ACCV Taiwan'16

On the way to present FuseNet

This year ACCV is organized in Taipei, Taiwan and both me and my colleague attend the conference with our paper "FuseNet". I will start telling the story from the beginning of my journey. First target was Istanbul to see my parents. After 7 hours of transfer break, I was ready to go. It took 10 hours to land in Taipei Taouyan Airport. It was quite challenging for me to pass through the immigration due to my bearded face not looking similar to the one on the passport picture =). After examining my passport for around 20 minutes, they finally put the stamp on my electronic card. Since my colleague arrived earlier than me and she is able to speak the local language, I was quite lucky to get some help to transport from airport to the Hotel. Yet, it took 2 hours... Plus the lady at the bus counter somehow forgot to give me the change for the bus ticket (around 1.5 euro), however, i had no time to ask for it and just went to the bus line. I don't even mention that I could not withdraw money from the ATM and had to exchange currency with an expensive interest =). So it didn't start perfect. Nonetheless, I was quite happy to be in Asia again. While approaching to the city center I felt like I am traveling in between Anatolian cities, where you could observe a similar architecture and underdeveloped suburbs. Even my Hotel had a very ugly facade though inside is quite clean and well-decorated (AT Boutique Hotel).

Workshops

Workshops started... It was boring. We made a quick plan and fled to the city center (Ximenting). We first visited the Lungshan Temple. We put three incense sticks for Buda and prayed for the best =) and threw a piece of woods to check if our wish will come true for marriage (hehehe). Well it turned out to be positive for me. And then we picked a piece of red rope, I guess the tradition is to give away to the person you like most and want to be husband/wife of. After this we had a nice tour around the Ximen station and eat a very good lunch in Ikki New Japanese Restaurant. OMG! I was quite full afterward. I couldn't even look at the snacks sold out on the streets where we visited afterward. Then what!! It started raining... We were already exhausted from the jetlag so we decided to return. After yesterday I tried one more time to visit the Tower 101 shopping mall, I succeeded this time. Nevertheless, mall was almost closed and could find any open restaurant inside. After a short walk around the Hotel, finally I bought a piece of chocolate cake and eat it while watching the Grey's Anatomy =). This trip is gonna be amazing since I decided to take a tour around the island after the conference !!! Looking forward to it!

Confucius Temple

Quite fast day... Keynote of Jitendra Malik was very good. I really liked him and his presentation. Moreover the work they publish. They are quite interesting and fascinating. Poster session as it is always was very exhausting. Very surprised though. So many interested people on the paper. Fun started afterward. I have seen important temples and night markets. They are awesome! Food is good there and the shops around are also cool. Later I went to the top of the Tower 101. It was around 400 meters and the view was nice! But I am kinda fed up about towers after been to many :P. A lot to write, not much time to do so... Todays favourite: Confucius Temple, absolutely! Meeting point of three Gods: Tao, Con and Buda! It was very impressive!

Taipei

This is an overloaded trip. Not scheduled at all. Everything is so random... I hope to survive and start a trip around the island now. Yesterday i woke up super late and only visited the New Taipei City and the Elephant Mountain. Lin Family Garden was impressive, I liked it! It was quite rainy and I climbed to the top of the Elephant Mountain in the evening. Taipei looks cool! Although after seeing many cities from top, I am not anymore impressed so much. Though, it was a self challenge to do it in the fucking rainy day and I did it! Now I am traveling with HSR (High Speed Rail) to Taichung. I plan to visit the Sun Moon Lake tomorrow if I can ever reach there :P. I have a hotel reservation but no access to the Lake yet :D. As I said, this trip is gonna be super random, even more than random number generator ^_^.

Sun Moon Lake

Early in the morning. My sleeping hours badly shifted, cant sleep in the morning, wake up around 5 and cant stay awake around 10 in the evening :D. I'm at Sun Moon Lake now. Very beautiful place and buses to here are quite frequent with Nantou Bus company. OmG! Ropeway was quite scary... The attitude is around a thousand meters... However it was a good experience. There is Aboriginal Village which was good but mainly intended for kids. So today I am here until afternoon and I take bus back to Taichung and train to Chiayi. Hopefully tomorrow Alishan (Ali Mountain). You can stay here and do more but it is also ok to see around for a day or so and then leave.

In the morning I took a free bus tour was included my Sun Moon Lake tour ticket. It is a beautiful region to see. Even taking bus around the lake is joyful. Right after that I came back to Taichung and then took the train to Chiayi. This hostel is a bit different than the others. All rooms look designed for kids :D. I have a bed in 'Courage' room. Yeaah, it really fits nowadays.. I am brave to travel alone in this country without having any direct communication with locals. It is not that easy though... On the other hand, they are super nice and super helpful. As I mentioned earlier, country is super underdeveloped but people are soooo nice and friendly. Moreover, i do not really feel unsafe here. When I go alone to the night markets I feel totally OK, which is actually good. Lets see what tomorrow brings...

Alishan Mountain & Koahsiung

Alishan (Ali Mountaing) is amazing. Even though it takes around two and half hours to get there by bus, it is a magnificent place to see. You end up 2000 meters above the see and watch the fogs over the mountains. There are plenty of centuries old trees and a very long path to walk :D. I took the train (a hundred years old small train) and went to Zhaoping station and from there I walked to Sacred Tree station and then to Alishan recreation area again. It was really good and fascinating.

It was yesterday and right after coming back to Chiayi, I traveled to the port city Kaohsiung. Actually there is not much to see here and the Love river unfortunately smells really bad. And the metro is not so much spread around the city, therefore I have walked a lot! At least I have seen the coast close next to the Natiaonal Sun Yat-Sen University. It is really beautiful. However, as I said, everything is extremely underdeveloped. There is not even a nice cafe to sit around. I am actually quite surprised about this. More interestingly number of tourists I have encountered is not more than 3 for the whole journey =). Tourists here are Taiwanese locals :D. Now heading back to Taipei with speed train from the MRT Zuoying station. One more thing: Kaohsiung is fucking humid!

I guess for the rest of my time here I will just enjoy the capital and do some more shopping. Hopefully this time electronics... :D

Ximenting

Ohh finally I rested in a very comfortable double bed at the Look Hotel. I had a huge bathroom with two showers :D. I really liked booking.com in this trip, especially with value deals =). Finally I became a genius member and now I have 10% more discount :D. I reserved yesterday and today only for shopping. Ximenting was my favorite stop which was also quite close to my hotel. And I feel extremely satisfied with this trip. I have seen enough and ate toooo much! Very nice and friendly people, super underdeveloped but also that much safe country, a lot to see and discover... Taiwan is over! Next target is Thailand. Already packed! Waiting for my time to fly!