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I have been working very hard these last few weeks—a little too hard, at times. To break the monotony of laying code every day I elected to go for a proper ride yesterday. Since moving to Tainan I haven’t gone on any long rides whatsoever—so I geared up for a day on the road, preparing for almost any eventuality. I had several destinations in mind such as the badlands to the east of the city but struck out to the north on a whim, intending to make it to at least Chiayi City by sundown.

I regularly find photographic negatives while exploring old buildings in Taiwan. Negatives interest me as they record something of the lives of those who have vanished. Sometimes I will pick up a set of negatives and hold them up to the light in a vain attempt to peer through a tiny window into the past. I seldom see much more than the glowing silhouettes of people standing in the sun.

One of my stranger day trips in Malaysia was to the mystic island of Pulau Besar in the state of Melaka, better known as Malacca to most English-speaking people. Situated in the Strait of Malacca, one of the world’s most important shipping lanes, the small island of Pulau Besar is steeped in myth and legend. It is also widely considered to be haunted—which partly explains why part of the island is abandoned.

After living in Taipei for nearly a year I feel as if it is time for a change of pace. I mainly keep to myself and seldom get together with friends or otherwise take advantage of all the wonders of such an international city. Most of my days are taken up by cycling around and solitary work in cafés. This I can do anyplace in Taiwan.

In March of 2014 I went to see the Xú Bīng (徐冰) retrospective at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (台北市立美術館), easily my favourite gallery space in Taiwan. Xu Bing is a Chinese artist working mainly with representations of language, particularly in the context of interactions between East and West. I first discovered him through an article about character amnesia that discussed A Book From The Sky (天書), a work that immediately captured my imagination.

I woke in a rundown hotel room not far from the railway station in Fengyuan. Sunlight trickled in through discolored drapes, filling the room with a murky glow. My muscles were knotted and my lower back ached, a consequence of sleeping on the rock-hard mattress and a tough, lumpy pillow after yesterday’s long ride. The passage of night left me feeling a vague sense of unease. I lingered in bed, letting the moment pass.

After taking it easy the day before I set out to ride south to Fengyuan, Taichung, nearly 90 km from my starting point in Zhubei. There were several sights I wanted to see on the way there so I wasn’t entirely sure I would make it with daylight to spare. In fact, I was quite sure I would not—I had been up late again, wracked by insomnia, and was not ready to go until the early afternoon.

The second day of my round-the-island tour of Taiwan was relatively uneventful. I had slept poorly after first day on the road and did not fully awaken until after noon. Since I was in no particular hurry I decided to take a day to ride around Zhubei and Hsinchu City before setting out for Taichung the following day.

I moved to Taiwan in early 2013 without much of a plan or any real idea about whether I would stay. While doing research prior to departure I stumbled upon several blogs describing the huandao (環島), a road trip around the main island on bicycle or scooter often taken as a rite of passage. I was intrigued, though I had never before embarked upon a multi-day cycling trip, nor even gone for a really long ride. Though I was deeply unsure of my own capabilities I decided, as September approached, to give it a shot. I scheduled a bicycle rental from a Giant shop in Dadaocheng, put what little I owned into storage, and hit the road on the afternoon of September 8th, 2013, hoping for a reprieve from the daytime heat.

I discovered Kampung Numbak using Wikimapia, a mash up of Google Maps and Wikipedia, while staying at 1Borneo, a megamall on the outskirts of Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah. After finding it online I decided to pay Numbak a visit. There was something very strange about the juxtaposition of Borneo’s biggest mall and this impoverished village of 5,000 a stone’s throw away.