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Details: Written by: Richard_McKie; Parent Category: Travel; Category: East Asia; Published: 07 June 2015; Hits: 89902

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I’ve mentioned that on several occasions we were taken to streets where there were local food vendors or small restaurants and set loose to find our own food of choice. But on others we were taken to larger establishments where the meal was part of our tour. At several of these restaurants some dozen or more local dishes were presented as a banquet to be shared.

The Taiwanese are very proud of their food and believe it to be the best in the world.

I’m on record elsewhere as saying that I don’t like spicy food. But Wendy and Craig do with Sonia on the fence. Others in our party were mixed as to taste preference.

But no one took to a special green soup that appeared several times as a delicacy. Having said that, most other dishes quickly disappeared into the collective digestive system, some with more enthusiastic praise than others.

I certainly didn’t starve but on the whole those of us who had been to China agreed that the food on the mainland, particularly in Beijing, is better.

By the end of the trip I was glad to get to Hong Kong and then to China to eat something less monotonously 'Taiwanese'.

Anyway, the local wine and beer was good and wine and beer from elsewhere was inexpensive too.

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Travel

Romania

In October 2016 we flew from southern England to Romania.

Romania is a big country by European standards and not one to see by public transport if time is limited. So to travel beyond Bucharest we hired a car and drove northwest to Brașov and on to Sighisiora, before looping southwest to Sibiu (European capital of culture 2007) and southeast through the Transylvanian Alps to Curtea de Arges on our way back to Bucharest.

Driving in Romania was interesting. There are some quite good motorways once out of the suburbs of Bucharest, where traffic lights are interminable trams rumble noisily, trolley-busses stop and start and progress can be slow. In the countryside road surfaces are variable and the roads mostly narrow. This does not slow the locals who seem to ignore speed limits making it necessary to keep up to avoid holding up traffic.

Fiction, Recollections & News

My car owning philosophies

I have owned well over a dozen cars and driven a lot more, in numerous countries.

It seems to me that there are a limited number of reasons to own a car:

As a tool of business where time is critical and tools of trade need to be carried about in a dedicated vehicle.
Convenient, fast, comfortable, transport particularly to difficult to get to places not easily accessible by public transport or cabs or in unpleasant weather conditions, when cabs may be hard to get.
Like clothes, a car can help define you to others and perhaps to yourself, as an extension of your personality.
A car can make a statement about one's success in life.
A car can be a work of art, something re-created as an aesthetic project.
A car is essential equipment in the sport of driving.

Opinions and Philosophy

Energy and a ‘good life’

Energy

With the invention of the first practical steam engines at the turn of the seventeenth century, and mechanical energy’s increasing utility to replace the physical labour of humans and animals, human civilisation took a new turn.

Now when a contemporary human catches public transport to work; drives the car to socialise with friends or family; washes and dries their clothes or the dishes; cooks their food; mows their lawn; uses a power tool; phones a friend or associate; or makes almost anything; they use power once provided by slaves, servants or animals.

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