As for future travels, we just booked a holiday to Australia, where we’ll be flying to Sydney and then Cairns (Great Berrier Reef) and then back to Sydney for the NYE fireworks (hopefully). Expect more updates from Hong Kong in the future!

We also bought a new digital camera, a Panasonic Lumix FZ28, which all the recently posted pictures were taken with. It has a really far optical zoom which is a feature we were both looking for and the price was right. We are both really satisfied with the purchase and I should have some good Christmas/New Year’s Eve HD videos posted up soon. You can read more about the camera here.

We are both heading to Malaysia/Borneo for Chinese New Year for a 2 week vacation which we are both extremely excited for — so planning for that has taken up most of our time recently. You can see all our recent xmas/new year’s pictures HERE. Thanks for checking out my site and comments are always appreciated!

This upcoming week, Nat and I will be meeting up with my parents in Hong Kong and taking a 3 week trek of China; so you should expect a massive post when we get back; we hope to see all the major sites and beautiful scenery/history that China has to offer — it’s the first time any of my family has visited China, we are all really excited for this trip! Talk to you all soon!

ps. we’re planning on going somewhere else special this weekend for my birthday, so expect some more pics soon.

There’s a famous temple called ‘Longshan’ temple which we visited and took some pictures of.  We also went to Danshui, which is the furthest stop north on the MRT (subway) and it’s a really beautiful place to visit.  It’s right on the waterfront and reminded us a lot of Halifax harbour. There were so many little stores, food vendors and activities there to spend a good afternoon having fun; we went with our friends Dena and Megan, and had a blast.  This past weekend, Nat and I went to Wulai scenic park and took some really great photos.  It’s in the most southern stop on the MRT in Taipei and is up in the mountains (which most of Taiwan is surrounded by). We went up a gondola and spent a good day walking around and snapping pics.  You can see all the great photos HERE.

Sorry for the lack of posts, we will try and get one up at least once a month (so hopefully we both do something cool every month).  Until next time, talk to you all soon! And thanks to everyone who is keeping in touch and writing comments!

Let’s begin with the positives so far. Food is really cheap here comparatively to Canada, you can pretty much eat a really good meal at a restaurant for around $5-10 CDN, or the many street vendors with a big plate of fried rice or chow-mein for $1.50.  There’s many all-you can eat ‘hot-pot’s’ where you cook all your food for $6… they have really good… and for alcohol drinkers, I have been told there’s many all you can drink bars for $5.  There’s also plenty of fruit for dirt cheap at grocery stores and markets nearby our place; there are so many interesting and different foods you can get at the markets… It’s also been really great weather with only a couple rainy periods, averaging 25-29 Celsius here during the daytime and still warm enough for t-shirts and shorts at night; It’s not even ’summer’ time yet, so we’re in for some hot weather coming up.  Also, when it rains, it pretty much pours.  Taking a bus here is pretty cheap too, $.75 for a one-way ride and they have very nice comfortable ones at certain destinations.

Although nothing has been really bad so far, there have been some minor issues that we have run into. We haven’t been able to work many hours yet because our work permits haven’t been processed yet, so not much $ has been made so far. We are taking it easy and using our free time traveling to Taipei on the weekend, taking teacher workshop classes or just vacationing.  Another issue for me is transportation. Twice a week I have to take two buses to get to one of the schools I teach at, and it eats up bit of my time, but it’s fine for now since I have a lot of free time. There are a lot of scooters around so the air pollution can get to you a bit, but for the most part the air isn’t bad, but many people wear mouth-masks when driving on the street. I don’t mind the air quality but it’s not even close to back home. Also, of course the purchase of my new mac put me back about $1500. I think the first two issues will be sorted out in the next few weeks… I’ll keep you posted.

As for traveling, we’ve only gone to Taipei which has been really nice. It’s a real big city, and we have barely explored it but from what I have seen so far it seems like a happening city to live in with lot’s to do there and many parks around. We went to the Taipei 101 Financial building, National Palace Musuem, the Shilin night market and CKS Memorial building. I have posted all our pictures so far HERE (with a comment explaining the pictures). Oh and one more thing, everyone assumes I speak chinese (mandarin) which I barely can… I’ll be studying hard and let you know how that goes. Also, Nat sticks out like a sore thumb here in Taoyuan… you dont’ see many foreigners on the street let alone a blonde one. Also, remember you can click on the ‘Grab our RSS feed’ link on the top so you can see when my site gets updated. Talk to you all soon!!