Here at WoWasis, we were early adopters of GPS technology, and probably the first travel site to include GPS coordinates for many of the out of the way and hard to find places to which we travel. But our trusty Garmin GPS III Plus, which we’d had for 13 years had been all over the […]
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WoWasis visits Taiwan’s National Museum of Marine Biology & Aquarium
Visitors to Taiwan’s southern-tip Hengchun Peninsula should be certain not to miss the National Museum of Marine Biology & Aquarium. Here, you’ll see a vast, colorful array of corals and the fascinating creatures that inhabit the reef area, as well as a wonderful collection of sea animals that to a large extent, swim around you, […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis visits Taiwan’s Sanxia Zushi (Sansia Zushih) temple near Taipei
The Taipei area is known for its beautiful temples, but for us here at WoWasis, none was more striking than Sanxia Zushi, 30 km southwest of Taipei. It’s a fairly close taxi ride away from the Yingge Ceramics Museum, so our suggestion is that you see both on the same day. In our opinion, […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘Angelwings,’ queer fiction from Taiwan
Oh how we desperately wanted to like Angelwings: Contemporary Queer Fiction from Taiwan (2003, ISBN 0-8248-2661-2). It had all the markings of a winner, ten short fiction stories told from a gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender perspective (referred to in Taiwan as the tonqzhi and ku’er wenxue movements). Here at WoWasis, our problem was that the […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis visits Taiwan’s Yingge Ceramics Museum
Located roughly 30 minutes outside of downtown Taipei, the Yingge Ceramics Museum, located in New Taipei City, is well worth the visit. Housed in a dynamic glass-concrete-steel building, the museum houses some 2,000 pieces of pottery, many of which are remarkable. The history of pottery making in Taiwan is ancient, the quality outstanding. Permanent exhibitions […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Wang Wen-hsing’s ‘Family Catastrophe’ from Taiwan
When originally written in 1972, Wang Wen-hsing’s ‘Family Catastrophe’ created a ton of controversy. His story of a dysfunctional family flew in the face of the Confucian concept of respect for parents. The story revolves around a young man named Fan Yeh, and is unfolded in a non-traditional time-lapse interpretation involving an older step-brother, a […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis visits historic Lin An Tai House, Taipei
Like many other nations, Taiwan has done a great job of tearing down its old houses in its surge to create a modern country. Aside from its venerated temples, there’s precious little left of Taiwan’s architectural past. Fortunately, Taipei has preserved a very old house that was built in 1785 by Lin Chin-Ming, and moved […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘Eye of the Times: Centennial Images of Taiwan’
Taiwan is a country richly documented in photography. To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Republic, the Taiwan Fine Arts Museum in Taipei in May of 2011 launched a photography retrospective documenting the many facets of Taiwan through historical and contemporary photography. The extraordinary richness of the exhibition is documented in its […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis visits Taiwan’s magnificent Taroko Gorge
Located between the Northeast Coast National Scenic Area and the East Coast National Scenic Area, the magnificent Taroko Gorge is Taiwan’s primary tourist destination after Taipei, and well worth the effort of going there. Bus tours can be easily booked from Taipei, and any traveler to Taiwan is recommended to carve out a day or […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis mailbag: Tourist rip-offs in Vietnam, Greece, and Egypt
We’re at WoWasis are always happy to get mail. Here’s an email we received this week: Dear WoWasis, We surfed your website and the information you give about annoyances in Vietnam was very helpful to us. Just one thing: you mention that touts and rip offs in vietnam are as common as in Greece or […]
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