Mr. Cabrera Goes to Singapore: Our Trip to Taiwan

For Chinese New Year, we spent the week in Taiwan. There was lots to see and do as the Taiwanese celebrated the Year of the Snake.

I added another tick to my Haircuts Across the World checklist.
My barber even sang Chinese songs as he happily cut my curly locks!

Here's another "jumping" photo of me. This time I am in front of the tallest building in Taiwan: Taipei 101. What you can't see is that I'm on a narrow ledge and there's a three-foot drop behind me.

This beautiful flower clock with surrounding cherry blossoms is in a beautiful, hilly area called Yangmingshan National Park

We stayed at the very artsy Amba Hotel in Taipei. As we entered the lobby, we were greeted by some cool works of art. And as we looked closer, we were even more amazed by the artists choice of materials...

Can you guess what this is made of, yet?

Yes, it's a portrait made entirely out of children's stickers: Hello Kitty, Pikachu, and Xi Yangyang!

We spent one evening at the Shilin Night Market looking for some delicious, local food. There were so many people packed together that we didn't actually move for a whole ten minutes. We decided to shimmy out of the crowd and found some delicious chicken sandwiches on the way out!

Outside the Taipei Fine Arts Museum were these 10-foot tall sculptures of Taiwan's aboriginal people, animals, and flowers.

Taiwan has Gemstone Coral fields off the coast and we were awestruck by this sculpture in Taipei 101. It has pagodas, flowers, and people inside the little houses!

Here's a close-up of the coral sculpture above. Amazing detail!

One of the reasons we went to Taiwan for vacation was to see the celebration of Chinese New Year. We got a full dose of culture when we visited the Long Shan temple and were lucky enough to witness food offerings, incense burning, group chanting, candle lighting, and hundreds of people everywhere!

For the second half of our trip, we travelled down to the city of Hualien on the east coast of Taiwan. On a tour of the countryside, we rented a paddleboat in a beautiful lake with stunning views.

Can you guess what material this is?
Did you guess wood? You're right!
She is an aboriginal woman hand carved by the Ami people.

One thing that struck us about Taiwan, is that they love to dress up their dogs! They also take them everywhere: restaurants, malls, and temples! Check out the latest in Taiwanese dog fashion below: