| General Information |
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| Rest Room Facilities: Squatter toilets are the norm, especially outside of the big cities. Finding a western toilet is not always easy, but urinating outside seems to be socially acceptable. Also, observation of the locals have shown that there appear to be no social taboos when using public rest rooms... |
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| In-Country Transportation: Trains and planes are the easiest way to get around the island. Planes are faster, but the local aviation safety record is about on par with Uganda... |
| Food: As long as you like Chinese food, you will never have a problem with eating here... |
| Medical Facilities: The best advise is don't get sick. If you do have to visit a doctor here, the chances are excellent that you will soon have an IV or two stuck into your arms. This treatment seems to be the local standard for all classes of illnesses... |
| Local Currency: The local currency is the New Taiwan dollar, or Taipi in the local language. At the time of this writing the NT dollar was about 32 to 1 against the US dollar... |
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| Demographics: Population: 23 Milllion. Number of Scooters: 23 Million. Number of Cell Phones: 23 Million. So, it is certainly possible that at any given instant, each and every Taiwanese person could be riding on their scooter while yakking into their cell phone... |
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| Weather: OK, lets see... Rainy season is from April to September.... Typhoon season is from June to December..... and Earthquake season is from January to December, so take your pick... |
| Driving: In a word: CHAOS.... A potentially fatal mix of betel nut chewing cab drivers, cement truck drivers, scooters, and other war criminals... One of the most important aspects to driving is to determine who has right of way.... Click here for a real life example of Taiwanese driving.... |
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| Superstitions: The Chinese are quite a superstitious lot. Some of the more common superstitions include the following: Never wrap gifts in white paper, as white is the color representing death here. It is also best to avoid the number 4, since the Chinese pronunciation of "four" is the same as the word for "death". (Many buildings here do not have a fourth floor, 1,2,3,5...) It is also best to avoid giving clocks as a gift, since they as they represent the time ticking down to death. Death seems to be is a common theme in their superstitions.... So, if one wanted to spook one of their native friends, a gift of four clocks wrapped in white wrapping paper would probably give the desired effect... |
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| Religious Ceremonies: On various auspicious dates, the locals parade around, bang drums, and dress up in colorful costumes for reasons that are not readily apparent to the author of this page.... |
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| Signs: Most of the signs in Taiwan are in Chinese, some are translated into English. Occasionally you see one where the translation doesn't quite capture the intended meaning.... |
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