My first new city in a good long while, hello Taipei!
Spent near a week wandering about with Sean and our friend Jesemy (a local? a foreigner? depends?). Thank you, visa-free entry for Filipinos! This could not have been possible without you. Or maybe it could have, but it’s nice to have one less layer of bureaucracy to deal with. We missed Nico and Maddie, who were meant to be on this trip with us.
There isn’t really much i can say here that my photos won’t tell, but i’ll fill in the gaps as needed.
A very local beef noodle joint that Jes took us to. I will have dreams about this soup for years.
While wandering around the town of Jiufen, the rain caught up with us and we ended up seeking shelter at this kind man’s gallery. He’s a black and white photographer named Paco, who’s been shooting around Asia since the 70s. He told us he ended up living in Cebu at some point. He prints his own work at a darkroom in the back, and he has a pretty massive collection of original silver gelatin prints in varying sizes. We ended up taking some home.
Shout out to all my Meteor Garden brothers and sisters, we’ve got a tiny Barbie Xu sighting at the night market! Ask me about why i can’t stand the reboot, and the watering down of Shan Cai is at the center of it.
Thanks for the hospitality, Taipei. We’ll be back : )
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6 comments on “Taiwan Ho”
Wow, Sandra! Taipei never looked so good! Your photographs elevate the ordinary to something almost magical. Ang galing galing mo naman.
Aw thanks Tita Henedine! :D Thanks for always reading!
These are awesome! You always manage to capture such an interesting mix of loud and quiet, fast and slow, chaotic and calm. I’ve obviously never been to Taipei, but this felt like an insider view into day-to-day life in the city.
I’m interested in your inclusion of the third photo from the top, the one of feet moving out of focus. To my woefully untrained eye, it looks like just that: a picture that’s out of focus. When I try to take pics of my kid and he won’t sit still, ones like this are the ones I delete or ignore. Why did you choose to include it here? I’m not criticizing, just curious.
Thanks again for sharing your adventure. I especially love the food shots and the landscape shots…and you have a really cute hat. :)
Hey thanks Erica! Slowly but surely i am working my way through to enticing you to come to Asia :)) And thanks, i was actually not supposed to even be wearing one but it was so unexpectedly hot there! We were hitting about 36C (97F) so i bought it off some lady by the train :))
And no worries at all, thank you for asking! For me, i like that image because it shows movement, haste, speed, which makes sense because it’s shot in a train station. I liked the denim on everyone, too, which is a weird coincidence considering everyone was moving so fast and they all just happened to fall in step with each other. Typically, i include images like it to give the series rhythm and to loosen it up a little bit – i find that straight shooting too often makes a series feel to stiff or formal.
Hi, I ve been to Taiwan twice but the pictures you’ve taken are so exact to the smallest details and it brings back the memories.. When we were there, the pictures we took focused more on the people and the smiles on our faces, not much on things Taiwan.. I love your pictures.. Awesome..
Thank you so much, Ms Vangie! : )