At the insistence of my better half, I agreed to go to Taiwan. I knew little about the place, but anywhere new is going to be full of photographic opportunities, so I had no objection at all.

Of the three days that we were there, we saw sunlight for about half an hour. It rained more or less non-stop. But we all know that inclement weather can make for interesting pictures...so let's see what we got.

First stop was at the hotel, and then a quick look at the park opposite it

And yes, that's 101 in the background. Plenty more of that to come.

Next up: some typically Taiwanese street kitchens for lunch (for the Mrs, not for me - although Taiwan is actually pretty good for vegetarians and, compared to Japan, it's way way better, not that this is much of a boast - this particular place didn't do 素食, which we soon memorised as Chinese for "vegetarian"). The Mrs. very much enjoyed hers though.

These two ladies were outside. My wife took one look at them and proclaimed that they were Japanese. "How do you know? " I asked, to which she replied "because they're standing out there dithering about whether to come in or not" :-)

Following this, it was time to walk around Taipei and do some shooting.

Flower market. Forgive the white balance; this is about as good as I could get it.

Tapiei 101, formerly the world's tallest building of some kind, is pretty hard to miss from anywhere in the city...

Needless to say we weren't going to pass up the chance to go up in the famously quick elevator and see the night view. This finished off my remaining batteries for the night but yielded some pretty impressive scenes.

Last shot of this entry: an attempt at some kind of semi-monochrome still life or something like that. Hotel room.

Next entry will feature a lot of temples and suchlike.

谢谢 for looking!