except once in Taipei Main when we couldn't find the MRT ticket machine (in our defence, Taipei Main is a major transportation hub with subway, high-speed rail, regular rail, and an airport LRT). The train system in Taiwan was also very easy to use and very punctual. We didn't take the subway in Seoul because the tourist attractions are compact enough to walk. People were very orderly everywhere on this trip, making getting on/off the subway really efficient.

Apple Pay worked most places, except a few in spots in Seoul, where we just used a regular credit card. It was cash-only in the markets.

All the places we visited were really safe, probably the safest places we've visited. Hopefully we didn't develop any bad travel safety habits for our future trips :)

Overall it was a very relaxing and enjoyable trip!

Seoul, South Korea

On recent trips we've used guidebooks to varying degrees, mostly to map out highlights of cities. They're still useful for navigating larger historical sites such as the Karnak Temple complex in Egypt. Heather also likes them for the historical context they provide. We're not really partial to a particular brand; it's more likely to be the most recently published one.

On this trip we had the Lonely Planet for Seoul and Taiwan, and an independent guidebook for Okinawa. We didn't use much of the Okinawa book (it covers the entire Ryukyu Island chain, of which we visited just the southern half of Okinawa Honto).

It took me most of the trip to figure out how to use the LP for Seoul. It's set up by neighbourhood, so you need to know what highlights you want to see (from other sources), and then use the LP to see what else is around the highlights. But you can't use the LP to figure out highlights (which is how I would have typically used it in the past).

Anyways for today (our last day touristing on this trip) we wanted to see the Seoul Museum of Art and Namdaemun Market. We planned out a nice little walking tour, including some places mentioned in the LP. They're not on 'top things to see' lists but were pretty cool.

First up was City Hall, just down the street from our hotel (we could see it from our room). It has a huge green wall, seven stories high, that was the largest in the world when it first opened in 2012. There's also an artwork that goes from floor to ceiling. It was interesting enough to see.

Across the street from City Hall is Deoksugung Palace. We lucked out that we reached there just after 11am and got to see the changing of the guard. They have a photo op with the guards before the change, then they clear everyone out and go through their ceremony. The sun was out and in the right direction for pics so took a bunch.

Deoksugung was included our combo ticket. We ended up visiting all the sites on the combo ticket except for two. Entry fees are pretty low (about $2 / site) so it was more about the convenience of not having to line up to buy tickets everywhere.

Deoksugung itself contains a handful of palaces and the National Museum of Art. The museum is separate admission (only $1 or something) so we bought our tickets and entered. The current exhibit, spread across the six rooms in the museum, was a retrospective on Chang Ucchin, one of Korea's pioneering modern artists. It was cool to see, and not that busy.

We were at our museum capacity for the day, so skipped out on the Seoul Museum of Art, which was next on our list. Instead, walked towards Namdaemun Market, and the start of Seoullo 7017. Along the way we passed by Sungnyemun, one of the Eight Gates of Seoul. We crossed the street to get better pics of the gate, and as I was taking my pics, Heather motioned for me to watch out for some people trying to walk by. Turns out we had stumbled into another ceremonial changing of the guard, and the 'people walking by' were actually the guards marching towards the gate! So took some more pics.

A couple hundred metres down the street was an access point to Seoullo 7017. It's a former highway overpass that was converted to a pedestrian walkway with plants and seating areas, sort of like the High Line in NYC. It's probably more interesting in the summer; when we visited it just contained large plant pots with burlap protecting the plants over winter.

Walked back along the path to Namdaemun market. They had a very helpful info booth in the middle. They gave us a map of the market and circled the alleys with food. There were a number of stalls selling hotteok, a very popular street food in the winter. It's a thick pancake with a sweet filling, served rolled up in a paper cup. We found a stall with a line-up and waited for our turn. The lady behind us was pleased that we wanted to try one each of the flavours (sweet potato and honey & seeds). They were excellent!

Next we searched out the restaurant alley and picked a busy one for lunch. The food was okay, although we were still a bit full from the hotteok. After we walked through a bit more of the market. It's more of a wholesaler market, with mostly clothing and bedding, and not as photogenic as some of the other food-based ones. Very atmospheric though!

We were getting tired so headed back to the hotel to pack up. On the way back, stopped by Koffee Sniffer which was an excellent little hipster coffee place.

Later in the evening I got an PSA alert in Korean on my iPhone. After translating in Google, it turned out the alert was just about the forecast for snow and a reminder to shovel your sidewalk. Not sure I'd rate that as important enough to push out across the entire mobile network :) Anyways we finished packing, the end of our little trip!

Seoul, South Korea

Seoul has a compact core with most of the tourist highlights within a 20 minute walk of our hotel. It’s also a very walkable city.

We started at a couple of hanok villages - Insadong and Ikseondong. Hanoks are the traditional Korean homes, in these two villages mostly gentrified.

Insadong has lots of boutique stores and art galleries. It’s also where you can get a custom-made dojang stamp. These are the traditional Korean seals used to sign/stamp documents. It takes about 30 minutes for them to create so we placed our order for pickup later in the day.

Across the street is Ikseondong. It’s filled with little restaurants and cafes. We were still full from breakfast so just browsed. The places looked really good though. There’s a couple Michelin rated ones which had long lineups.

Next to Ikseondong is the Jongmyo Shrine. It’s included in the combo ticket we had bought the first time through Seoul when we saw Gyeongbokgung Palace. However during the week you can just visit Jongmyo as part of a one hour tour. We just wanted to cut through on the way to Changyeongung Palace. So walked around Jongmyo Plaza Park.

Changyeongung Palace was okay to see. It leads to Changdeokgung Palace which is amazing, one of the highlights in Seoul. I took a lot of pics. Also included in our combo ticket was the Secret Garden, but it’s probably better visited not in winter.

From there it was a ten minute walk to Gwangjang Market. We worked our way to the food section. This was one of the cooler markets I’ve seen. There were food stalls on both sides and lined up the middle, all filled with people sitting on benches enjoying lunch.

The mantu stalls looked yummy so we grabbed a seat. The stall person motioned for us to squeeze in closer so that there was room for more folks. We tried steamed mantu and mantu in a soup broth. Mantu is similar in flavour to manti, the stuffed dumplings we had in Uzbekistan. I googled and turns out it’s generally the same thing. It was excellent.

After lunch we walked around the market, it’s really photogenic. There was a long line up for a donut stall. It moved really quick though, so we joined the line. About ten minutes later we had a twisted donut each, freshly cooked. It was amazing!!

We walked back to Insadong to pick up our dojangs, and then back towards the hotel. The mall next door had a Kakao Friends store, which was another souvenir I wanted for our key shelf. Kakao Friends are emoticons used in a hugely popular texting app in Korea.

Just around the corner was a seesaw statue that Heather had read about. It was cool.

After dinner we tried to visit Deoksugung (they light it up and supposedly it’s really pretty), but it closes at 9pm so we missed it today.

That wrapped up our day, we saw quite a bit with lots of variety. We also picked up both the souvenirs we wanted for the key shelf, so a very successful day!

Seoul, South Korea

We had carefully planned out getting to Taoyuan International this morning, right down to having exactly 40 TWD in coins for the MRT and 300 TWD in bills for the express train. I felt like the bad guys in Die Hard 3. I’m sure John McClane would have figured out our destination.

Our flight to Seoul was at 12:20, so it turned into a full transit day :( Oh well, traveling between countries usually takes up the full day.

We flew Korean Air, it was pretty good. Even got a decent hot meal for lunch!

I had booked our flight in Feb so we were the 2nd row in economy, for the luggage space under the seat and front of the line for immigration.

We were through both customs and immigration in no time. We couldn’t track our AirTags in Seoul but couldn’t see our luggage elsewhere in the world so assumed it was here. Sure enough our luggage came out.

We debated taking the subway but Naver was showing it 20 minutes faster driving so just took a taxi. Less than an hour later we were at our hotel.

We just had dinner in the hotel lounge and planned out the next two days. We won’t get to see everything this time but that’s okay; Seoul only became a destination this trip cause of the direct flight from Toronto.

We had to look up thank-you and hello in Korean again. Also said xie xie (thanks in Taiwanese) a few times out of habit :(

Somehow we ended up walking 7.5km today. I guess with transit transfers in Taipei and walking through the airports it adds up.

Taipei, Taiwan

The forecast had called for rain today and it was right :(

We didn’t plan to do much today, partially cause of the rain and also because we had to pack up for our flight to Seoul tomorrow. We had accumulated quite a bit of stuff over the past two weeks (including my shoes!) and it all needed to fit in one suitcase each.

Anyways we started the day at National Taiwan Museum Nanmen Branch. On the way there we walked through 228 Peace Memorial Park. It’s dedicated to the Feb 2, 1947 massacre of thousands participating in the drive for independence. (I knew very little of Taiwan's history until this trip). The park was peaceful in the rain.

The museum was small but excellent. There’s several branches, it’s the Nanmen one that we visited. It’s built in an old camphor factory. The ground floor was about the history of camphor and opium in Taiwan. Camphor is still used today in some products, including Salonpas (pain relief patches) and Tiger Balm. The upstairs was a special exhibition on the history of electricity in Taiwan which I found way more interesting than I would have thought. Both floors were really cool, with good English descriptions.

We had lunch at a sushi place based on Google maps. It was okay. We’ve had such great sushi on this trip that anything less is just meh. We did like their scallops (with lime), squid and yellowtail.

After lunch we took the MRT up to the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. This had cool contemporary art and was a nice contrast to the museums we saw in the morning. By 3pm we tapped out, and took the MRT home.

We had reservations for dinner at the hotel restaurant. It’s highly rated and based on their breakfasts we had high hopes. We ordered a la carte - appetizers to share (soft shell crab, grilled cauliflower and a deconstructed pho). All were excellent. We both had pork dishes for our mains which were also excellent. It was a nice end to our Taiwan leg of the trip!

Taipei,Taiwan

It was a beautiful day outside, blue sky, no humidity, about 22C. Perfect day to take the gondola up to Maokong!

The gondola base is conveniently located at the end of the Wenhu MRT line. The MRT is above ground on the last few stops and pretty scenic. It’s then a 5 minute walk to the gondola. We arrived around 10am to beat the crowds - we only waited about five minutes to get on the gondola. We bought a day pass in case we stopped off at the various stops to sightsee on the way down. (We ended up not, but it was less than 1 CAD each extra for the day pass).

In our gondola cabin was an older couple who had visited Toronto and studied at York. We think they were both professors. Anyways it was nice chatting with them on the 30 minute ride up to the top.

We decided to walk over to Zhangshan Temple, about 20 minutes up the road. It’s a beautiful walk through tea farms with great views of the city skyline. A lot of locals come up here to hike the trails or for bike rides - it’s really close to the centre yet seems miles away.

Walked back towards the gondola and stopped for lunch at a place (Spring Tea County) that looked busy with groups of friends. The restaurant said it would be a 40 minute wait for food, which was okay by us as they had seated us on the balcony with a beautiful view of Taipei 101 and the skyline.

We ordered a bunch of tea-inspired dishes - fried rice with tea leaves, fried chicken in tea oil, fried king mushrooms and steamed greens. We really liked the rice and mushrooms, although it was all good.

We tried to get a green tea ice cream a couple stores down, but the ice cream machine stopped working when we were literally the next in line. Oh well.

Took the gondola back down, and the MRT over to an antique market in town. The market itself was pretty small and just starting to open; however it was in a really cute part of town. We wandered around (one of the best weather days we’ve had), came across a tofu pudding place and stopped in to try some - it was one of the last food items on our list. It was really good.

We browsed through the nearby Yongkang shopping district which was very lively. Google had marked the end of the street as a photo op. I assumed it was where you were supposed to take a pic of Yongkang St. We got there and looked around, and realized there was an unobstructed view of Taipei 101 framed by Xinyi Rd! The lighting was excellent as it was nearing dusk. That was a nice little bonus on our walk.

Walked the rest of the way back to the hotel and cleaned up. We wanted to try Din Tai Fung for dinner, a Michelin-rated dumpling place and supposedly some of the best dumplings in Taipei. There was a branch just next door to us in SOGO mall. It sometimes has wait times of up to two hours! They have a good reservation system though - you can stop by in person and get a number and QR code. You can then use the QR code to place your order and see how long the wait is for your number.

So I went across and got a QR code, the wait was about 80 minutes. Returned back to the hotel (just a four minute walk, almost all underground, similar to the PATH system in Toronto), had a beer and caught up in my blog.

Around 75 minutes later we went back to Din Tai Fung. We still had another 20 minutes wait before we were seated.

I had preordered using the QR code, including xiao long bao, steamed dumplings, shao mai and pot stickers. They run a tight ship here - we were seated, had another server come by to explain the proper way to mix soy sauce and vinegar for our xiao long bao (1 part soy 3 parts vinegar) and then our food started coming out from the kitchen. There was an instruction card on how to eat - place the xiao long bao in you spoon, use your chop stick (just called ‘chops’ in Taiwan) to poke a hole, sip the broth that spills out, then lightly dip in the soy mixture, add a sliver of pickled ginger and enjoy! It was the best dumplings ever.

After dinner we walked about 15 minutes to a place marked on Google maps as Taipei 101 street photo point. I had looked on street view to make sure we weren't being pranked. It had an even fuller view of Taipei 101 with nice street lighting framing the pic.

Thus ended another day of good eats in Taiwan! Good thing we walked over 17km today :)

Taipei, Taiwan

We’ve found Jan 1 to be a good day when traveling cause the things that are open are usually very under-touristed. Today we had a train ride to Taipei and then an afternoon to sightsee.

Had breakfast in Tainan, packed up, walked across the street to the train station (much easier now that we had figured out how to access the bridge).

We took a local train from Tainan main to the HSR station, about five stops. Most people were doing the same thing so it was easy, plus they announced the stations in English.

We used our local train ticket to exit and then our HSR ticket to enter the HSR station. The train system is fully automated for passengers here (I guess it’s similar to the GO train back home).

We settled in for the 90 minute ride to Taipei. We used the time to read up on Taipei and what to do over the next couple days.

In Taipei we transferred to the MRT (subway) and three stops later we were at our hotel. Easy peasy.

Our room wasn’t available yet (it was just past noon) so we left our bags behind and headed off for lunch near Taipei 101.

Our hotel had made a reservation for us at a restaurant in a mall (a lot of good restaurants are found in malls here). In the mall we ran into a Onitsuka Tiger store! I’m a big fan of Mexico 66 SD’s, but they’re very hard to find in North America. Here was a store fully stocked with them! Yes, here I was in Taiwan, shopping for shoes in a mall.

Luckily cause we hadn’t yet checked in I still had my passport on me, so was able to claim a tax credit. Conveniently there’s a tax return place right in the mall :)

We left the shoeboxes at the store to pick up later, and went for lunch. The restaurant specialized in teas (their food is also very good). We both had some premium teas, and a set lunch of fried rice with pork, miso soup and accoutrements. We also split a grilled corn appetizer. Mmm good.

Taipei 101 was a few minutes walk away. The entrance is through a mall, on the 5th floor. It was very busy. Bought our ticket at the kiosk. It’s timed entry so we had an hour to kill. We browsed through the mall, but it’s not really a browsing mall - here most stores were luxury goods stores that had retractable belt stanchions in the front to keep out the riff raff like us.

Finally our entry window came up. (Actually we went 30 minutes early but they didn’t care). Waited about ten minutes to catch the elevator. It was very quick, taking 37 seconds to reach the 89th floor.

The views are great from the observation deck, as you would expect. The coolest part was the tuned mass damper in the middle. This is a big yellow weight that acts as a counter-balance in high winds and earthquakes. They had videos of the damper swaying (I guess it’s actually the building swaying but it’s all relative) when recent earthquakes had struck.

There was a longer line up to get back down. We walked back to the Onitsuka Tiger store to pick up my shoes, and caught the subway home.

For dinner we headed back to the Michelin-starred beef noodle place near the hotel. Another day of great eating!

Tainan, Taiwan

We had seen all the places on our list in Tainan over the last couple days, so had a free day :) We debated just wandering around the random small alleys in the centre. Decided instead to head to the Anping District, about 20 minutes by taxi on the coast. There’s an old Dutch fort to see, a couple temples, and Anping Old Street with markets and small alleys.

Our taxi driver chatted with us on the drive to the coast, the first taxi driver we’ve had that did so. He had actually visited Canada recently, including Yellowknife to see the Northern Lights. He observed that during Covid when travel was largely restricted to within country borders, there were far more options for folks in larger geographical countries such as Canada, vs Taiwan, which is less than 400km tip to tip. In Canada there were also provincial restrictions, but Ontario itself is pretty big :)

We were dropped off at Eternal Golden Castle, a fort on the shores of the Taiwan Strait. Paid our entry fee, and walked around the ramparts. There’s not much to see except some replica canyons. It had a cool atmosphere though.

We walked along the waterfront through a park. It was warm today - the high was near 27C and sunny. The waterfront is being redeveloped, it will look nice when it’s done.

Between the hotel map and Google maps it was confusing to figure out where things were. The hotel map had the same sites marked in multiple places, and Google had yet something different. So we just followed the path along the waterfront.

Crossed over the canal and entered old Anping. It was bustling, maybe cause it was a Sunday? Or maybe this was normal every day? We weren’t sure.

There were lots of food stalls, nothing that caught our fancy, so we continued through to the restaurants just outside the market through small alleyways.

We ended up at a cute little Thai restaurant (Moveforward), rated highly on Google maps. It was excellent, although we might have ordered too much food. (And we had booked a NYE dinner special at 6:30pm back at the hotel!)

Checked out the Anping Kaitai Tianhou Temple after lunch. It was pretty nice, although we are getting a bit out-templed.

We figured out later that there are actually three forts in Anping, and the other two were a stone’s throw from the temple. Oh well. We were done for the day, and just grabbed a taxi home.

Relaxed and then cleaned up for our big NYE dinner special at the hotel. It was the first time in a while traveling that we’ve had a dinner special for NYE - usually these are pretty elaborate and extend to midnight. Here it was just dinner, we had to be out by 9pm so they could set up for the partyers. The soup course was the hit of the meal - a chicken broth with an egg roll.

Around 8pm we heard a pianist start up in the lounge, who was amazing. We settled up at the restaurant to head down to listen; and then realized the pianist was a guest who looked to be about 10 years old. He stopped playing after a couple songs :(

Back up in our room we watched a bit of the NYE fireworks in Sydney, and then went to bed before midnight our time, around 10pm.

Tainan, Taiwan

It was very foggy out when we woke up - we could barely see the railway station across the tracks. As the sun rose and burnt off the fog, we realized there was quite a bit of pollution here in Tainan. Our iPhone doesn’t give an air quality index for cities in Taiwan, but it looked bad. I guess with all the cloudy days we hadn’t noticed.

The hotel had pretty good western options for breakfast - we both went off-menu and ordered French toast with scrambled eggs on the side. They actually had teapots too!

The forecast called for clouds with no rain, and enough of a UV index to require sunscreen.

As soon as we stepped outside the hotel it started raining, so we went back up to grab our umbrellas.

Most of the buildings in the core have a sheltered walkway, so it was just on occasion that we used the umbrellas. Probably did not need sunscreen though. It ended up raining most of the day, but it wasn’t an inconvenience.

We started at Tiantan Tian Gong Temple. I quite liked this temple - it was really beautiful. The rain seemed to be keeping some tourists away - Google maps said less busy than usual at all the outdoor sites today. I took a lot of pics. There was a good description in English at the entrance about the highlights of the temple.

We randomly walked by Chuan Mei Theatre, which has hand-painted movie posters advertising what’s playing. Wouldn’t have gone out of our way to see it but it was cool to see in passing.

We also randomly walked by a lantern shop where an artist was painting the lanterns. They were okay with pics so I took a few.

We stopped into a couple other smaller temples along the way to Grand Matsu Temples, which were okay.

Next up was Grand Matsu Temple, another highlight of the day. Matsu and Mazu are transliterations of the same word, I’ve just used whatever Google maps uses to make it easier to search for.

Grand Matsu Temple is extensive and very photogenic. I got some good pics of the various ceremonial instruments and tools, such as the percussion temple block, halberds, moon stones and fortune sticks. Some of them I just took the pic and looked up afterwards to figure out what they were called.

A quick visit to Chikan Tower, which was built as a fort back in the 17th century and later turned into a residence. It’s now being restored, with half of it under scaffolding.

We walked through a street market looking for lunch and ended up at place on a street corner, slightly outside the market. Had the pork with rice set meal, which included a salad and miso soup. It was really tasty.

On the way to our next stop we passed by a bào bīng place (shaved ice with fruit and fruit-flavoured sorbet on top). We ordered the mango version - it was excellent!

We found our way to Tainan Art Museum Building 1. We really enjoyed the exhibit - A Garden in the South – The Su Shi-xiong Commemorative Exhibition which chronicled the ceramics and art of Su Shi-Xiong through his life. It included works by his wife and daughter, also accomplished artists.

Next was Tainan Art Museum Building 2, about a five minute walk, and included in the same ticket.

Building 2 had some interesting contemporary exhibits. The highlight for us were the pieces on loan from the National Palace Museum in Taipei. This included the Jadeite Cabbage, one of the most well-known pieces from the museum. We had read that it’s quite small, so weren’t surprised. This exhibit was heavily guarded.

On the walk back home, we stopped into the train station to buy tickets for Jan 1 to get to the HSR train station (the high speed train doesn't come into the centre of town).

We also finally figured out how to access the bridge over the tracks. There's a ticket dispenser where you have to press a red button to generate a ticket, which allows entry to the station (otherwise only train ticket holders are allowed) to cross the bridge.

Overall it was a really good day with lots of highlights!

Tainan, Taiwan

We had a quick breakfast at our hotel in Kaohshiung and got packed up. It took us a bit longer than usual cause we had spread out quite a bit in the room.

Caught the MRT (subway) to the train station, where it was very easy to transfer. It was only 30 minutes to Tainan, hardly enough time to open up the Lonely Planet to plan out the afternoon.

It was a beautiful day, sunny and about 25C. It’s been an odd trip weather-wise, we’ve been through all types of clothing from max winter gear with all our base layers to dry fit and humidity.

Our hotel in Tainan was just opposite the train station; but on the other side of the tracks so it took us 10 minutes to walk around. Then we realized there’s a pedestrian bridge and exit on the hotel side :(

Anyways it was not even noon so early check in wasn’t yet available. We left our luggage and headed out to sightsee, roughly along the Lonely Planet “Urban Tainan Temple Walking Tour” (not sure what the “Urban” part meant, it would be hard to do a Rural walking tour, but whatever).

Tainan is one of the oldest cities in Taiwan, with lots of temples and old buildings to see.

We started with the City God Temple, which was okay. It had pretty good descriptions in English, and a large abacus over the main entrance (symbolizing the calculation of people’s good and bad deeds).

Along the way we looked for a busy restaurant for lunch. Heather spotted a line up down an alleyway, with food that looked good. We lined up and then did some research. The internet said good things too, and also suggested the best things to try.

After about 45 minutes we were seated! Placed our order (sticky rice with pork and fish floss, breadstick, boiled greens, pork dumpling soup, pork jowl and pork rind). It came out made-to-order (most places are buffet-like). It was excellent, worth the wait.

After lunch we checked out the National Museum of Taiwan Literature. Over its history, Taiwan has had a number of different languages either mandated or suppressed, which makes it difficult to develop a literary history. The museum was interesting. English descriptors were limited (I guess that makes sense, given it’s a literary museum where English isn’t prominent).

We then headed over to the Confucius Temple, which was a combination temple and museum. It’s my first pic of a temple in Taiwan with a blue sky background :)

Nearby was the Hayashi Department Store. It was built in the 1930’s, bombed in WWII (you can still see the effects on the 5th floor), restored in 2006 and is still a department store. It’s an old-school department store, it feels like you’re walking through a movie shoot but it’s real.

Kitty corner is the Land Bank, with Greek columns and a mix of other architectural styles.

It was nearing 3pm and check in time at the hotel. We relaxed back at the hotel, watched the sunset over the city, had some snacks at the lounge, and made plans for tomorrow. A good start to Tainan!

Kaohshiung, Taiwan

Breakfast at our hotel was a set tray with an interesting mix of western and local dishes. There was a small bowl of milk and cereal, eggs with grilled chicken and tomato, a mushroom soup and a separate potato broth. They were all very tasty but I couldn’t get past the soup for breakfast part. They did have excellent pastries though.

The things to see that we had mapped out last night were unfortunately spread out across the city. Kaohshiung, a bit like Toronto, is under-serviced by subways. It’s great if what you want is on the subway line but most things aren’t.

So we started by taking a taxi out to Lotus Pond, about a half hour north of the centre. It’s surrounded by numerous temples and is a big tourist draw. Unfortunately for us there was a cruise ship in town (we had noticed it docked last night from our hotel) and so the temples were busier than usual with large group excursions.

The most popular site at Lotus Pond are the Dragon and Tiger Pagodas. They’re under restorations and covered with scaffolding. So we checked out the other pagodas. These were covered with pigeon poop. So not very attractive or picturesque.

We tried to hail a taxi to the National Kaohsiung Center for the Arts and at first jumped into someone else’s Uber. The Centre for the Arts is a Zaha Hadid Architecture (ZHA) designed building. It looked the part, with not many straight lines. It wasn’t quite as interesting as the ZHA building in Baku, where we first became interested in her work.

Close by was WeiWu Mi Mi Village, where murals cover the outside of most of the 3-5 storey buildings in the block. Some of them were cool but we found it a bit over the top.

We were able to take a subway to near our next stop, Hei Bonn Gōrudohausu. It’s a high-end Japanese grocery store on the 1st floor (wagyu beef, sushi etc) and on the 2nd floor is a cafeteria-like setting where you can cook and eat. The store had someone who spoke English help us buy the right ingredients for a hotpot (sliced wagyu beef and an assorted vegetable platter). Upstairs, they then provided a miso broth and we were cooking!

We’ve really enjoyed the street food scene on this trip, but we have found it to be a lot of deep fried stuff. I like deep fried food, but maybe in moderation :). Anyways our lunch hit the spot.

Next door was another ZHA building, the Kaohsiung Port Cruise Terminal. The cruise ship was still in port, and the security staff thought we were returning passengers. The cruise ship also got in the way of pics of the building :( but I guess it is the cruise terminal.

We debated checking out the Museum of Labour that we had stumbled across yesterday, but decided to return to the hotel to rest up.

We had dinner at the grill restaurant in the hotel. Their grilled steaks were excellent, the appetizers were so-so.

After dinner we took a taxi to Sanfong Temple. It’s better visited after sunset cause of the strings of red laterns. There were only a couple other visitors there too. There were worshippers near the back of the temple that were chanting and playing instruments. It was pretty cool to see the temple and hear the ceremonial music.

We were still full from dinner so decided to walk the 45 minutes home. It was a very pleasant walk back. There’s a nice vibe to Kaohshiung, with lots of people out and about enjoying the evening. (It was also perfect weather). We came across a busy Christmas event in a park with performers and a jolly Santa. It was a nice end to the day.

Kaohshiung, Taiwan

It took a bit longer to get from Lukang to Kaohshiung than getting into Lukang. A taxi, local train and subway ride and four hours later we were at our hotel in Kaohshiung. We were able to get early check in again!

Our hotel recommended a restaurant for lunch. The folks there provided us a picture menu and helped us order. It was pretty good.

After we walked over to the Pier2 Art Centre and browsed the artsy stores. Kaohshiung is more of a cultural hub than other cities in Taiwan, with two (!) Zaha Hadid Architecture buildings to see. It's a nice variety from all the temples we've been seeing so far.

We were close to Formosa Blvd subway station so checked out the Dome of Light, an art installation inside the station. On the way there we walked past the Museum of Labour which looked interesting, but for another day as we had lost our steam.

Took the subway back to the hotel and made plans for the next day. There’s a few things on the list so we’ll have a full day.

Lukang, Taiwan

We took the HSR (high-speed rail) from Taipei to Taichung, and then a taxi to Lukang. It was a three step process to get tickets - I bought a voucher online for the route, and then used the voucher to reserve seats on the day we wanted. Then in Taiwan we had to show our passports at a train station to pick up the tickets. I made the reservation as soon as the window opened up two weeks out - good thing too, as it looked fully booked.

It’s only 45 minutes by HSR to Taichung, about half way south down Taiwan. The taxi ride to Lukang was just as long :) we could have taken another local train but we only had the afternoon to see Lukang.

Luckily our room was available for early check in at noon, so we could freshen up and change to warmer weather clothes. It was beautiful in Lukang, about 22C with a warm breeze. It’s the first nice day weather-wise we’ve had!

Lukang is a quaint little town with really well preserved older buildings. It’s a working town (not just for tourists) and has a nice charm. We loosely followed the Lonely Planet walking tour to get to Lukang Mazu Temple.

First we stopped for food. There’s a number of local delicacies and the restaurants around the temple are some of the best to try them. So we ordered oyster fritters, deep-fried mud shrimp, oyster omelette and some other stuff. It was interesting to try, but it wasn’t to our liking. The restaurant was packed with locals enjoying it though so I’m sure it was very good.

Then we visited Mazu Temple. It’s my favourite temple I’ve seen so far. It dates back to the 17th century. There weren’t many worshippers and hardly any tourists when we visited.

We wandered back to the hotel through little streets and alleys.

After sunset we returned back to Mazu Temple to see it at night. It was even more amazing and magical at night. There were only a couple other people there.

Walked back to the hotel, the back alleys near the hotel were also nicely lit at night. The hotel recommended a place for dinner; they were closing when we arrived but they suggested another place around the corner, which was okay.

We were glad we stayed overnight in Lukang (it’s more common as a day trip) just so we could see it at night. If you’re in Taiwan and have the chance to visit I’d highly recommend it.

Taipei, Taiwan

Merry Christmas! Dec 25 is not a public holiday in Taiwan so things were generally open, unlike our last trip in NZ where they shut down almost everything for weeks! We had more of a challenge with today being a Monday (most museums and the like are closed Mondays).

Today on our list was Chiang Kai-shek (CKS) Memorial Hall and Bangka Longshan Temple. We took the subway to CKS station, where the exit to the Memorial Hall was very clearly signed in Taiwanese and English. We’ve been really impressed with the subway in Taipei.

CKS Memorial Hall is really amazing to see. The size and scale is enormous. The main building has a 6.3m tall statue of CKS on the top, with 89 steps leading up (he lived to 89). In front are beautiful gardens, and at the other end a concert hall and a theatre.

We were lucky to arrive just on the hour and catch the changing of the guards.

There’s a museum on the ground floor under the massive bronze statue, which describes the evolution of democracy and freedom of speech in Taiwan.

The power cut out for a few minutes while we were visiting the museum which helped clear out the tour groups :)

The memorial hall and the grounds took us about 2.5 hours to see.

The Lonely Planet recommended a dumpling place just around the corner, so we checked it out for lunch. Ordered pork and leek steamed dumplings and siu mai. Both were amazing, some of the best we’ve had.

We then walked over to Longshan Temple. On the way passed by Bopiliao Historic Block, a row of restored old shophouses. Unfortunately it’s closed on Mondays :(

Longshan Temple was just down the street from Bopiliao. It’s the oldest temple in Tainan, founded in 1938. It was pretty busy with worshippers, with the smell of incense in the air and the clatter of moon stones. Worshippers will ask the gods a yes/no question and then throw the stones on the ground. The answer depends on how they land. There’s a bowl with moon stones in the temple - worshippers carefully select their stones (based on what I’m not sure) and then return them later.

Took the subway back home and rested up.

Later we checked out Tonghua St Night Market. We got there around 6:30pm and it was just getting busy. Tried any stall with a line up, except for the stinky tofu. We were full at that point, plus it is really stinky. Maybe on our way back through Taipei we’ll try it. The last thing we tried were pineapple buns. These were amazing. They look just like a dinner roll but have so much flavour. It was served warm with sliced cold butter, mmm good.

Taipei, Taiwan

It’s Christmas Eve, in Taipei. The concierge said to us to Have a nice day, to paraphrase Shane MacGowan.

We had another hearty breakfast and headed out touristing. We checked out the Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, which was pretty interesting. It’s not high on lists of things to see in Taipei but we enjoy visiting the contemporary arts museums wherever we go.

Next we wandered down Dihua Street, a pedestrian street with a mix of trendy cafes, street food, and older shops, and lots of character. We tried a few bites - pork meatballs in a pepper sauce, steamed buns (our favourite of the day) and deep fried tofu.

Walked in the direction of our hotel and came across Huashan 1914 Creative Park, a cultural hub in an old sake winery (similar to the Distillery District in Toronto). It was very lively.

Tried out a dumpling place near our hotel for dinner. It was hard to find - it’s in the bottom level of a mall. The pork steamed dumplings were pretty good.

It was a quiet day otherwise. The rains held off but it was cloudy and dreary. We haven’t seen the sun yet in Taiwan :(

Taipei, Taiwan

Luckily Heather had read through the various hotel instructions last night, cause we had to book a seating for breakfast (7am/8am/9am). We were up before our alarms, still a bit jetlagged, although at least we’re getting sleep at night.

Breakfast was excellent, I think that’s why we chose our hotel. After breakfast, we planned out our day. We have three full days now, and then two days at the end of our Taiwan leg. We had to plan around a Monday when not many museums are open. Figured we’d start with the National Palace Museum, one of the must-sees in Taipei.

We took a taxi to the museum as it’s a bit out of the centre. The weather held off so far - the forecast was for rain all day.

Bought our tickets and entered. The museum signage includes English so it’s easy to get around and understand what you’re looking at.

We started in the jade section. One of the museum highlights is the Jadeite Cabbage, but it’s on loan to the Tainan Art Museum for the next month. Fortunately we’ll actually be in Tainan next week :)

We also toured through the bronze, calligraphy and porcelain sections. I had to google to figure out the difference between porcelain and ceramic (porcelain is a type of ceramic).

The museum is very popular with tour groups. Heather was flash mobbed a number of times looking at something and had to swim her way out.

It took us about three hours to get through the museum. It’s very impressive. Most of the pieces were moved from the Forbidden City in Beijing during the Great Retreat in 1949.

Grabbed a taxi back to the centre, to Dalongdong Bao’an Temple. Google maps makes it very easy if you don’t speak the local language - it displays the destination in the local script and can sound it out too. So we had no problems communicating our destination with the taxi driver. (Maybe this is commonly known but first time we’ve used it).

We decided to have lunch first and then see the temple. Picked a random spot based on seeing the dumplings they were cooking in the front. Used Google translate to figure out the menu and order. It was excellent.

Walked back over to Bao’an Temple. It’s a Taiwanese folk religion temple, with mostly worshippers and just a couple other tourists. It’s very photogenic - I took a lot of pics.

I’ve been trying to use mostly my iPhone for pics this trip. It has a 15x optical zoom which should be good enough for city pics. It’s definitely lighter and easier to carry. Also it’s waterproof so I don’t have to worry about rain. So far the results are mixed - anything beyond a 3x zoom (when the iPhone switches over to a different lens) it looks really dithered. Anyways I’ll keep on experimenting this trip.

Next door to the Bao’an Temple is the Taipei Confucius Temple. It was similarly impressive with only a handful of people, mostly tourists here. Took a bunch more pics.

We thought about walking all the way back to the hotel, about an hour. After about ten minutes we reached a small outdoor market near Yuanshan station. Tried some snacks and then decided just to catch the subway home. Figured out how to buy a single fare. It’s zone based, cost us about $1 each to get back. You get a token which is scanned to enter, and then you drop it back when you exit at your station. Pretty easy.

Got back around 3:30pm, in time for afternoon tea at the hotel. Had a double breakfast espresso and some cookies.

Later on had a drink at happy hour and caught up in my blog. The hotel made a reservation at a restaurant about a two minute walk away. It was miserable outside, rainy and misty, so just wanted something close.

The restaurant turned out to be Michelin rated, although in Taiwan, Michelin restaurants seem to be as common as a green Pass sign in Toronto. I had the beef noodles, the recommended meal and a Taiwanese specialty. It was excellent, although from my perspective, no more so than any of the other food I’ve had here. Obviously my palette is not sophisticated enough :)

Taipei, Taiwan

Our flight to Taiwan wasn’t until 3:30pm so we had a relaxing morning. We checked out, left our bags at the hotel and then headed out in search of the Makishi Public Market. ‘Search’ as in followed Google maps walking directions through the covered arcade.

The market covers two floors. The 1st floor is a wet market with mostly fish mongers; upstairs are restaurants. The fish was super fresh - there was absolutely no smell at all! Heather was suitably impressed. We browsed around, I took a bunch of pics. We weren’t hungry when we arrived but after seeing all the food we figured we’d have lunch and then head to the airport.

Chose a sushi place and ordered tuna, Okinawan soba and oolong tea, trying to stay within our remaining yen. There was a mix up with our tuna order and we got a full sashimi boat. We did some quick math and figured we’d still be okay, although we had to skip the Okinawan donuts. The soba and sashimi were excellent (the tuna in Payao was still the best though).

I took a few more pics of the fishies on our way out. Heather was checking out the large clams when suddenly one started spouting water with an arc like a drinking fountain, landing right on Heather’s shoe. Hopefully she won’t have smelly sneakers tomorrow :)

Got back to the hotel, cleaned up and took a taxi to the airport. Getting through immigration was easy, just a passport scan. Had some Blue Seal ice cream in departures (the last Okinawan food on our list), bought a tshirt too.

We flew on Starlux, a Taiwanese airline, on a brand new plane. It’s only 80 minutes from Okinawa to Taipei. They served a sandwich but we were still full from our lunch.

It took us 90 minutes to get through immigration in Taipei, longer than our flight. Our luggage looked lonely drifting around the carousel. I guess most of the other passengers on our flight were Taiwanese (their immigration line was much shorter).

Another 90 minutes later through rush hour traffic we finally reached our hotel, in the Da’an District in central Taipei. They were just finishing their happy hour, so we had a drink to celebrate my 100th country :)

For those who don’t know the backstory, in 1997 Gerry and I took the route of the Transmongolian. On the Irkutsk-Ulaanbaatar leg we met a Brit named James. His goal was to get to 100 countries in his lifetime (this was before the internet when getting to 100 was a big deal). Anyways Gerry and I adopted the goal and then spent many a night debating what counted as a country, and what counted as visiting. Twenty six years later, I finally made it :)

We were somehow tired after a day of just sitting around in airports, airplanes and taxis, so just called it a night after the drinks.

Naha, Japan

In the late 17th century, pottery making was centralized in Tsuboya, now part of Naha. Over the centuries a distinct Ryukyuan style evolved. Also, pottery!

We started at the Tsuboya Pottery Museum, which was a pretty decent museum. Most of the signage was in Japanese however they did have a good self-guided audio tour in English. The museum was built over a historical climbing kiln (built into the side of the hill) which was part of the exhibit.

Now knowledgeable of the differences in firing between Jo-yachi (glazed) and Ara-yachi (unglazed) pottery, we checked out the studios and stores that line Tsuboya Yachimun St.

The pottery district includes some side streets so we wandered down those as well. Stumbled across Nuchigafu, a restaurant with local specialties. It was exactly what we were looking for for lunch and we weren’t even really searching!

We both ordered a combo meal so we could try out Goya Champuru (bitter melon), Rafute (braised pork belly), Mozuku (brown seaweed), Jimami Tofu, Okinawa soba and Okinawan salt-cookies-flavoured ice cream. It was all really good, and a great way to sample Okinawan food. It was a more formal restaurant where removed our shoes to enter the dining area and sat at lower tables.

Literally across the street from the pottery district was an entrance to the extensive covered arcade market. There were three souvenirs I was looking to get for our key shelf: a Shisa (mythical Okinawan creature), Maneki neko (lucky cat) and a Daruma doll. We had bought a ceramic Shisa from a pottery place so just had two items to find.

You can find everything in this market from souvenirs to bars and cool hole-in-the-wall restaurants to everyday household goods. Everything, that is, except for a Daruma doll. We asked around, and it seemed that we could find it a place called Don Kee, with some hand gestured directions from other friendly store owners.

Finally a store worker showed us a department store on a map. We went to check it out, it’s actually a popular department store chain, Don Quixote, which is nicknamed Don Qui here. The store itself is several floors selling everything with no order or organization. A store worker told us we could find them on the 4th floor. And there they were! It’s not a tourist thing so it was a harder item to find.

That was it for our day. The full day was a good amount of time to spend in Naha. Tomorrow we leave for Taiwan!

Naha, Japan

If we had done some research we would have been aware that our breakfast at the ryokan was going to be a traditional Japanese-style breakfast with multiple dishes. But alas we did not.

At least we wore our yukata (traditional robe and pants). We just wore our own socks though, the ryokan-provided ones were very uncomfortable.

The presentation of the food was again amazing, with everything just so. We’re rather provincial in our breakfast preferences, but it was cool to try. We actually made quite a dent in the food. The salad and in particular the cherry tomatoes were amazing.

The forecast was rainy and windy all day. So we decided to skip on a couple other castles and just drive back to Naha.

A couple of random things I forgot to mention previously. The safety video for Korean Air featured BTS and a couple other K-pop artists. It’s our 2nd favourite after the Lego-themed video for Turkish Airlines.

Also realized that AirTags don’t work in Korea, for security reasons. I had to google to figure out why my phone thought our luggage was still in Canada. The tags are working again now that we’re in Japan.

So we drove back to Naha in the rain. The Avis folks had warned us to use the GPS when returning the car, or we'd end up at Avis Total Landscaping. We followed Google Maps for most of the 90 minute drive back, switching over to the GPS about 20 minutes out from Naha. It promptly took us on a toll highway. The toll instructions were only in Japanese so we guessed at what to do. After about 15 minutes we reached another toll booth where we handed our ticket and 1000 yen (about 10 CAD) and hoped for the best. Got back about 700 yen and a receipt, so we guessed well :)

We returned the car, got the shuttle to the terminal and grabbed a taxi to our hotel. We debated taking the monorail but didn’t want to pull our suitcases through the rain and puddles.

We arrived at the hotel at 1pm. Our room would only be ready at 3pm, so we left our luggage and headed out for lunch. We walked through some charming side streets with little restaurants all along. We had a classic Naha lunch of pork and rice. Okinawa Agu Pork is locally famous - there’s pork dishes everywhere here.

After lunch we stopped in at a 7-Eleven yet again, this time for a type A USB-C adaptor to charge our phones. (Type A is the standard in North America.) I had packed chargers & adaptors for everything except what we used at home.

We really liked our brief walk around Naha. It has a nice vibe to it.

On the way back to the hotel stopped in at a cute little coffee shop for a double espresso and a slice of cheesecake, mmm good.

That took us to exactly 3pm. We checked in, and then relaxed the rest of the day. We had been on the go pretty much since we left Toronto so it was good to do nothing for a few hours.

It was still raining sideways around dinner time so just had some snacks in the lounge and called it a day.

Onna, Japan

Our flight from Seoul to Naha was at 8:05am so we set our alarms for 4:15am. Got to the airport just before 6am with plans to have breakfast while we waited. Unfortunately nothing was open except for a juice place :( luckily they also had coffee and bagels.

The flight to Naha was full, a lot of US military related folks probably returning to base (the US has a large military presence in Okinawa). It’s just under two hours south from Seoul. We were served a decent hot meal which was good cause we were still a bit hungry.

Immigration was straightforward (Canadians don’t need a visa for Japan). Got a little sticker in our passports, country number 99 for me!

Korean Air had sent me a text in Seoul that my luggage had been loaded on the flight (technically, probably just into the ULD container) plus our AirTags showed our luggage had made it so it was stress-free waiting by the carousel.

There were more people wearing masks here than in Seoul. In Seoul it was about 15% and here in Naha about 50%.

Next up was picking up our rental car from Avis. The shuttle was waiting for us at the terminal, a good sign that they had our car waiting :) The paperwork took forever though.

Finally around noon we started our little road trip in a Toyota Yaris. UNESCO castles, here we come!

Naha’s population is over a million and it’s all urban sprawl. So our road trip wasn’t making any lists :) The car had built in navigation but the search function only had a kanji keyboard, so we used Google maps which worked well.

First up was Nakagusuku Castle. My research had said all the sites were free to enter, but there’s now admission (at least at the two castles we saw today). It was cash-only so we had to drive out to a 7-Eleven (which are ubiquitous here), get cash, buy some water to break the large bill, and then drive back.

The heat and humidity were a bit of a shock. It was 24C here, a swing of over 40C from Seoul if you factor in the feels-like. Our luggage was strewn all over the trunk in our search for our summer gear.

Finally we were set to enter. After we paid for our ticket, a golf cart whisked us up to the top of the hill. The marked path then wound through the castle ruins back down to the entrance.

The castle has been preserved in its ruined state. It was very peaceful to wander through, with only a handful of other tourists.

We then drove to the nearby Payao Fish Market. I had read somewhere that it was a great place to eat. It seemed a bit dubious as google maps guided us down to the wharf through an industrial area. We parked and entered. There was a kitchen in the back, with faded pictures of food options. Somebody else was just picking up their order which looked good, so we just ordered two of those.

Turned out to be one of the best lunches we’ve had! I googled it later, we had their specialty, the Ise-ebi lobster, with a side of sashimi, pickled radish, and miso soup. The sashimi tuna was the best tuna we’ve had. The lobster is baked with uni sauce. The miso was also excellent.

I took some pics of the fishies in the market area and then we were back on the road.

Next up were the Katsuren Castle Ruins. It was a bit awkward to figure out parking cause they’re in the midst of constructing a huge visitor centre. Anyways it was the same drill - a golf cart drove us up to the top and then we toured heading back down. It was pretty impressive, with great views of the ocean and surrounding countryside. You could imagine how impressive it would have been back in the 13th century day.

The atmosphere around the castles reminded me of other UNESCO historical sites that are off the beaten path, like the painted churches in Cyprus or the Roman ruins in Butrint, Albania. It’s really peaceful with good tourist infrastructure, and hardly any other tourists.

Our last stop was our hotel for the night, a ryokan-style hotel on the west coast. The staff had limited English and our Japanese was just welcome and thanks, but we managed to check in and get to our room.

We had booked their Kaiseki dinner, an elaborate multi-course traditional meal. We were somewhat rushed to clean up as they wanted us to start at 6pm, an hour earlier than I had requested. Oh well.

It’s traditional to wear yukata (robe and pants), which were provided in our room. They fit okay. We should have skipped on their socks which were small and uncomfortable.

We enjoyed some of the courses which were quite excellent, others are probably more an acquired taste. We were in it for the experience so it was all good. I particularly enjoyed the beef course. Everything was impeccably presented.

It was a long day, and a transit day at that! We fell asleep quickly, around 8pm.

Seoul, South Korea

We actually got a decent sleep our first night considering the time change. So after breakfast we bundled up in our max winter gear and set out to sightsee!

There’s so much to see in Seoul. We started with the classic tourist stuff today, Gyeongbokgung Palace and Bukchon Hanoi Village. Our hotel is pretty central so we walked over, about 25 minutes. It’s a pedestrian-friendly core plus the city is all decked out for the holidays.

Got the combination pass for five royal palaces, only 10 CAD! About half the visitors were wearing hanbok, the traditional Korean clothing. Admission is free if you’re wearing hanbok. It adds to the atmosphere of the palace.

Gyeongbokgung Palace is like a huge open-air museum. It was first established in 1395 and then destroyed and rebuilt a couple times over the centuries. It took us about 90 minutes to see everything, at which point we couldn’t do palace anymore.

We stopped for lunch at Oreno Ramen, a highly-rated restaurant on Naver. It was on a small winding street full of cafes and cool little restaurants.

Turned out to be a Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant! We had to wait about 15 minutes in line. The restaurant staff brought out hand warmer packets (equivalent of HotShots) for folks in line, although we were seated before they warmed up.

The ramen was excellent, a good start to eating on this trip!

After lunch we wandered up to Bukchon Hanok Village. It’s a residential area that’s become touristed because of the traditional style of houses. There’s a couple popular spots for pics which capture the houses and the Seoul Tower in the background.

That was it for our day. Got back to our hotel around 3pm. We have an early flight out to Okinawa tomorrow.

Seoul, South Korea

We arrived in Seoul on Sunday evening on a direct flight from Toronto. We had stayed up most of Friday night trying to get a head start on adjusting to the time change, and slept most of the 15.5h flight. Our internal clocks are now completely messed up. Door-to-door it was just over 20 hours, however with the lost day crossing the dateline it took all weekend.

Incheon International is about an hour outside the downtown core. We had debated trying to take the subway, but Seoul is in a cold snap right now (-12C when we landed) so took a taxi instead. (We brought winter clothing for Seoul but it was all packed up).

Outside of rush hour, a taxi is not too bad an option, about the same cost as two fares on the express bus. We used Naver to show the taxi driver which hotel we were staying at, as soon as he saw the directions he knew exactly where it was. (Naver is the app of choice here cause Google maps has limited functionality in South Korea).

Maybe because we were jetlagged we hardly remembered any of the Korean we had learnt on Duolingo. We even had to look up thank-you again (감사합니다). I sort of remember the alphabet.

Anyways we were quickly checked into our hotel. We were out of steam so just had a snack in the hotel lounge and then called it a night.

Toronto, Canada

We're heading back to Asia for the first time in almost ten years! Taiwan's been high on our list for a while, and the main part of this trip. The closest direct flight from Toronto was to Seoul, also on our list. About half way between Seoul and Taiwan is Okinawa, which has some cool UNESCO castles, and unique Ryūkyūan culture. It's also part of Japan which means I'll get to 100 countries on this trip :)

The weather in Seoul over Christmas is similar to December weather in Toronto.  We're packing for anything from -10C to 20C.  The rest of the trip should be comfortable, highs around 22C and lows around 15C. I signed up for typhoon alerts, although typhoon season typically ends in November. We already receive earthquake and tsunami alerts from our last trip to NZ and Fiji.

We're renting a car in Okinawa. Canadians need an International Driver's License for Japan (this is common where your license is in a different script) so I had a little trip to the CAA. I had to look it up, over the years we've had a car rental in 9 countries, and 7 of those were left-hand drive (there's 64 countries in the world that drive on the left, mostly former British colonies). Japan will make it 8 of 10. (Next Christmas we'll be in Namibia making it 9 of 11!). At least Google Maps makes it pretty easy to navigate, especially with offline maps.

In Seoul, Google Maps is limited for security reasons, so I've downloaded Naver. You can't offline or get walking directions in Seoul on Google Maps.

On the technical side, you can now subscribe to this travel blog! I also added cookie consent cause that's now required for Quebec, and this website is nothing if not over-engineered. You can also check out our Google Photos album optimized for the Nest Hub, which you can add as your Nest screensaver.

We fly out on in two weeks (Sat Dec 16), so likely won't post again until then.

Toronto, Canada

We've been back home now for a few days, trying to de-jetlag. Overall it was a really fun trip.

We finally got back to Toronto after a four-day transit back home. The arrival through customs at Pearson has improved since our last time through (pre-covid), although it's still behind all the other international arrivals we had on this trip. It also took almost an hour for the luggage to get from the plane to the carousel. I suppose we should be happy that our luggage arrived at all.

The highlights (in chronological order):

• Snorkeling with manta rays in the Astrolabe Reef 
• Flying over the reefs in little prop planes during local flights in Fiji
• Standing on the 180th meridian (the only accessible place in the world where you can do so)
• Snorkeling with all the colourful fishes and coral at Rainbow Reef
• Village walks on Taveuni
• Walking around Hobart
• Road trip to the Outback in South Australia
• Making it to Kati Thanda, our 4th of the Seven Low Points
• Driving along Highway 6 on the West Coast
• Excursions to Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound (Milford more impressive to see, Doubtful a more fun experience)
• Watching the sheep graze from our lodge in Tahakopa Bay in Southland
• Little Blue Penguins in Oamaru
• Seeing Wandering Albatross in Kaikoura (wingspan of 3.7m, the largest flying bird in the world)
• Glowworm caves in Waitomo and Te Anau (my favourite was Ruakuri Cave)
• Learning about wines from the many wine regions in NZ
• Orakei Korako Geothermal Park

We were lucky to not get sick over the whole trip. There was a lot of uncertainty with covid when we booked back in Feb 2022, but pretty much all the restrictions had been lifted by the time we started out trip. We wore masks on flights and other public transport, and in the occasional museum if it was busy.

It was our first trip where English was an official language in all the countries. Fiji has three (English, Fijian, Fiji Hindi) and NZ has three (English, Māori and NZ Sign Language). Legally, Australia has no offical language but English is considered the de facto national language. (There's a handful of other countries without an offical language, including UK, US and Japan).

Australia is the first country I've spent more than a couple days without having any currency from the country. (We had cash in NZ as a backup -- in a couple places they didn't take foreign credit cards, and some roadside fruit stands were cash-only)

We also traveled with a bluetooth speaker (in our case, an Echo Dot 5th Gen, which can be used offline as a bluetooth speaker). We used it quite a bit, especially in bnb's.

A couple last bits of trivia, the 38 days we spent in NZ is the longest I've spent consecutively in another country. At eleven weeks, this was our longest trip together. It's probably nearing the longest we'd like to be out traveling, after a while we do miss the routine of home.

Time to start thinking about our next trip!

San Francisco, USA

Day 3 (Fiji Standard Time) of our four-day transit back home, today from Nadi to San Francisco.

The flight didn't depart from Nadi until 10:15pm so we had all day to do much of nothing. We were able to get late check-out at 5pm for $100 FJD which was great. We spent most of the day in our air-conditioned room because we weren't adjusted to the 31C or humidity.

We had one last ferry ride from the Doubletree to the mainland and then a taxi to the airport. We forgot that we had been in the Fiji Airways lounge previously (we had upgraded at check-in for the flight from Nadi to Sydney). It was pretty crowded in the lounge, there were two large flights to LA and SF around 10pm, and I'm guessing most people had the same idea as us, to hang out at the lounge for most of the evening.

Our flight boarded and departed on time. We were able to get a few hours sleep 'overnight'.

Day 3 (Pacific Standard Time)

We arrived in SF around 12:45pm, after a pretty smooth 10+ hour flight. We also gained 18 hours by crossing the International Date Line so arrived nine hours before we took off. We had to clear US immigration and customs before rechecking our bags for the last leg home. Originally the NAN-SFO-YYZ flights had a nice connection, but before we started our trip, Air Canada changed the SFO-YYZ flight to leave an hour before we arrived. So we had 23 hours in transit in San Francisco. I had booked a hotel in Union Square rather than staying at the airport.

We had to wheel our luggage (in a $8 USD cart!) from T1 to T2, where the United / Air Canada desks were. We asked directions from a very helpful airline agent who guessed that we just came off a long flight and would prefer to walk to T2 rather than take the inter-terminal bus.

Unfortunately Air Canada couldn't take our checked bags until the following day. So we would have to lug six suitcases into town. Hopefully this wouldn't affect my Uber rating!

It was a beautiful day in San Francisco. We were lucky cause the previous week the entire coast of California had had torrential rains and flooding. Our hotel people gave us suggestions on where to eat and tourist for the afternoon. We had lunch at E&O Kitchen, just down the street from our hotel. By the time we were done it was almost 3pm, and we realized we were back in the northern hemisphere with early sunsets. So we went back to the hotel to grab warmer jackets for dusk.

We walked through Chinatown and then down Columbus Ave, where the restaurants changed to Italian. We continued down Columbus to Fort Mason for a view of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Island. Fort Mason is popular with joggers and almost everyone passing by stopped to take pics of the sunset. It was one of the better sunsets we'd seen on our trip!

We took a different route back to our hotel, down Polk St and then back across Sutter St. It was a pretty good whirlwind tour of San Francisco! It looks like a pretty cool place to visit with lots of character. We didn't have much steam left, but wanted to stay up a little longer to try to get back to our time zone, so we stopped in at the Irish Bank for a drink, and then called it a night.