At first glance, it’s easy to disregard Jioufen. Initially appearing to be yet another hillside town of nondescript buildings, the town unveils itself under the cover of a series of narrow alleys lined with shops, selling everything from calligraphy to condoms. Walking through the alleys of Jioufen takes the better part of an afternoon, and […]
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WoWasis visits Wulai: an aboriginal cultural village & hot springs in Taiwan
WoWasis drove to Wulai, only 40 minutes south of Taipei. The trick, once we got there, was finding the Atayal-run Wulai Aboriginal Cultural Village. Wulai is a village noted for its hot springs, and there are plenty there from which to choose. The Atayals, who run the cultural village across the river, are one of […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: ‘Dragon Lady’ by Sterling Seagrave
China’s Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi (1835-1908) was truly the stuff of legend, but as veteran Asian historian Sterling Seagrave (along with co-researcher Peggy Seagrave) points out, most of the legend was false. In Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China (1992, ISBN 0-679-40230-6), the author debunks the myths that unfairly […]
Read the rest of this entry »Pa Farang on taxi scams in Bangkok
The Good Manner: Advice on Thailand from WoWasis’ Pa Farang This week’s dilemma: My taxi driver refuses to turn meter on: taxi scams in Bangkok Dear Pa Farang, What gives withBangkok taxis? Half the time the driver refuses to turn the meter on, and quotes me a rediculous price. Am I being taken to the […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Guidebook for Taiwan by National Geographic
Whenever we’re in a foreign country, we here at WoWasis always travel with a guidebook: they’re easier to use and markup than online guides, and we always end up running across stuff by accident that we wouldn’t have discovered otherwise. Our local bookshop only carried one guidebook for Taiwan, and that’s how we acquired (and […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis sex book review: Lujo Bassermann’s ‘History of Prostitution’
We here at WoWasis were skeptical at first: would this be just another titillating tome, or would there be real substance here? We were thrilled, because Lujo Bassermann’s The Oldest Profession: A History of Prostitution (1967, ISBN 0-88029-248-2) is scholarly, well-written, and readable. And it’s not a history of prostitution so much as it is […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Leon Wolff’s ‘Little Brown Brother: How the United States Purchased and Pacified the Philippines’
There are two very good reasons Leon Wolff won the Parkman Prize for history literature for his landmark book Little Brown Brother: How the United States Purchased and Pacified the Philippine Islands at the Century’s Turn (1960, ISBN 1-58288-209-6). First of all, it’s a compelling book. And second, there remains a dearth of literature pertaining […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis book review: Ted Jordan Meredith’s Pocket Guide to Bamboos
Here at WoWasis, we have quite a bit of bamboo planted in our immediate environs. And frankly, we’ve been wrestling a lot with the variety known as Bambusa oldhamii, also known as Oldham’s Bamboo. The problem with this variety is that it weeps an acidic liquid that etches car windows and paint and is not […]
Read the rest of this entry »Is hard pinching really a form of love?
The Good Manner: Advice on Thailand from WoWasis’ Pa Farang This week’s dilemma: Is hard pinching really a form of love? Dear Pa Farang, My face is sore (again) from my Thai wife’s latest onslaught, which involves pinching my cheeks strongly. This nonsense started after her sister arrived for a visit with her new baby […]
Read the rest of this entry »WoWasis goes shopping: 54 exquisitely crafted ethnic Vietnamese ceramic figures
Going to Vietnam and want to bring back something truly unique? And inexpensive, too? We were thrilled with the exquisitely-crafted tiny ceramic figurines detailing each of Vietnam’s 54 ethnic groups, crafted by the Minh Long 1 company. Each figure, which is 2 ½ inches tall by 1 inch wide, details a female representative of her […]
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