Tips for the Wet and Cold Months in North Taiwan

Word to the wise. If you've been trying to keep up the same Western habits for winter that you had in your home country, you've been doing it all wrong!

Winters in Taiwan's north are pretty depressing and uncomfortable. Often overcast with drizzle and rain and ranging in temperature from 10C to 15C, winters are, in some ways, much worse than in some of our more frozen homelands. This is mainly due to the fact that winters in Taiwan are so wet and humid but also because there is no way to get in from the cold, so to speak. Taiwanese houses don't usually have interior heating save for rudimentary electric heaters that don't really project a lot of heat. When you get out of the cool and wet, you're often in a house that is also cool(er) and wet.

So when it comes to staying warm, people from other countries living in Taiwan are often ill-prepared. So, to better prepare everyone, I give you my top two tips for making your winter much more pleasant.

1) USE A STACK OF HAND TOWELS, not full sized ones. Due to the humidity and the cool inside and outside, big towels will not fully dry from day to day, even if hung. In fact, because they stay wet, if you use any towel for days on end, they are likely to get moldy. Either buy one (several) of those quick dry camping towels or buy a stack of hand towels. They tend to dry faster. I suggest using one hand towel per shower and then throwing it in the laundry right away. As they are smaller, they'll take up less of your laundry anyhow.

2) FLEECE IS YOUR FRIEND! I mean anything fleece: jackets, shirts, hats and bedding. Yes, bedding! I'm sure the properties of fleece are probably well known to you in terms of keeping dry. There are also some new kinds of fleece that are wind and sometimes water repellant. Some stores sell fleece bedding which has a real advantage in the winter in that, when you crawl into bed, you won't feel that your bedding is wet. Crawling into a damp bed in the cold is a terrible feeling (my wife used to resort to using a hairdryer to thoroughly warm up her side before getting in). Wet bedding also eventually causes molding as well which I'm sure you won't like sleeping in either. You won't need to wash your bedding (and have difficulty drying it) as often with fleece.

If you're asking where I got these ideas from then the answer is simple: Taiwanese themselves. My in-laws keep stacks of hand towels as bath towels. I always wondered why they used small ones and threw them in the laundry right after using them. They also use tons of fleece for bedding and blankets. Now I know why on both counts. And I'm definitely a convert to these ideas!

If you have any other tips about getting laundry dry, buying heaters or anything else related to Taiwan winters, feel free to post a comment.

It'll huff and it'll puff but it won't blow your house down...

Who's afraid of a big, bad typhoon?  Well not me and I live in Typhoon Alley (what I like to call the fact that most Pacific tropical cyclones seem to hit Taiwan square on).  However, I live in Taipei and being from a modern Taiwanese city of concrete and steel does have its advantages in a big typhoon.

As the countryside areas of Taiwan seem to be like crumbly sandcastles compared to the cities, typhoons there strike with devastation, bringing landslides and flooding and blowing down weak structures made of wood or the cheap aluminum and plastic siding (that lots of buildings have hammered on).  Wood and cheap siding just don't cut it in a typhoon but concrete does.

Just look at the devastation after Katrina in the US.  Taiwanese look to this kind of hurricane in America with amazement.  Not amazement about the typhoon force but about amazement about the destruction wrought in cities in their aftermath!  Well, there are a few reasons why cyclones don't bring the damage they do in America to homes.

First, homes are built with different materials.  Taiwanese city dwellings are built with concrete which stands a much better chance in the high winds.  What many Taiwanese don't know is that American homes are built with wooden structures.  Wood doesn't fare as well in the wind.  All it takes is for one small opening to let a strong wind take a whole house down.  If you want proof, watch this:



The second reason is better flood water management in the cities.  Big cities in Taiwan have got lots of flood water prevention systems, not the least being the flood water walls that you can find along the edge of rivers.  Remember the poorly built and maintained levees of New Orleans?  'Nuff said.

So in the end, if there is a lesson to be learned from all this then it is that of the Three Little Pigs.  When the big, bad wolf comes knocking on your door during a typhoon, if your house is made of concrete and brick, you stand the best chance and, in fact, are quite safe.  Let's hope you aren't the pig caught in the house made of straw or sticks...

幹!好熱 It's Freakin' Hot

Ok ok, it doesn't actually say those exact words but you get the idea. Popularized on Green Island, this slogan sure seems appropriate for these last few days with the mercury reaching up as high as 38C (100F) in Taipei City.

Thank god the convenience stores just started their summer beer sales events. Family mart offers 50% off any 3 beers while 7eleven has their regular selection plus several imports available. From now until July 27, buy 3 beers of any kind and get 21% off at 7eleven. They've kindly imported a few new beers 1664 Blanc from France (a fruity white beer), Longboard (lager) and Wailua (wheat with Passion Fruit) from Hawaii and Samuel Adams (bitter) from the Mainland US + a few others.

Stay frosty Taiwan!

Tropical Cyclones - Typhoons or Hurricanes by other Names

Well, several typhoons have come and gone. Here is a primer on typhoons for the uninitiated.

Basically typhoons and hurricanes belong to the weather category called tropical cyclones, named because of their circular nature. In the Northern hemisphere, cyclones turn counter-clockwise. Generally speaking, typhoons are what cyclones are called to the West of the international dateline. On the right they are called hurricanes.

wiki

Contrary to some beliefs, hurricanes can and do happen in the Pacific. They have been known to happen on the West coast of Mexico and the USA but are not very common. Most hurricanes occur in the Atlantic rounding out their paths in the Caribbean Sea.

As for typhoons, you could say that Taiwan is in 'typhoon alley' to borrow from the term 'tornado alley'. This is to say Taiwan gets more than its fair share of typhoons hitting in any given season. Typhoons that hit Taiwan often hit the Philippines beforehand. Typhoons can even hit Taiwan twice if they turn back, rare but not unheard of. The misses, typhoons that don't hit Taiwan, tend to go either North and hit Japan or South and hit Hong Kong or even Vietnam. What can I say, it's difficult to predict, typhoon tracking is an imperfect science.

There is also a naming convention for tropical depressions. Hurricanes are named alphabetically. From 2000, typhoons have received local Asian names. The lists of names can be found in the link below.

"Each of the 14 nations that typhoons affect submitted a list of names for a total of 141 names. The names include animals, flowers, astrological signs and a few personal names."
USA Today