On a few different occasions over the years I had planned trips to Asia, either for business or pleasure, but for various reasons they never materialized. Finally I have my chance: a friend is living in Taipei and he invited me to come check it out. A big part of my interest in travel is linguistic, since Asian languages are so difficult to learn I have always been somewhate intimidated by the prospect of spending time here. In fact I haven't been to a country whose language I don't speak in about 10 years; and even then it was Chile where I could sort of scrape by with my knowledge of French until I picked up Spanish. I have to go back to the early nineties when I went to Russia with my brother to find an example of really traveling in a place where I had zero linguistic background - I don't count Scandinavia because English is widespread there - so this is going to be a real adventure for me.
