Tuesday June 20th, 2006

Pinglin (坪林) River, Taiwan. It's a quick jaunt out of the city via scooter ... through windy mountain roads ... small towns ... country homes ... a little over an hour's worth. Mostly all one finds there is some fishermen.

One time, however, a year or so back, a few of us ran into a group of Taiwanese camping for the night. There must have been about 15 of them partying it up ... and when I say partying it up, that is putting it mildly. They were lighting off fireworks all night ... and I'm talking fireworks. Maybe I should now remind you to look at the photo on the left. Notice that there isn't much space between where one camps and the lush greenery across the somewhat narrow river. Where we camp is a bit of a bigger area with the river being quite a bit wider, but, still. What a blast ... no pun intended, of course.

The highlight of the past weekend camping trip was the sighting of a monkey. He was in the trees across the river. Now, I have seen monkeys in most of the countries I have been to along the way, but this one presented a different situation. As we were camping, we had nothing to do but be interested in his activites. We saw him in the trees and on the rocks by the water and then back in the trees. He came out one tree and my thought was, he's going to fall in the water ... I guess that was his intention. He had a bit of a swim ... it was a pretty cool thing. The day was hot ... who could blame him, really?

The sun has been out for day number 4 ... hopefully it is here to stay. I had to pull out the fan on Sunday ... it's back to that humid, sweating all the time, kinda heat. It beats the rain, but it doesn't make one want to do much. I am thankful now for the cold, white tiled floors and the beautiful breeze a corner apartment gets ya! I enjoyed the pool today which means I didn't make it to Wen Hua. Procrastinating? A bit. I still have next week and I say why do today what you can do tomorrow.

My plane ticket has been purchased. Money gone, ticket in hand. According to my countdown (see the bottom of my blog) I now have 40 days, and ... the time ticks ...

PS - I'm liking this whole photoshop thing ... need more time to learn.