My buddy's are awesome!

"Taiwan is Asia's best kept secret". The Lonely Planet authors already know. My buddy said Taiwanese often put it this way: "Taiwan has everything but international recognition". I really have to agree, ignoring the political aspect I feel like from where I am I could both do and see anything I want.
Speaking of my buddy, NCCU (政治大學), the university I'm gonna be staying at, has generously assigned me two buddy's. They can show me around and answer all my questions about what to eat, where to eat, with whom to eat and many other (even non-food related) topics.
I present to you Quincy (珮萱) and Hank (靖捷), I think I’ll just stick with their American names here. Pictures below.

Quincy picked me up at the airport when I arrived here, so Nina and I didn’t even have one moment to get lost. She took me and some other Dutchies to Tamsui (淡水) one week ago, an awesome place where we crossed the river by boat and cycled around on rented bikes. We also visited The Shihsanhang Museum of Archaeology where we saw (among other things) Taiwanese signs recommending skirt-wearers not to walk on the glass ceiling in order to protect their privacy. I like how everything here is so regulated and put onto signs.
Also I’m monkeys now. Quincy and her friends started calling me 阿班, which sounds almost exactly like “apen” in Dutch. (By the way, us saying “aah neeneenee” apparently means boobs).

Wilmer.

With my other buddy Hank I went hiking at Yangming mountain (陽明山) last Monday, a 40 minute bus ride from Taipei. It was nice to get away from the city and venture into nature for a day. I loved the foggy scenery there and we talked (mostly in English) a lot about Taiwan, Mandarin and Coldplay. Just when I was trying to explain what a walking stick was, a huge adrenaline inducing snake caught our eye, and I was glad that’s just a figure of speech (if only because it would mean Hank and me share an eye). It slid down from almost next to us on our right, to then quickly slither away into the bushes to our left.
It’s funny how some animals seem to think you don’t see them (or they are just fearless…) when you’re almost kissing their tail or wings, whereas others make their presence known by fleeing when you were otherwise just gonna walk by without ever seeing them. This snake’s sense of visibility obviously was the latter, and somehow being more photogenic: attached is a photo of a dragonfly belonging to the former.

I still love it here, meeting new people every day, maybe my next blog is gonna be about hostels.
Hostels are great too.