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These photos were taken two years ago after cycling through the Old Caoling Railway Tunnel (舊草嶺隧道) into Toucheng, Yilan. The first set of six photos were all shot along the rugged shoreline of the Láilái Geological Area (萊萊地質區) while the last four were captured at Mǎgǎng (馬崗), a half-abandoned fishing village on Cape San Diego (三貂角), the easternmost tip of Taiwan. All were captured in Gongliao. From here the vast Pacific Ocean stretches all the way to Baja California in Mexico.

Curated by Nicolas Bourriaud, the Taipei Biennial 2014 was held at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (臺北市立美術館) in Zhongshan from September into the early part of the new year. The theme is “art in the age of the anthropocene”, the current geophysical epoch defined by humankind’s enormous impact on the natural world. From the curator’s notes: this exhibition is organized around the cohabitation of human consciousness with swarming animals, data processing, the rapid growth of plants and the slow movements of matter. I am no serious critic but I certainly appreciate thought-provoking art when I see it. Since I haven’t any expertise in this area I’m mostly going to let the photos speak for themselves, however incomprehensible that might be. Much like the Xu Bing retrospective it was an inspiring experience so I’d like to have a record of it here on my blog.

Nánfāng’ào (南方澳) is a major fishing port in Su’ao, Yilan, on the east coast of Taiwan. It is located just south of the end of the Lányáng Plain (蘭陽平原), where a rocky headland juts out into the ocean to form a natural harbour. It opened in 1923 after development by the Japanese colonial authorities and is now considered one of the top fishing ports in the nation, often ranking in third place by measures unknown to me, and is particularly known for its record-breaking mackerel catch. Part of why the port is so productive has to do with the nutrient-rich Kuroshio Current (黑潮, literally “Black Stream”), which lies just offshore.

In the summer of 2014 I was nearing the end of my first sojourn in Taiwan. By the beginning of August I would be in Canada for a wedding in the family with no idea what I’d be doing after that. Since I wasn’t sure if I would be returning to Taiwan I made vague plans to go on a road trip. With only about a week to go before my departure the weather took an ominous turn as Typhoon Matmo (麥德姆) barrelled toward the island. On July 20th, with the pressure of time bearing down on us, my girlfriend and I hopped on a 125cc scooter—the same kind of dinky, puttering scooter you see people riding around any Taiwanese town—and set out from Changhua with the goal of crossing the Central Mountain Range (中央山脈) at Wǔlíng (武陵), the highest paved (and publicly-accessible) mountain pass in Taiwan at 3,275 meters above sea level. With luck, time and weather permitting, we’d be able to visit Héhuānshān (合歡山) and maybe even drive down into the amazingly scenic Taroko Gorge (太魯閣峽谷) on the east side of the island.

Last week I moved from Taipei to Zhongli, a mid-sized city of approximately half a million about 45 minutes down the Western Line (西部幹線) in the heart of Taoyuan. I have been all around the island but haven’t explored much of what you might call the “middle north”, the strongly Hakka-influenced area stretching from the rugged borders of New Taipei south to Taichung that includes Taoyuan, Hsinchu, and Miaoli. Perhaps by staying here awhile I will find opportunities to explore more of this part of Taiwan and fill in some blank spots on my personal map.

Taiwan is absolutely mad for scooters, a consequence of high population density, tightly cramped streets, and the expense and inconvenience of driving a car. Everywhere you go you’ll find streets lined with parked scooters and filled with scooterists going about their business. In can all seem like absolute chaos to outsiders—but there is a method to the madness, and the convenience factor regularly seduces skeptics, particularly when living outside of Taipei or beyond the reach of public transportation.

Last week I spent a morning in Guelph, Ontario, after cycling all the way there from Hamilton the previous day. Not knowing what there was to see, I biked around downtown, keeping an eye out for historic features of the urban landscape.

The badlands of Taiwan are one of the nation’s most captivating and unusual landscapes. While there are several scattered around the country the most extensive badlands can be found along the hilly borderlands of Tainan and Kaohsiung. Known locally to Taiwanese as “moon worlds” (月世界), these landscapes are composed of weathered mudstone outcrops that erode too quickly for plants to grow.

Recently I posted my full exploration of the Qiaoyou Building (喬友大廈), a towering ruin in the heart of Changhua City. It was a big building and I ended up capturing many more photographs than I ended up sharing there. Here, in this post, I’d like to share a few more photos I captured in black and white. I have also included a couple of images demonstrating how I digitally restore photographic negatives I find in the ruins.

My last night in Changhua City was surprisingly eventful thanks to a fortunate accident of timing. Earlier in the day I had noticed an unusual uptick in the amount of activity on the streets while cycling around. Banquet tents had been setup on major thoroughfares, police were standing at major intersections, scooters flying yellow banners were buzzing around like angry hornets, and the air was filled with a palpable sense of expectation and excitement. After an early supper next to a coffee shop I often work at I approached to one of the staff (who speaks passable English) and asked, “What’s going on?” Their answer, “It’s the…” Trailing off, hands aflutter, obviously searching for the right word—and then: “Mazu!”

Kowloon was my first experience of Asia back in 2012. Anytime I return to Hong Kong I stay there for at least a couple of nights. It helps that many of the most affordable hotels are located in Kowloon—but I also like how gritty, rundown, and real it is, particularly when compared to the naked display of wealth and privilege seen on the other side of Victoria Harbour on Hong Kong Island itself.

A year ago the Taiwanese people stood up to their elected government and halted the passage of a controversial free trade agreement by occupying the Legislative Yuan. This act of mass civil disobedience was soon christened the Sunflower Student Movement. I was living in Taipei when it all went down and visited the protest on several nights to watch history unfold. I am not a professional photographer, political observer, nor journalist, so please excuse the poor technical quality of the images and lack of elaboration in this gallery. It is my hope that these pictures capture something of the spirit of those wild, uncertain nights when anything seemed possible.

Nishinari is widely reputed to be the most run-down, crime-ridden, and dangerous part of Osaka—and about as close to a slum as you are likely to find anywhere in Japan. This may explain the preponderance of cheap backpacker accommodation in Shinimamiya, the area just south of Shinsekai (新世界), literally “New World”, where I stayed for a single night in May 2014 before returning to Taiwan. Although I only had a few hours to work with I couldn’t resist wandering around Nishinari to see just how bad it was. I figured it couldn’t be any worse than the Downtown Eastside, the festering carbuncle of Vancouver, which I had wandered through on many occasions.

I lived in Wenshan, Taipei, from October 2013 until April 2014 when I moved south to Tainan. In those six months I captured a great many photographs from in around the area, the finest of which were previously shared on this blog in a post about the urban landscape of Wenshan. It was my intention with that post to portray southern Taipei from the vantage point of mountaintops, hillsides, river banks, and pedestrian overpasses, with only a couple of shots from street level. This time around I would like to zoom in and share scenes from everyday life in Wenshan.

I am just about to zip off to Chiang Mai for the second time and I realized—I still haven’t shared any photos from the first time I went! The reason for this is simple: I was sick every day I was there in early 2012. I made the mistake of visiting during burning season and could hardly breathe the entire time I was there. I didn’t even know what was going on at the time, a consequence of my inexperience with extreme air pollution and the lack of a cell phone (on which I would have certainly read about it in the news as I did after returning to Bangkok) a few days later. “National Haze Crisis Declared”, the headlines read.

Beigang is a historic town on the riverside border between Yunlin and Chiayi in southern Taiwan. I made a brief, unplanned stopover in Beigang while riding north to Changhua in the summer of 2014. I was only vaguely aware of Beigang’s existence, having at some point read something about Cháotiān Temple (朝天宫), one of Taiwan’s most famous Mazu temples, but I had a hunch that there might be more to see—and I was right! If you enjoy visiting traditional towns with a lot of history then Beigang should definitely be on your list.

I moved to Changhua City in November 2014 to see what it’s like living in a traditional town in central Taiwan. I had an interesting time staying in Tainan for three months earlier that year so I figured why not give Changhua a shot for the wintertime? Changhua is nowhere near as lively and interesting as Taiwan’s old southern capital but it is not without charm. Here I have gathered up some of the more representative images I captured during my first two months of residency, mostly of the area immediately to the east of the railway station, which also happens to be the oldest part of town. Explanations are given in the caption of each photo, where available.

Last year, near the end of 2013, I had the good fortune to move to Wenshan, the southernmost part of Taipei. In late September I was nearing the end of my first round-the-island bicycle tour and put a call out on Facebook asking if anyone knew of a place I could stay for a month or so. That call was answered—and I ended up staying with a couple of cool European guys for six months before heading south to Tainan in April 2014.

These photographs were captured on a short two day, three night visit to Singapore in February 2013. I was unable to do more than scratch the surface of this intriguing island city-state on such a brief trip, but I did manage to take a few interesting shots while I was there. Most of my time was spent in Singapore’s historic Chinatown, known in Chinese as Niúchēshuǐ (牛車水), but I also ventured into Little India and the Downtown Core.

Note: this post still receives a fair amount of traffic but it is very out of date. It was only current back in 2014, when it was published. Keep that in mind when considering these recommendations, many of which have closed down!

What follows is a short list of serviceable working cafés in and around downtown Tainan. What do I mean by a “working café”? I mean a café where students, freelancers, and remote workers will find the things they need to dig in for an extended period of time and get some work done. My criteria for a good working café: decent coffee, the availability of snacks or light meals, comfortable seating, wireless connectivity, unobtrusive music, reasonable prices, long opening hours, welcoming staff, and an ambiance conducive to creative work, especially programming. Of course, it helps if a café looks nice too!