Nihao everyone :) I have a spare moment here so I thought i'd regale you with an entertaining moment from this trip to Taipei...don't worry, there will be more, it's certainly been eventful to say the least! but, as Julie Andrews once pointed out so musically, let's start at the beginning (as it's a very good place to start...apparently).

I arrive in Taipei after my incredibly long flight (more on that little adventure later) to be greeted by a very official looking chap with a nice big sign with my name on it...I wander over, say hi and he grabs all my bags off me and beckons me to follow...which I do...we get outside and i'm led over to this *huge* American limo...all black, blacked out windows, leather interior, the works...now the first thought to enter my addled little brain was "fuck me! i'm being picked up by the mafia!" and then the drivers door opens and out gets my driver (obviously) who's a huge Chinese guy wearing a cool black suit, he's even got one of those 'secret service' style earpiece things in!, so my second thought is "Fuck me! I'm being driven by the Secret Service...working for the mafia!", so I get in my groovy limo with my scary looking driver, relax a bit and watch the Taiwanese scenery fly by...and boy did it fly! you see, driving in Taiwan seems to be an intricate procedure where everyone has many secret gestures, signals, signs, flashes, beeps and codes enabling them to drive 1/4 of an inch off each others bumpers, change lanes wildly and with no signals and drive at whatever speeds they fancy with total confidence. Now, as something of an outsider, I was obviously slightly less confident with this system as my scary driver and was, initially, ever so slightly worried...but then mister scary driver reached onto the dashboard, picked up his sunglasses and put them on...and then it hit me, I realised who he looked like, who he was the exact duplicate of, and this was my third thought "Fuck me! I'm being driven by Bolo Yeung who's a Secret Service agent working for the mafia!"...needless to say this revelation instantly allayed all of my foolish worries about safety...I mean if you can't trust Bolo Yeung (who's a Secret Service agent working for the mafia) then who the hell can you trust ;)