A long weekend in November saw us make the most of it, of course! Our local airport, Wuxi flies to Taipei and as we went to an island for Golden Week we thought we would collect another island, and of course at least another Starbucks mug. We know a few people who are from Taiwan and so armed with their list of must sees we started in earnest. We flew on the Thursday night after our professional development day and arrived late into Taipei. As we were sitting on the runway in Wuxi, we did have a minor panic as … Continue reading Towering Taipei

Apologies for the delay in recent blogs. I have been a tad busy. And also I didn’t want to blog anything new that would get lost amidst the 2014-15 blogs. Golden Week in October is sorted for 2019. Eleanor and I have tickets to go with my parents to see Japan v Ireland in the Rugby World Cup in Japan!!! 2018 Golden Week in October was spent in Macau. As Eleanor liked to tell everyone, we were taking her to a gambling den. And as we told everyone, we weren’t there to gamble. We flew into Macau from Wuxi. An … Continue reading An Island of Gambling

The other thing that has changed since 2014 is the pace of technology and the ability to walk out the door with no cash, no cards but just a phone. Electronic payments are now a daily occurrence. Apple Pay maybe popular in the UK, and we will shortly see how popular (typing this on the way to the airport for Ireland), but in China we have Alipay and Wechat Pay. Claire when she came out to visit us in April wanted to know if there was Martinpay as we seemed to be Alipaying everything, but Alipay, connected to my bank … Continue reading Cash, Cards, Phone.

When typing up the first set of blogs again there were some parts of living that I glossed over or have improved since coming in August 2014. This is one of them. In the beginning right up until a couple of years ago, getting a taxi would be old style. Standing on a street corner, arm out while trying to make eye contact with drivers as they sailed on by. Or if you were lucky getting a taxi and then showing a taxi card in Chinese to the driver as to where you wanted to go. And if you were … Continue reading Standing on Street Corners.