SFO international airport

United Airlines served good food outbound Taiwan, including rice noodles (炒米粉). I transferred in SFO, but the breakfast in the lounge was boring. Anyway, I am getting closer to home after traveling 2 months!

Touyuan international airport

My last day in Taiwan was super productive with the help of of college Roomate in Hsinchu. I nailed the issues with two banks and got an electronic residency card with a reader for remote assess. She took me to the biggest department store and we has famous duck rice for dinner. She also introduced me to the exquisite dessert macaron. A macaron 馬可龍 is a small sweet meringue-based French confection made with egg white, icing sugar, granulated sugar, almond powder or ground almond, and food coloring. A macaron costs 2 Euro due to only almond powder and complicated proceedings. 

Thanks to her and all my friends who helped me during the visit. See you soon!

Touring around Hsinchu

A friend I met in Czech Republic kindly showed me around Hsinchu, including two dams, Beipu, and Nanliao, where I last visited over 20 years ago. 

Beipu Township 北埔鄉 is a rural township in Hsinchu County, Taiwan. Beipu is well known in Taiwan as a center of Hakka culture, especially for production of dongfang meiren tea and its special Hakkanese blends of tea and nuts called lēichá. Since My stomach was still full from the lunch buffet, my friend bought two boxes of cakes from a 100-yr old famous bakery as gifts for me. 

The Hsinchu Nanliao Harbor ( 南寮漁港) Is famous for cycling, kite flying and eating seafood. It's 17 km beautiful Coastal Bike Path is very popular. It was too hot to bike there today, but I will try next time when I come back.

Amazing lunch buffet in Hsinchu

I took a bus to Hsinchu to spend my last two days in Taiwan there. Much less green spaces left among towns since I traveled there last time. I met a Tsinghua alumni and had a buffet lunch over conversation. The quality and taste of the food were great, and the desert bar was simply amazing.

Half-day hike over 7-peak near Taipei

The forecast for Yangmingshan National Park was raining this Sunday so my friend canceled the hike, and I found a hike near 內湖 organized by a local hiking club at the last minute. Fortunately, the weather was cool and relatively dry for me to hike seven peaks. I tried an award winning chicken rice place after the hike at 西湖市场. The three-cup chicken (三杯鸡）rice tasted pretty good.