Reflections

I really enjoyed this trip to Asia even though it was a lot different than what I had imagined. Taiwan was a lot more chaotic than I remembered and having never been to Hong Kong and Singapore, I didn't have a lot of expectations. The interesting thing is that all three places are inhabited by mainly Chinese people; Taiwan and Hong Kong is almost all Chinese and I heard that Singapore was at least 70% Chinese. However, I could see a lot of differences between each culture/society. If I had to compare, Singapore and Taiwan would be at opposite ends of a spectrum with Hong Kong in the middle.

Arriving in Taiwan, I was surprised at how run-down and dirty everything looked. Maybe I'm too used to "The O.C.", especially Irvine but the buildings in Taiwan (except for new skyscrapers in Taipei) looked really old. In addition, almost every building has a huge cylindrical metal tank on the roof. Silvia told me that it's to store water for time when the water system breaks down which happens quite often. Another thing I noticed that there are very few public trash cans, even in Taipei, so often we had to hold our garbage (food wrappers, tissue, etc.) while walking around (this is one of Shirley's pet peeves too). Finally, there seems to be a general disregard for traffic rules, especially outside of Taipei. I'm not sure why this is but I've also noticed that people are very impatient, even when walking; we got yelled at several times when we paused on the sidewalk. The night markets are really cool though... not like in the U.S. where everything shuts down early. I'll probably gain a lot of weight if I lived in Taiwan. :)

In Singapore, I really didn't see very much since it was work, eat, and sleep for the three days I was there. What I did see was that the city is very clean and people seem to follow traffic rules. The people I met were nice and quiet, especially "the girls" working at Broadcom. However, I don't know if there's pressure to conform to society norms like in Japan which creates all sorts of weird underground stuff to relieve that pressure. If I get to go to Singapore again, I'll need to get there a couple days before work so I can see the rest of the island.

I really liked Hong Kong. The buildings seem just as run-down or even dirtier than in Taiwan but things seem less chaotic. Maybe it's because of 99 years of British rule or Hong Kong is a more cosmopolitan city than Taipei. There is also a lot more English spoken in Hong Kong which is a plus for me with my crappy Mandarin. The food is a toss-up; the dim sum was really good in Hong Kong but I didn't see anything like the night markets in Taiwan. I was a little nervous walking around at night since there was a lot of people standing around our hotel. I found out later that we were next to a large building that had many Pakistani people living there. Without A/C, it's probably cooler to hang out on the sidewalk than to sweat indoors.

It felt weird driving to work yesterday after not driving for over two weeks. In Singapore, we either took the taxi or were driven everywhere. In Taipei and Hong Kong, we used the public transportation which were convienent and cheap. The downside is that it took a long time to get anywhere. Even going about 3 miles--4 stations with one line change--takes about 1/2 hour on the MTR. In the U.S., I would jump in my car and it would only take 5 minutes. Of course this is not an option in Asia with traffic, parking, and $5/gallon for gas, but the freedom of having a car is hard to give up.