Oh, Matero

I have rarely left my house in almost four months here at home in Michigan. No luck at jobs around here, not even an interview. I’ve decided I’m going to get out of the house for a while and take another trip while I’m still young. This will give me another chance to see many of the places I’ve missed before.

Since Oasis Hong Kong Airlines went out of business last year, I thought I was out of luck on cheap flights to Asia. Fortunately, I found the next best thing: Hainan Airlines. The 4th largest Chinese airline started flying from Seattle to Beijing in June of 2008. Next year they will start service from Chicago, but for now I have to make a few connections. I found a good deal that packaged all the connections together (thanks to kayak.com) for $503 one-way.

I’ve been preparing. This summer I received new visas to India (5-year) and China (1-year). I bought two travel guides, checked out another five travel guides from the library and took photos of many pages. I’ve upgraded my laptop from 1.5GB to 2.5GB RAM and the hard drive from 160GB to 320GB; dual booting my laptop with Windows Vista and Mac OS X 10.5; bought a new wireless card for the laptop that is supposed to be compatible with both operating systems. I’ve also upgraded my main PC with a Seagate 750GB hard drive, but it crashed about two months after I installed. I got a replacement and that is up and running again.

Chronological summery of my trip from September 2007 - June 2008:

1. Japan = 21 days
2. Korea = 10 days
3. China = 60 days
4. Thailand = 30 days
5. Cambodia = 20 days
6. Vietnam = 11 days
7. Thailand = 5 days
8. Malaysia = 6 days
9. Thailand = 3 days
10. China = 51 days
11. Singapore = 3 days
12. Indonesia = 15 days
13. Thailand = 4 days
14. Taiwan = 15 days

I took a flight on Northwest Airlines after midnight Eastern time and it arrived at 5:30AM in Detroit. On the first flight from Taiwan I think I slept an hour, but I didn’t sleep at all on this flight. My body still thinks it is daytime.

After waiting around for a while, I asked where the bus stop was. It was down on the lowest level, hidden away it seemed. I got on the 7:18AM bus which cost $1.75. I was the only white person on the bus and that felt a little strange after where I’ve been. I also noticed a lot of fat people on the bus.

It was a nice Sunday morning for driving through Detroit. I noticed the differences between here and the other places I’ve been. There are liquor stores everywhere, lots of pizza shops, many parking lots, and a lot of grass. In Detroit I got to see the urban scenery including abandoned buildings, a burnt down school, and a wastewater treatment plant.

I had to change buses in downtown Detroit, so I walked around a little bit. For the second bus I had to insert my ticket into the machine in the correct spot for the free transfer. The bus driver was late and in a hurry. She threw my ticket onto the floor since I didn’t take back the ticket right away. I don’t know how this confusing bus system worked. I had to pick up my ticket from under the bus driver’s feet.

In Royal Oak I had to transfer to my 3rd bus. I got off on the wrong stop and and to walk quickly to make it to the station and I saw the bus arriving as I was getting close. If I missed that one, I would have had to wait another hour. After 3 hours on the bus, I made it.

Today is my last day in Taipei, Taiwan and the last day of my trip. I’m pretty satisfied i saw enough of the 4,492 booths at Computex the past few days.

Today I went to a computer market in the city since Computex isn’t really for buying one of something, they wanted you to my hundreds. After a while I spotted what I was looking for, a SATA hard drive adapter for my laptop. I didn’t buy it though since the price was kind of high compared to what I could find on EBay.

I filled up on Taiwanese and Japanese food since it was my chance. I did read an article that it is best to not eat any food before a long flight to combat jet lag and adjust the to a new time zone the quickest. But oh well!

In the evening I took a bus to the airport for my 11:10PM, June 7th flight to San Francisco. The China Airlines flight was delayed a bit, but no problem. The flight showed some movies, including 10,000 BC, Step Up 2: The Streets, and CJ7. I arrived in San Francisco at 8:00PM, June 7th.

Today I wanted to visit some of the 1,725 exhibitors I missed and take a closer look at some of the bigger ones. I started at Nangang just like yesterday. Zalman was showing some video games displayed in 3D (glasses required) on LCDs. I think that looked pretty good. There were many companies trying to get the attention of buyers. So there were numerous booth babes and other activities. Abit showcased a Counterstrike game match between the top player in Taiwan and the top player in Indonesia.

Thermaltake had some interesting products. Many of their fans have some kind of LEDs embedded on the blades of the fan and when it spins it displays information like RPM and Temperature. The same company was also showing off a 2000 Watt Power Supply.

I noticed Taiwanese companies are selling double layer recordable Blu-ray discs. So if you have the correct drive, you can burn 50GB on a single disc. I imagine it is pretty expensive though.

There were some wild computer cases around. I saw water cooled, ones with tons of fans, but I liked the trend of big fans. Many cases have a single large fan, maybe 12 inches in diameter or larger. So I think they can run that at a low RPM and move a lot of air without too much noise.

Later I returned to the other location of the show. I saw the main ASUS booth which was very crowded. They were named the top brand in Taiwan this year because of the Eee-PC. I’ve noticed a lot of other travelers using that computer in hostels since it is so tiny and inexpensive. I have to say ASUS had some of the most impressive products, including audio cards and motherboards.

The four buildings yesterday aren’t quite big enough to hold the entire show. A new exhibition center called Nangang opened up this year just time time for Computex and it is the largest building of them all. It is located in a different part of the city, so I decided visit this site today.

The Nangang Exhibition Hall had most of the important companies on the upper floor, which was a smart move to get everyone out here. There was Intel and AMD from the US and all the major Taiwanese motherboard companies like MSI, Foxconn, Gigabyte, and Abit. There were tons of memory companies, like AData. Cooling companies like Zalman and Thermaltake. Things were more exciting here since many companies were using computer games to show off their hardware.

The hottest thing this here are the ultra portable PCs. Intel was showing around 10 different implementations using their new efficient Atom CPU. Intel also had a section showing overclocking of their CPUs. For example, they had a 3GHz CPU running at 4GHz with air cooling. There were more extreme demonstrations too. I noticed some companies had canisters of Liquid Nitrogen around. I saw some demos where they would pour the liquid directly onto the CPU and they got one up to 5.5GHz. It isn’t very practical though since you have to continuously pour the liquid on the CPU since it evaporates.

One of the reasons for visiting Taiwan was a chance to see the 2nd largest computer show in the world, Computex. It is located in a series of halls surrounding the world’s tallest building: Taipei 101.

I was a little concerned about registering and getting into the show since it seems to be open to only “professional buyers” for all the days but the last day. So I had to give them some company name, phone number, fax number, plus a business card and I was able to get in. Good thing I brought along a couple 7 year-old business cards from home just in case. It worked, I got a International Visitor badge that says “Lon Matero, United States.”

I started in Hall 1 of the Taipei World Trade Center. I noticed a lot of networking companies with wireless cards, routers, antennas. There was a bigger booth for Enermax, who makes the power supply in my computer at home. They were showing off a power supply running like 10 hard drives, 4 video cards, 2 CPUs all at the same time. There were more companies on the 2nd floor. One showed me a demo of a router that can connect to a G3.5 phone signal. They were getting pretty good speeds, 60KB/s or so average. I think hard to get that in the US. In Asia I think you can get unlimited data transfer for dirt cheap using these: $15-$20 a month.

Another antenna company asked for my business card, so right away I used up my only two cards (well, they weren’t accurate anyway). Throughout the day it got pretty uncomfortable since these companies are selling and they want my “company” to buy and possibly resell or distribute in the US. They would all ask for my card and information on my company which I didn’t have. I think it is unusual for someone to come all the way here to this show without a company sending them.

I checked out Hall 2 (all WiMAX technologies), Hall 3 (mostly consumer electronics), and TICC which has some smaller showrooms and meeting rooms. It was strange when I visited Analog Devices. They had a few prototype hardware designs running, but I wasn’t sure exactly what they did. After being confused after a while, I asked someone but then he wouldn’t talk to me because he thought I was a competitor at an American engineering company and these products were confidential. So I left and decided that was enough for one day.

Ever since yesterday afternoon it has been raining. I still had places to see, so I set off anyway. I borrowed an umbrella from the hotel and took a bus to the National Natural Science Museum. The highlight here was the Science and Technology of ancient China. The four big inventions where there: compass, paper, printing, and gunpowder. Some others like an ancient seismograph and a two story tall water powered astronomical clock.

In the afternoon I visited the nearby city of Changhua. And from there I took a bus to the 2nd oldest town in Taiwan, Lugang. I spent some time walking around there and then back to Taichung to pick up my bag and then head to the High Speed Rail station.

The High Speed Rail opened in 2006 with speeds up to 300km/h. The 700T train was made in Japan, and it is the latest model used in both countries. I think the tickets are a little cheaper here though.

I spent a night in Taichung, which means Middle Tai. It is funny that the other places I stayed were called Tainan and Taipei, which mean South Tai and North Tai. So I guess I have everything covered!

Today I took the bus to the very center of the island, the city of Puli. My destination was Chung Tai Chan monastery, a modern skyscraper like place surrounded by mountains. The same architect that designed the current world’s tallest building designed this place.

The only way to get there is taxi or walking 6km. I chose the taxi since I didn’t know the exact way to get there. It was an impressive place. I think I saw the tallest doors I’ve ever seen. Inside the entrance hall were four colossal statues used as columns to hold up the roof. It looked like something from a fantasy setting like Lord of the Rings. I soon found out I couldn’t see much of the monastery since only one section is open to the public. I asked some information at the reception desk and they were able to arrange a tour by one of the nuns.

After going through the public area again (Hall of the Four Heavenly Kings & The Great Majestic Hall), my guide took me up the elevator to the 5th floor to see The Great Magnificence Hall. There were no photos allowed here, but I saw a large gold disc behind a statue and on the opposite side was a plain looking Chan Meditation Hall that holds 300 people or so. Then it was up to the 16th floor and I saw a wonderful 7 story wooden pagoda in the enter of a large room with two 30m tall windows on each side. On the walls were 10,000 Buddha images. From here, we walked the wide stairway that leads outside back down to the 5th floor. Looking at my small guidebook of the building, there are still more non-public areas I did not see including the Great Enlightenment Hall containing a four-story high statue.

The entire building is 108m tall and it was one of the most impressive temples/monasteries I’ve seen anywhere. I was going to try walking back to the town of Puli, but it started raining. So I decided to eat in a vegetarian restaurant located just outside the gates. The rain did stop after a little while and I walked, but I didn’t know exactly how to get back. There was not a wide road leading away, but some small narrow roads. Finally one guy on a motorcycle tried to help, but we had trouble communicating and he drove me a little bit the wrong way. Finally I got on the right path and walked back. I was going to see if I could get a ride from someone. The Taxi was too expensive for one person, so I compromised only taking it one direction.

Walking down the main road to the city, some people on motorcycles said hello to me. One guy asked “Puli?” I said yes, and then he road away. I thought he was giving me a ride. About half way back it started to rain, so I got more desperate for a ride. I tried putting my thumb up to signal a car, but no luck. Finally a lady on a motorcycle stopped and gave me a ride in the rain, so I didn’t have to walk the rest of the way.

I took a morning train to Kaohsiung, followed by a bus to Fo Guang Shan, a large modern monastery complex. When I arrived, I asked for a place to put my luggage since I was carrying my full backpack. One of the shaved headed nuns told me it was 11:30 and I can have lunch up at the Pilgrim’s Lodge. I ate a nice vegetarian buffet lunch. And it was a donation type place too.

Then I gave myself a tour around the place, through huge halls, museums, art galleries, statue parks, and even a Disneyland style attraction featuring moving models of people.

On my way to leave, I tried to time myself to catch the bus, but then there was an “X” next to the time of 14:40. Someone explained that bus doesn’t run anymore, so I had to sit for another hour.

I was heading back to Kaohsiung, Taiwan’s 2nd largest city. It seems more dirty and more like China in this city compared to Taipei. Since it isn’t too attractive, I’m just passing through. I got a train to Taichung.

Tainan is the old capital of the country up until about 100 years ago, when it was moved to Taipei. Today I took a walk around the city. This included Koxinga’s Shrine, Temple of Five Concubines, Lady LinShui’s Temple, Confucius Temple (I walked in without paying for a ticket by mistake), National Museum of Taiwanese Literature, Altar of Heaven, God of War Temple, Mazu Temple, City God Temple, and East Mountain Temple. At these temples you see many people burning large stacks of money. It isn’t real money, but fake money that is supposed to go up to their ancestors in heaven.

Across the street from my hotel was a big bookstore. I found the English section on the 4th floor and read some Taiwan travel guides for ideas. And I did get some last minute places to go to.

I found a bar that had a place I could sit down and use a wireless Internet connection in the evening. I ordered a bowl of Vegetable Soup which seemed pretty healthy.