Hello From Taipei!

Hey Everyone! So yep, I definitely landed safe and sound in Taipei. We got here on Saturday at around 5:00 AM Taipei time, but since we slept on the plane, it just felt like we got up too early after a 12 hour direct flight from Vancouver. Or at least I did. Michael had problems ignoring the screaming babies in the seats behind us.

So far, Michael Kwan and me have walked most of Downtown Taipei…yes…walked…over the last couple days. As a result, we’ve got some pretty killer blisters, but we’re still having a great time. We’ve already seen all the computer malls and we’ll definitely be going back later this week after we finish up with COMPUTEX. Last year, we only took cabs mainly because John Chow is a wimp and doesn’t like to walk so it was great to actually get out and see the city. Although I did take some Mandarin Lessons last year, I would only classify it as “Survival Mandarin” and made for some interesting conversations during our exploring. We look the part, but we talk like we’re a couple of pre-schoolers.

I’ve been shooting a lot of video and can’t wait to show it to all of you. Since one of my most recent posts was about the traffic in Taipei, I thought that I would make a quick video about the massive scooter population….

If anyone needs to find me in Taipei, I finally got a phone number here. You can reach me at 0930326948. Michael also got a new number and his is 0930138171. This was probably one of our biggest Mandarin challenges yet and we survived relatively unscathed. The girl selling us the cards at Far East Tone couldn’t keep a straight face as we butchered her language.

Tonight, we’re heading to the first COMPUTEX press conference and then the GreenIT forum. Later, we’re going to meet up with webmasters around the world at the Gigabyte COMPUTEX Reunion party at the Tavern. John Chow and Ed Lau should finally be showing up today so that we can have Dot Com Pho: Taipei Edition.