Middle East and SE Asia - 2024

With Asia and the Middle East in the rear view mirror, we're back on American soil for our first visit to Hawaii.  I've now finally visited all 50 states, and oddly left Hawaii for last, given that part of my family is from here (my great grandmother was born & raised here!).   We arrived on Oahu at mid morning after a 10+ hour flight via Manila in the Philippines to a bright and sunny day.  After picking up a rental car, we headed to our "free" hotel a few blocks off the beach in Waikiki (we used up all our accumulated hotel points!) and settled in to begin our vacation from our vacation ;-)- 5 nights with no real agenda other that getting out and exploring a bit.  Bei g all but exhausted after the long flight, we walked down the the beach for lunch, and discovered that our hotel is on the same street as my family's old house used to be, before it was "purchased" via eminent domain (in 1904) and converted to become a US Army artillery em...

After our day driving through Taroko Gorge, everywhere else was bound to be a bit anticlimactic...  Our next stop was an overnight at Sun Moon Lake, which is the largest natural lake in Taiwan, and reputed to be a "must see" place....  It reminded both Norma and I of Big Bear Lake or Lake Tahoe, or some of the more touristy lakes in the Adirondacks- "nice," but a bit over-developed.  We did have a cool visit to a Tea Plantation and processing factory that was neat, as well as stopped at one of the more impressive Confusionist temples we've seen... After leaving Sun Moon Lake, we headed back down to the West Coast city of Tainan.  Here we hoped to enjoy the annual "Taiwan Lantern Festival." Unfortunately, the festival was one of the big disappointments of our trip.  Norma had seen a Rick Steves travel segment highlighting the festival a few years back, and we planned our stop here based on that impression....

After 2 days in Taipei, we rented a car and set out to discover some of Taiwan's natural wonders - specifically the eastern coast and then up and over the main central mountain range.  Day one took us from western Taipei at the airport, across to the east coast, where we enjoyed a wonderful lunch in the small fishing port of Su'ao.  Su'ao was a place we just decided to explore on the spur of the moment on the way to our overnight in Hualien, and it was a wonderfully serendipitous choice!  We had one of our best meals of the trip here- starting with scallion & egg pancakes, and finishing with passion fruit shaved ice (in the picture!). Yum! After that we drove down the coast to Hualien, along a road that compared favorably with US highway 1 through Big Sur or the NorCal and Oregon coast.  Absolutely breathtaking for about 60+ miles of hairpins, tunnels, and cliff edges :-) Once in Hualien...

After 7 weeks on the road, and 13 time zones, we've made it to our last "new" country - on the island of Taiwan (formerly Formosa).  Depending on who you ask, it is technically either the "Republic of China," or a province of the People's Republic of China (mainland China) called "Chinese Taipei," though most people here just say "Taiwan."  Politically, it's more complicated (a LOT more complicated!), but from what we've seen and heard, this is a distinctly different place and culture here.  Mandarin Chinese is the main language spoken, but there are strong influences from Japan, which controlled the island for more than half a century up until the end of WW II.  On our two days in Taipei visiting museums and taking a local walking tour, we've learned a lot, including the basic fact that we don't teach much about the post-WWII history of China/Taiwan in the US (Google "228 incident," and you'll se...