IMG_0548.jpg
IMG_0548.jpg
Originally uploaded by jono1515.
Monday, October 23, 2006
Sunday, October 22, 2006
October 23
On Friday last week I bought a motorcycle. It's pretty sweet, a lot of fun to drive. I was a little irritated by the guy that I sold my scooter to, he lives in the dorm here and is actually the guy that showed me the motorcycle. I had told him that I paid $10,000 for the scooter and would like to get that much for it, he said he wasn't willing to pay that because the shocks were no good. So I said ok, shocks could be like $2000, I'll sell it to you for $8000. Then he started getting all worried about things going wrong with it and I told him that if something broke on it like right after he bought it I'd split the cost with him on repairs. So he goes to a shop to see how much the shocks would be and told me it'd be $900 for the shocks. I said that's sweet, so you want to buy it? And he said yeah, so you'll give me $450 towards the shocks? And I was like no, I gave you $2000 towards the shocks already. Keep in mind that $450nt is like $15US. So he's like come on, make me a deal. So at this point I was really just pissed at him for being such a shister. I could understand doing this sort of bargaining with someone you don't really know, but we live in the same freaking place. So I said to him, "Whatever, this is stupid to be like this over $15US, I'll give you $300nt off, $10US. How's that? Does that make you happy?" And he was like yeah that's good enough. Just stupid really. Anyway, the guy at the motorcycle shop was asking $20,000 for the motorcycle. He showed me on the calculator 20,000. So, I took it and put in 17,000. And he takes it back and shakes his head and puts in 19,000. I thought to myself, "Do I dare?" and took the calculator back and put in 18,000. And he was like ok. It's a nice little motorcycle. It's got 2900km on it and drives pretty nice.
Friday, October 20, 2006
IMG_0542.jpg
IMG_0542.jpg
Originally uploaded by jono1515.
This is the motorcycle I bought the other day, it's a Sym Legend. It's pretty small, only 125cc, so it doesn't go real fast and is pretty easy to ride.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Photo37_37.jpg
Photo37_37.jpg
Originally uploaded by jono1515.
Anyone know what kind of fish that is?
I had a good day surfing today. I've gotten a much better feel for my board, I think. I can see when I've got my weight too far forward and too far behind now. I can anticipate the pain of being too far forward and flipping end over end and the boredom of swimming too slow and missing a wave altogether and the elation of catching a wave perfectly. You see a wave coming and it's such a thin line between them, the excitement and fear all at once is amazing.
Friday, October 13, 2006
Photo16_13A.jpg
Photo16_13A.jpg
Originally uploaded by jono1515.
This is our picnic table at the campground we stayed at in Kenting. We took an overnight bus Thursday night and got down to Kenting around 7am. That's Elijah on the left and Amanda and Jess on the right, Jess is the blurier one. There were 11 of us travelling together at the start. We rented a huge van when we got there. I brought my surfboard along because I didn't want to have to rent one after spending $5000nt on mine and also because I'm starting to get a feel for my own board and I don't want to be jumping around from board to board while I'm learning. I ended up only surfing once, but it was still worth the hassle of lugging my board all over to have been able to use my own.
The day we arrived, we basically just hung out at the beach right by our campground. It was a really nice beach, coral sand. The beach is at the back of a bay and the sides of the bay are coral reefs. There was some coral at the back of the bay, but it was mostly out on the sides. The campground had a little food/drinks shack which was pretty sweet. I liked the food, though I'm pretty sure no one else in our group did.
On the second day we went to a beach over on the East coast of Taiwan, we drove around the southern tip and up the coast. The waves at this beach were crazy, I've never surfed in such big waves before. The bottom was pretty rocky too, so it was a pretty scary experience. You really had to paddle hard to get out into deep enough water, and then when you got there you were exhausted. And that was usually right when huge waves would come in and break on you. By huge, I mean like 15ft. I got tossed around pretty good and the only analogy I can think of is to imagine being in a front load washer machine. I did manage to stand up and ride one wave though, and for the first time ever, one of my friends actually saw me. He said something like, "I thought I saw you riding a wave and then I was like, no it couldn't have been because it looked like you knew what you were doing, but then I was like that's Jon's purple board and those are definitely his red board shorts" So if you don't believe me, talk to Elijah.
The next day we went up in to Kenting National Park and walked around up there. It was pretty sweet, there were some really nice views and a few caves that we walked through. One of the caves had a bunch of bats sleeping on the ceiling, it was crazy. After that we went back to the campground and the beach there for the rest of the evening. A few people left early on Sunday and we were down to 7 people. Sunday night Elijah took off and left me as the only guy with 5 girls.
On Monday we packed up and returned our rental van and hopped on a bus to Fangliao where we caught a train to Taitung.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
IMG_0518.jpg
IMG_0518.jpg
Originally uploaded by jono1515.
This is inside the Buddhist temple. It was really nice at the temple, I had brought along my digital and film cameras and right when we got there the batteries died in the film camera and the battery light started flashing in my digital, so I didn't take many pictures and it was a lot more relaxing not feeling like I needed to take pictures. I'm glad I got a few, but I'm really glad I didn't take more.
IMG_0522.jpg
IMG_0522.jpg
Originally uploaded by jono1515.
This is the gate to a Buddhist Temple up in the mountains in Chipen. It was pointed out to me that all the other pictures I've had up of temples are not, in fact, Buddhist but are Taoist. So I've gone through and corrected captions for the other temples. This one right here is actually a Buddhist temple. We went here on our last day of vacation.
IMG_0524.jpg
IMG_0524.jpg
Originally uploaded by jono1515.
Chipen hot springs
This is where we spent the last night of our vacation. It was really nice to have a hotel room after 3 nights camping. And the hot springs were so nice to relax in. We hadn't planned on ending up here, we were going to go from Kenting to Hualien and Taroko Gorge, and then we changed the plan to go to Taitung and then out to Lanyu Island. We had to change plans again because we missed the 2 hour ferry ride out to Lanyu Island. So we headed up into the mountains to Chipen hot springs. All the while, of course, I'm lugging my surfboard along.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Photo05_2A.jpg
Photo05_2A.jpg
Originally uploaded by jono1515.
This guy was catching the smallest fish, they looked a lot like those silver dollar fish you can get for a fish tank.
Photo31_28A.jpg
Photo31_28A.jpg
Originally uploaded by jono1515.
Double Line - Color
Which looks better?
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Photo09_6A.jpg
Photo09_6A.jpg
Originally uploaded by jono1515.
Double Line - the beach we've been surfing at lately
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