every year during the first weekend of april, taiwan hosts a giant music festival in kenting, which is the tropical portion of the island.  over 200 bands participate in the 3 day event and we were lucky enough to be one of them!  the whole trip was amazing.  i couldn’t even explain how much fun we had! much like my korea pictures, i will be splitting up the posts by photographer, the first one being me, which is good because i’ve noticed that a lot of my recent posts have been strictly about the band, and since i can’t take pictures of ourselves while we play, this post will be a nice break!  anyway let’s begin….

taking the 1am bus ride

left at around 1.30am and arrived around 10am

arrival! view from our balcony

trying to find food, which was very hard because there was nothing around us.  cab drivers took advantage of the giant amount of people and decided to turn off their meters and gouge the prices! so the only alternative was to walk

gave up and just went to the water

water so clear

oh ya, did i mention that tiff is here? haha, irwin was in taipei also but i’ll have post specifically for him

i’m so buff

our bum, jason

bff’s

we had to take a nap because we were performing in a few hours.  we also had to lug all our equipment like a mile up and down this giant hill, which turned out to be the worst part of the trip haha

lighthouse!

entrance

picture of one of the stages

i’d normally insert pictures of our show here, but i haven’t gotten them yet! save that for next post…

so anyway, we had a great set, quite a few people were in the audience!  after putting our equipment back at the hotel, we went back to the festival where they were serving all sorts of good eats and more importantly, a lot of beer

we ate like 3 boxes of stinky tofu from him

favorite new band #2 : go chic

so much fun

the looking glass

resting

annie’s man

all up on him

next day: a picture of our hotel

remember how i said cab drivers gouged their prices? well we had to pay $500nt (~$15us) to get a ride into town, which doesn’t sound too expensive, but in taiwan, that is RIDICULOUS. we were craving mexican food though!

we then decided that since cab fares were so high, we had to rent some of THESE!!!

the scooters made the trip. if it weren’t for these little things, we would have been stuck in the middle of nowhere. we hadn’t driven a vehicle since leaving the states, so having that freedom back was seriously the best thing ever.  now that i’ve had a chance to practice using these things, annie and i will be driving one in taipei now! anyway, we drove to a beach to swim and mess around

we almost had the whole place to ourselves

now for some group shots

waterbugs

so…long story short, francesca got bit by something…so she jumped on iki

you can see a faint outline of a mouth and some blood where the front teeth hit…we think it might have been a little shark because what fish has a mouth that big?!

didn’t scare these 2 from going back in though

best thing ever

then we drove to the nearest giant night market

at the jaeger cart!

turned out iki knew one of the girls hah

then we ran into more friends!  so much fun

jason had a 6 pack of beers at all times, we seriously didn’t know how he ended up with them

very surprised my lens was wide enough

next morning: thai food

beer poster that reminded me of north korea

aileen’s super cute heart rice

on our HOGS

needless to say, but we’ll be back.

stay tuned for part 2…….

every wednesday since the season premier of our favorite show, LOST, wes, annie and i have been having little parties at our place to watch the newest episode, hang out and discuss.  this party isn’t for the casual watcher, it’s for the major LOST nerds who really just want an excuse to geek out on the show.  starting last week, one of my classmates from hong kong, named calton, started joining us.  also starting last week, we started the weekly eat dinner before and then go to our place for LOST.  last week we went to hotpot.  while walking over to the hot pot, we noticed this restaurant:

it’s called A380, and it’s an airplane themed restaurant.  naturally, we thought it only necessary to have dinner here the following week for our LOST party.  last night we went, and to our surprise, there was ANOTHER airplane themed restaurant next door (well, separated by a thai restaurant).

turns out though, that the other one was only japanese food…so we called that the domestic flight whereas our restaurant had all sorts of food, so of course we took the international flight!

entrance

seats

ordering our food

other flight passengers…

our…captain…of the bar

there were 2 choices of food…you could have a 7 course meal, or the airplane looking food…guess which one wes got hahah

then our courses started…with butter filled bread

vodka sour shots (it came with the meal for some odd reason)

CROUTONS…you have no idea how much i miss croutons

crab something something and snails w/ garlic butter!

my american steak

throughout the course of the meal, everything was “normal”….until they turned off all the lights, made some announcements that we couldn’t hear in chinese and english and then came out the drink carts!!! it was the typical “coffee or tea” but then with “beer” tacked on to the end of it.  hooray for free beer!

then last came the ice cream

by far one of the more interesting experiences i’ve had in taipei.  it was a little pricey, but i think it was well worth the $15US for the experience.  we thought about trying out the airplane place next door, but i think we’d rather get some legit japanese food instead, haha.

a picture from our show in taichung (台中).  it was our first show out of taipei and it was also one of our best!!

girls generation, or snsd.  for those of you who don’t know who they are, familiarize yourself with this video (their latest):

these girls were always just a cute group to us, who could sing really ridiculously catchy songs and dance really well.  but today, i found that they are a very talented group of singers.  i stumbled upon these 2 videos today that made annie and i go WHOA

acoustic rendition of super junior’s “sorry sorry”

acoustic rendition of “gee”

amazing.

sorry for all the band related posts lately…but a lot has been happening recently!

early morning car ride to the radio station, reading our article in the newspaper!

arrival at the station

inside the studio

mandatory cheesy band shot in front of the station sign

if you missed the live broadcast, wes actually recorded and uploaded half of the show online!! i’m still in the process of trying to find a recording of the second half. you can download it here: http://www.hokwongwei.com/uploads/tlg/20100312%20ICRT.mp3

the experience was absolutely amazing.  our website traffic for thelookingglassband.com more than quadrupled as a result!! it was a little nerve racking though being on the air…didn’t say a lot of things i wanted to say and probably said some things i didn’t mean to say, but oh well! hopefully we’ll be able to do it again in the near future!