Well, I’m traveling again, and as usual I’m not doing very well at keeping up my blog. I’m going to fast forward to the present, instead of trying to catch up, even though there’s a lot of things I have wanted to say about what has happened so far. Maybe I’ll get a chance to go back and fill in a few details later.
On this trip, I have spent a week in China and a few days in Hong Kong, and now I am in Taiwan. In all three places I have been hearing about the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, and today (September 25) it is finally here! If you want to know more about it, you can visit this web page, but basically it is a harvest festival, celebrated with moon cakes, fireworks, and many other things.
It may seem strange for me to mention mobile phone SIM cards at this point, but you’ll understand why in a moment. Recently I have started buying local prepaid SIM cards for my mobile phone in each country that I go to. That allows me to make local calls very cheaply, instead of paying about $4.00 per minute roaming charges. That means I have to carry two phones, in order to stay in touch with people using my regular phone number, but it seems to be worth the effort. I had some whopping phone bills recently, and it makes it much nicer when you can stay in touch with the people you’re working with without counting $4 bills going by.
So I arrived in Taiwan today, and as has become my custom, I set out to try and find a shop with prepaid SIM cards. Their availability and quality seems to vary from country to country (I don’t think they are even available in the U.S.–does anyone know of any U.S. carriers that offer them?), and there is a learning curve associated with the process. Some SIM cards allow you to also get Internet access, while some only allow you to make phone calls. With some, the Internet access has turned out to be automatic, but with some, you have to go hunting on the Internet for access points, user names, and passwords (even though you don’t yet have Internet access–chicken, egg syndrome).
I stopped in a shop, and they didn’t have any. Fortunately, it seemed that normally they have them–they were just temporarily out. So I went on to the next store. I stopped at a few more, and did not have any better success. Some people struggled (in their very limited English) with trying to tell me how much a SIM card costs. (They didn’t have prepaid cards, so that means getting a monthly plan, etc., etc.)
I enjoyed the walk however, and I saw something very interesting. Every so often, there would be what looked like a little barbecue going on in front of a shop. I finally figured out that it’s associated with the Mid-Autumn Festival. For a while I was thinking they did this every day!
So I guess it goes like this… if one of your relatives has a shop of some type, you might decide to have your family/friend get together on the sidewalk in front of their shop. I finally got up enough nerve to ask if I could take a picture of one group, and they didn’t seem to mind too much. The second time I did that, I got offered some food! I accepted–it was pretty good. They offered more, and before long I was sitting with the group enjoying all kinds of things… beef steak, chicken, prawns, oysters, corn on the cob, all barbecued on the grill.
English was limited, but we had a good time. Now I’m in my room on the 28th floor of the hotel, looking down on the city lights, hearing and occasionally seeing the private fireworks displays. It’s nice! I like it here!
(By the way, writing all this and posting these pictures takes time, so I hope you enjoy it!)