Just came back from a 2 week trip to Taiwan to see my wife's family and a little traveling. Some fun and not so fun moment that I'd like to share here:
The humidity is very high, as much as 95% and enough to get you sick if air circulation is not good. 15C there feel as cold as 5C in California.
The food is interesting: you get lots of varieties of desserts, fried stuffs, drinks, and yet hard to find high quality real food that I was expecting from Hong Kong. Maybe because I wasn't familiar to the area. There are 2 main types of restaurants: breakfast only that opens from 6am to 12pm, and dinner types that open somewhat from 12-1pm to almost midnight. Seems like people there eat breakfast, dinner, and mid night snacks and skip lunch. There are lots of closed shop wherever I go and a lot of places don't open till 4pm (retails near night market).
The hotel ratings are way off the mark. You join a tour that said they use 3-4 stars hotel and you get a hotel decorated nicely in the lobby yet full of old worn out furniture and beat up bathroom, and sulfur hot spring water instead of fresh hot water in the shower.
Shopping seems to be 2 extremes: either very cheap and low quality stores and very expensive and luxurious stores, hardly anything in between.
Pharmacy gets you everything they have in stock without a prescription, at a ridiculously low cost. Antibiotics cost about 33 cents US each, Zyrtec (name brand, not generic) cost about 33 cents each pill rather than the almost $4 in the state. However, when you want to buy 360 pills for your foreign family member, they have a hard time getting such a large order for you despite it being cheaper. They also prescribe antibiotic for almost everything. My wife got a flu and the antibiotic the pharmacy and doctor gave were causing her to have fever, and if she wasn't in the pharmaceutical industry herself, she would probably be in huge pain without knowing why.
Air quality is horrible due to the many scooter out there. I'd think probably most of the low quality ones are not pollution controlled or even 2 stroke. In a way I'm glad that California is having huge regulation on air quality and I don't have to live through such a pollution. People drive aggressively there too, but at least traffic jams are everywhere and you can stop easily.
Due to population density and people still going out for fun when they are sick (i.e. my wife's cousins), cold and flu are everywhere. Wife caught a flu like symptom from someone (can't even tell who) and it was influenza A (could be H1N1). She visited the ER twice. The first time they only do a quick swipe to see if it is flu (false negative) and gave her some pain killer, antihistamine, and anti-cough medicines. The next days' visit she need a saline drip, blood test, X ray, and another swipe and finally confirmed that she had influenza A. Yet they just gave her Tamiflu and a few more similar pills and antibiotic (the same one that the pharmacy gave her until I ask them to switch due to possible allergy), without further testing to see if it is H1N1 (claiming that only the government lab has the tools to test). At least the ER is cheap in comparison (1st visit about $35 US and 2nd visit about $130 US).
Even though my wife was born and live in Taiwan till 15, she couldn't handle it anymore and as soon as she could, we fly back to the US (with mask on the whole time) and she is feeling much better here now. She is still sick at home but is getting better slowly but surely.
I think I'm too used to the American middle class everything from food to hotel, that a foreign country with extremes are not something I'm used to.
p.s. the oil they use seems to be Castrol, Shell, Texaco, and some local and Japanese brand. Synthetic cost around $8 per Liter and dino around $3 per Liter.
The humidity is very high, as much as 95% and enough to get you sick if air circulation is not good. 15C there feel as cold as 5C in California.
The food is interesting: you get lots of varieties of desserts, fried stuffs, drinks, and yet hard to find high quality real food that I was expecting from Hong Kong. Maybe because I wasn't familiar to the area. There are 2 main types of restaurants: breakfast only that opens from 6am to 12pm, and dinner types that open somewhat from 12-1pm to almost midnight. Seems like people there eat breakfast, dinner, and mid night snacks and skip lunch. There are lots of closed shop wherever I go and a lot of places don't open till 4pm (retails near night market).
The hotel ratings are way off the mark. You join a tour that said they use 3-4 stars hotel and you get a hotel decorated nicely in the lobby yet full of old worn out furniture and beat up bathroom, and sulfur hot spring water instead of fresh hot water in the shower.
Shopping seems to be 2 extremes: either very cheap and low quality stores and very expensive and luxurious stores, hardly anything in between.
Pharmacy gets you everything they have in stock without a prescription, at a ridiculously low cost. Antibiotics cost about 33 cents US each, Zyrtec (name brand, not generic) cost about 33 cents each pill rather than the almost $4 in the state. However, when you want to buy 360 pills for your foreign family member, they have a hard time getting such a large order for you despite it being cheaper. They also prescribe antibiotic for almost everything. My wife got a flu and the antibiotic the pharmacy and doctor gave were causing her to have fever, and if she wasn't in the pharmaceutical industry herself, she would probably be in huge pain without knowing why.
Air quality is horrible due to the many scooter out there. I'd think probably most of the low quality ones are not pollution controlled or even 2 stroke. In a way I'm glad that California is having huge regulation on air quality and I don't have to live through such a pollution. People drive aggressively there too, but at least traffic jams are everywhere and you can stop easily.
Due to population density and people still going out for fun when they are sick (i.e. my wife's cousins), cold and flu are everywhere. Wife caught a flu like symptom from someone (can't even tell who) and it was influenza A (could be H1N1). She visited the ER twice. The first time they only do a quick swipe to see if it is flu (false negative) and gave her some pain killer, antihistamine, and anti-cough medicines. The next days' visit she need a saline drip, blood test, X ray, and another swipe and finally confirmed that she had influenza A. Yet they just gave her Tamiflu and a few more similar pills and antibiotic (the same one that the pharmacy gave her until I ask them to switch due to possible allergy), without further testing to see if it is H1N1 (claiming that only the government lab has the tools to test). At least the ER is cheap in comparison (1st visit about $35 US and 2nd visit about $130 US).
Even though my wife was born and live in Taiwan till 15, she couldn't handle it anymore and as soon as she could, we fly back to the US (with mask on the whole time) and she is feeling much better here now. She is still sick at home but is getting better slowly but surely.
I think I'm too used to the American middle class everything from food to hotel, that a foreign country with extremes are not something I'm used to.
p.s. the oil they use seems to be Castrol, Shell, Texaco, and some local and Japanese brand. Synthetic cost around $8 per Liter and dino around $3 per Liter.
