Katy’s Weblog
I’m still writing about my vacation.
In my backwards recall of our days in Taiwan, I am now back at the first weekend when we arrived there. We arrived on Friday, 7/8, but I’ll start with Sunday, 7/10 and go back from there.
Sunday, 7/10
We woke up early to make our way to worship…
Continuing on with recollections of our trip to Taiwan – Monday 7/11 – Friday 5/15
Monday 7/11 – tour begins
After researching various tour options, I settled on booking with Edison Travel Services, mainly based on comments on Tripadvisor. If you have a business with negative comments on the internet, you’re in trouble. The itinerary seems to be the same among the tour groups, so base on price, feedback, and website appeal and email responsiveness, I went with Edison.
Saturday, 7/16
Sent off a birthday wish to Au. I don’t remember when we haven’t been together to celebrate her birthday. She’s in Germany while we are in Taiwan, and that doesn’t happen very often…actually never, and will probably never happen again.
We spent the day with T, first going to Danshui, known for shopping…
Rewinding backwards, I am now going to recall the fun we had in Taiwan, starting from the last day we were there.
Monday, 7/18
On Sunday night we stayed at City Suites Gateway hotel near Taoyuan airport. Our flight was about 10am, so we woke early and took a taxi to the airport (100TWD). The…
No vacation is complete without special regional foods. To be honest, I probably missed out some of the best stuff because I played it safe and didn’t eat street foods or uncooked vegetables. But still, there was plenty to enjoy.
Best in Vietnam are the fruits and fruit smoothies. We even had a durian smoothie – don’t recommend.
8/18 Monday – 8/21 Thursday
At the baggage claim area at the Saigon airport, I saw a worker very enthusiastically helping travelers with their luggage. He climbed onto the baggage carousel to take luggage off for people. What good service, I thought. Is the airport providing this service? Then I realized he’s an independent contractor working for tips. Very entrepreneurial and I guess the airport allows him to do this. We got our own bags though.
8/22 Friday
Our friend T is arriving in Saigon today, so we thought we’d save one tourist sight to go with him. Unfortunately, it was the most disappointing place of our whole trip, and we didn’t even meet up with T.
The Reunification Palace is NOT recommended. Now, I usually love museums and historical places…
8/22 Friday evening – 8/24 Sunday
The main reason for coming to Vietnam is to experience what life is like for E and to meet his friends and coworkers. It was perfect that his company planned a retreat this weekend at Mui Ne so that we can both see a new place and get to know his coworkers.
8/25 Monday in Vietnam
E said people say District 7 of Saigon is like Southern California, so I wanted to get a taste of home, not that I was missing it.
Similarities to SoCal – streets are wide with little traffic, minimum honking, tree-lined streets, individual houses with dogs barking when we walked past, Pizza Hut, Carl’s Jr., Dominoes, Subway (no Starbucks or McDonald’s in Vietnam.)
I’ve gained new respect for travel bloggers.
It seems like fun to blog while you travel to keep the memories alive while sharing with others, but it’s much harder than it looks.
I was planning on blogging during my trip, and it didn’t happen. So here I will try to recreate some of my thoughts, starting with the most recent and working my way backwards and see how much I can remember.