Taking Care of the World Tour

[jigsaw]

Season them with salt in the air

 

Passing through the busy tourist Legian street to get to our anticipated lunch spot of a balinese famous babi 

explosion of flavor in this plate

Chillin after a double portion lunch

a few shot of the seminyak road

The next morning we are heading to Nusa Penida island ,but first...

Lunch before the boat ride

 

Arrive at the beach

Bath them with hot bali Sun!

And i do not plan to sea wash them on this leg but i did a skin-dipping on them a bit 

View from the nusa penida

i tried to wear them as much but we all know its not the proper attire in this situation but i personally think they are versatile enough to be worn daily in this tropic weather, so roomy And the weight is perfect

[jigsaw]

Then we do what the local do grill them pig on a open fireee

*caution disturbing pic for some

the next day we headed to Ubud and ubud market 

found a few coffee spot

 

 

Edited August 12, 2017 by jigsaw

[jigsaw]

Back to nature

 

need to adjust the back cinch to fit me

Front pocket sticthing start to unravel

Beautiful twist

[jigsaw]

Having coffee at titik temu seminyak (just ok coffee) and lunch at Deusexmachina in Canggu

Honestly im not forcing myself to wear the jeans in this heat but it just comfortable and im really ok with it.

29 degree celcius today with a cool breeze from Australia and im good

[Bobbo]

Loving your updates mate, proper world tour stuff.

[jigsaw]

Today is our independence day that mean extra rest day and spend it rightly

[jigsaw]

A week to end my leg

bring them to the office today, really want to keep them, enjoyed them very much

[Foxy2]

and what a great leg so far!

really enjoying the posts.

[bartlebyyphonics]

agreed! 

great to see

fits

fun

n love 4 20s cut

[jigsaw]

Thanks gents

this will be my last week and try to wear them as much until i pass it to the next guy. So whos next? is it ooms?

 

So this is what happens on weekends

meetings

Decided to have tacos for lunch

and then move to indonesian food for dinner

Edited August 28, 2017 by jigsaw

[Bobbo]

Yep, Ooms should be next in line before Ironhorse takes over.

[oomslokop]

sorry, but i won't be taking part in this tour (told @redragon forgot if i told you @Bobbo or other guys in this thread). i'm all toured out at the moment. so on to taiwan! been enjoying the pics! cheers.

[jigsaw]

no biggies, Ironhorse it is, shoot me a PM for address

[volvo240thebest]

I've just caught up with the last couple pages of this topic. Outstanding tour bitch job dear @jigsaw , quite excited to have you onboard on the tcb20s contest as well!

 

[jigsaw]

On 8/31/2017 at 1:33 AM, volvo240thebest said:

I've just caught up with the last couple pages of this topic. Outstanding tour bitch job dear @jigsaw , quite excited to have you onboard on the tcb20s contest as well!

 

Thank you broda...

here is my last update until i ship it to ironhorse on monday

 

lunch 

indonesian dry noodle

 

And then off to my friend coffee cupping session

 

Its been an enjoyable tour pants and i would definitely miss them and hope the new contest pair to be better!

 

Edited September 2, 2017 by jigsaw

[Iron Horse]

Great leg, looking forward to getting the jeans! I can't beat Bali though  Here's hoping it doesn't rain too much here during my leg.

[jigsaw]

4 hours ago, Iron Horse said:

Great leg, looking forward to getting the jeans! I can't beat Bali though  Here's hoping it doesn't rain too much here during my leg.

 dont worry you'll nail it! everyplace got their own charm

[Iron Horse]

Jeans just arrived at my office, will get some photos up tomorrow most likely! Still awfully hot and humid here to wear jeans though 

[jigsaw]

4 hours ago, Iron Horse said:

Jeans just arrived at my office, will get some photos up tomorrow most likely! Still awfully hot and humid here to wear jeans though 

that's fast, good to hear the jeans landed safely....excited about this leg

[Iron Horse]

Tried them on, loose and soft, like pajama pants! Should be much easier to wear in the heat than I feared. 

[Iron Horse]

Some initial photos of the jeans and fit, I'll get out and do/see some interesting things soon!

 

[jigsaw]

they sure look great on everyone, love them

[Iron Horse]

Went out around the area near my office here in Taipei for lunch and took some photos for yous guys, starting off with a cat-themed cafe since after all TCB is the two cats brand (though, I'm a dog person):

Got breakfast food for lunch, a tuna "dan bing" a kind of dough crepe thing with egg in it:

And of course spaghetti with chopsticks, because that's what you eat for breakfast. These kinds of little breakfast places are all over the place here and serve all kinds of fairly cheap food. I sure miss them whenever I leave, especially in Japan where everyone tends to eat breakfast at home:

Moving on to the nearby Yongkang Street, a big-time restaurant and cafe area that's also popular with tourists, especially Japanese and Korean tourists. The place with the red sign is Jin Ji Yuan, or Golden Chicken Garden, one of the best xiao long bao places around. I'll eat there another day to give you a peek inside.

The sky is pretty grey today, bad luck as it's been clear all summer until exactly today. Smog tends to roll in from China the most in winter, as it's getting cold there and everyone fires up the coal burners, or on rare occasions sand storms blow down from the far eastern Gobi Desert. We're pretty far from there, but we're also exactly downwind from northeastern China too.

Duck anyone? This place is pretty good too!

Yongkang Park has a partially defaced statue of Chiang Kai Shek, former military junta leader of Taiwan.

What Taiwan is, legally, is kind of a complicated issue. This is kind of long but here goes: Taiwan's original inhabitants were Polynesians, usually referred to as aboriginal these days. About 400 years ago, people migrated from China, especially nearby Fujian province, mostly fishermen and tea farmers, but did not colonize the entire island because of its rough terrain and pushback from native people. The Spanish, Dutch, British, and Japanese all tried to colonize Taiwan in the next few centuries but mostly failed for the same reasons. During this time, China's ruling dynasties didn't really care much about Taiwan and considered it mostly a wild and untameable place with few natural resources, though they did extract some tribute. 

At the end of the first Sino-Japanese War in 1895, Japan stipulated to the Qing Dynasty that it wanted Taiwan as part of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which from all accounts didn't bother the Qing very much. Japan was trying to become an imperial power at the time in the mold of Europe's imperial nations and saw great value in Taiwan. It would serve as a stopping point between the Japanese mainland and its prospective territories in Southeast Asia; raw materials would be taken from SEA, through Taiwan, and then on to Japan proper. Taiwan was also a source of timber, including the Camphor tree, which is used to make camphor, or menthol ointment. What's more, Taiwan was to serve as Japan's model colony, unlike Korea. The local people were treated well, so long as they didn't rebel, and Japan introduced railroads, standardized education, Taiwan's first universities, irrigation, running water, and much more. Of course, in turn the local people were educated in Japanese. This lasted until 1945, when Japan lost in WWII, and as part of its surrender it had to hand Taiwan over to the US; at the same time, in China, the Chinese government which succeeded the Qing Dynasty, the Republic of China (ROC), led by Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek, was in a civil war with Mao Zedong's communist People's Liberation Army. The communists won, establishing the current People's Republic of China (PRC) and the ROC government fled in exile to Taiwan. While Chiang's reps had accepted Japan's surrender on behalf of the Allied Powers, the US never officially handed over Taiwan to the ROC, so one could make the case that legally it's still a US protectorate. At any rate, the ROC (or Kuomintang) became Taiwan's government starting in 1949 as a military junta and treated its stay as temporary with the intention of one day taking back China, though that was really a pipe dream. It was a one-party dictatorship, though better than the communist one back in China, and democracy and other parties were not introduced until 1996. The current Chinese government maintains that Taiwan belongs to it, though the PRC never had control of Taiwan at any point, making it a dubious claim, so for all intents and purposes Taiwan is a de facto independent nation with its own government, flag, passport, currency, immigration laws, etc.

Anyway, back to sight-seeing! 

Sweating making noodles by hand at Du Xiao Yue, a famous restaurant from Tainan, the old capital in the south. Great food here.

View of Taipei 101 from Dongmen Station. The air is clearly not so clear today.

While here you need to eat at the original Din Tai Fung; I'll go back another day:

Heading back, down Yongkang; if you think a lot of the architecture here seems pretty drab you'd be right, but it's for a few reasons. The buildings need to withstand earthquakes and typhoons, and it's pretty muggy for about half the year, so concrete is the best option. Also, the ROC's view of only being here temporarily led the construction of a lot of functional but unattractive buildings.

Flirting:

Gotta get a green onion pancake while here:

Since I was full I settled for a salted cream black tea drink; the national drink is actually pearl milk tea, aka bubble tea/boba, which is from the city of Taichung. Anyway, that's it for me for now!

Edited September 8, 2017 by Iron Horse

[Bobbo]

Off to a great start mate. Don't know much about Taiwan so it will be a fun part to follow!

[volvo240thebest]

great start @Iron Horse and must say the jeans fit you really well too.

the jeans are super washed which is what happens to tour jeans, they look like dad jeans but it's a good sign that people care about hygiene at least lol

[Iron Horse]

Thanks guys; yep the denim is a bluish-grey dad jean color like the kind of denim you find in night markets here.  Still, I'm loving the cut, and I can wear a thin belt over the suspender buttons and cinch no problem.

[Iron Horse]

Got out again this morning because the weather picked up, and it's the weekend. Took the subway to Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall, which is a good tourist starting point in Taipei:

At the end is the memorial hall, and on each side are national theaters:

Tai Chi practitioners doing Pushing Hands:

The pond:

And the elusive crested night heron:

Detail of the roofing work on the national theaters:

Inside the memorial hall, a giant statue of CKS:

And one of his old rides, a 1955 GM-made Cadillac:

Moving on, I walked to the nearby Taipei Main Station area; below is 228 Peace Park. The park is a memorial to the February 28, 1947 protests against the moving-in Chiang Kai Shek government which led to violent crackdowns across the nation, killing about 10,000 people. 

On the far left with the green dome you can see a museum that was originally built in 1908 by the Japanese to commemorate the completion of the North-South railway. In the front is a newer pagoda, and in the background the pink tower is the Shinkong Mitsukoshi building, owned by the joint venture between local Shin Guang holdings and Japan's Mitsukoshi department store, which has locations here. It was also previously the tallest building in Taiwan before the construction of Taipei 101:

Walking past the museum, looking down the road in the distance Yangmingshan mountain looms. This is technically an active volcano:

Across the road is the former local headquarters of the Japanese Mitsui keiretsu corporation, which is still one of Japan's largest corporate groups whose companies include Sumitomo Mitsui Banking, Sapporo Breweries, and Isetan Mitsukoshi. This particular building was constructed in the 1920s, which is pretty evident from its Art Deco styling:

Ever seen a capsule toy dispensing machine selling capsule toys that are miniature capsule toy dispensing machines? 

Lunch time! Got some chicken stir fried noodles:

7-11, and other convenience stores, are a big deal here; Taiwan is tied with Japan for having the most number of convenience stores per capita in the world. The big ones are 7-11, Family Mart, and the local OK Mart, and Hi-Life. A lot of campers hang out at them all day:

Edited September 9, 2017 by Iron Horse

[Maynard Friedman]

Great tour so far IH, I'm really enjoying it  

[louisbosco]

ahh! now i finally understood the resemblance to japan with the amount of family marts etc when i visited a couple years ago. i'm well versed in the CKS/KMT history of taiwan but never knew about the japan part further back..

Edited September 10, 2017 by louisbosco

[jigsaw]

Im getting smarter already, great leg man!