I know I've been seriously behind in my updates, but I had to fly back to Asia for work, which has effectively delayed my blog posting yet again.
So, let's see...I posted about the wedding, so now it's on to the honeymoon. Its already been about 3 weeks or so since the honeymoon.
For the honeymoon we spent 5 days in Taiwan and 5 days in Bali.
Most of our time in Taiwan was spent hanging out with my family and getting wedding photos taken.
Here we are with my family. (Phil, me, grandma, grandpa, mom, aunt, aunt, uncle Robert - sorry don't know my aunts' English names...)
I always rave to Phil about how great the food in Taiwan is (because it really is), but he wasn't half as excited as I thought he'd be. Through the entire trip in Taiwan I think Phil's favorite food was the Taiwanese mango ice that we had - shaved ice with chunks of fresh mango, mango flavored syrup and mango ice cream. It
was pretty tasty.
Personally I think Phil might have seem less excited about the food because he was grumpy at me for dragging him through 3 days worth of picture taking. Well really only 1 of those 3 days was actually us taking pictures. We also had 1 day for figuring out what would be included in our package and picking out our outfits, and the 3rd day for picking out the pictures we wanted to keep. What can I say, I've always wanted to take wedding photos in Taiwan since they do such an awesome job. I think they came out pretty well...even though we both look super Asian...
I think one of my favorite pictures has to be our "gangsta" picture - the two of us in our gangsta faces trying to look bad-ass in our fancy clothes, standing outside a random door in the slums of Taiwan...Ok, so we weren't really in the slums, but it kind of looks like we are, doesn't it?
You can check out the rest of the Taiwanese wedding photos here.
After hanging out with the family and taking photos in Taiwan we headed off to Bali. We did a lot while we were in Bali - lots of sight-seeing, some relaxing on the beach. I had over 300 pictures and videos on my camera by the end. Here are some of the highlights.
We went to several temples since Bali is littered with them. One of our favorites was the temple at Tanah Lot. It's right by the water, so lots of people go there in the early evening to get some nice shots of the sunset. We got a couple of nice shots before the sun decided to hide behind some clouds.
This picture is of the temple out in the water. I think during low tide you can probably walk across without really getting too wet, but the tide was a bit higher while we were there so you could see people tredging through chest high water to make it to the other side. I don't think they allow tourists up to the actual temple at the top of the rock anymore though.
While we were in Bali we also stopped by a small farm or plantation where they harvest all kinds of things - different herbs, coffee, cocoa. They were most well known for their coffee beans. In particular their Mongoose Coffee (I don't think that's what it's actually called, but that's OK). Basically when the mongoose gets some kind of indigestion it will eat the coffee beans and then poop it out. They then clean the coffee bean and roast it...sounds yummy doesn't it!
Anyway, it's supposed to be very expensive and very good so I did end up trying some. It tasted pretty good. Although knowing that it came from the feces of an animal was kind of gross.
This is the elusive mongoose. He kind of looks like a cross between a cat and a feret...
We also tried riding an elephant at one of Bali's elephant parks. Elephants aren't really animals native to Bali. They get shipped onto the island from Jakarta. But who knows if Phil and I would ever be in another country where we could ride an elephant. Our elephant's name was Laora.
I think Phil made a new friend...
You can't go to Bali and not explore their beaches. One of the beaches we went to was called "Dreamland" and is well known as a hot spot for surfing. The beach was beautiful. Phil even rented a surfboard and tried to learn how to surf. I got some good videos of Phil getting wiped out by the waves. I'll need to work on getting those posted.
And we were able to end the entire trip on a high note with a stop to the legendary Hello Kitty gate in the Taipei airport. Yes, an entire gate dedicated to nothing but Hello Kitty...Why? Who knows...The Hello Kitty gate was complete with pink Hello Kitty seats with Hello Kitty's face plastered on the back, a Hello Kitty playing area for the kids, a rainbow bench where you can sit and watch Hello Kitty cartoons, and a Hello Kitty store. Taiwanese people sure do like their Hello Kitty...either that or its just a giant marketing ploy by Sanrio...
Phil didn't seem to mind chilling with Hello Kitty though. ^__^
Ok, so those are the highlights. You can check out the rest of the photos from the honeymoon here.
Each place had huge grills setup to keep up with all the people lining up for food. Surprisingly some stands had already run out of food by the time we got there and it was only half way through the event...
After the pulled pork we decided to wait in line for some ribs.
Looks yummy, doesn't it?
