by Jonny | Apr 21, 2012 | Updates
Finding a swimming pool, or at least a decent swimming pool, in Taichung is quite a feat if you don’t know where to look. I found this great place where it’s pretty decent and cheap. A good combination if you don’t have all the money in the world and you perhaps want to swim or relax on a frequent basis. Swimming is the epitome to travelling and you need to at least have an experience of some sort swimming wherever you are in the world.
This swimming centre includes a pretty decent spa along with other swimming options. Although, when I went to Dong Feng Swimming pool, it seemed as if it focused mainly on the relaxing side of things. So perhaps after work or on the weekends you can go to this place for the sole purpose of relaxing. Or if you need to exercise then swimming is the perfect exercise as it practically exercises all of the muscles in your body.
I recommend this place 100%! If you have kids then this place is perfectly adequate to accommodate them. In fact, they have safety gear for kids who want to swim and they have shallow pools where they can swim safely without the worst occurring.
However, the kids can be sometimes quite annoying when they splash water on your face without the consideration of others who are trying to actually relax after a hard day at work or something. I’ve had this on a few occasions where kids were trying to swim in the spa section; the two don’t fit together.
If they want to swim, splash around and whatnot, well then, they have a huge swimming area specifically for them to do that. Who could blame them though, as they designed the swimming areas poorly in that respect, as they built a small playground area for kids too nearby to the resting and relaxation area. – However, the two are connected, making it hard for kids not to disturb and generally be kids. That’s a huge flaw.
I digress that it isn’t much of an issue. On the odd day, you do get a large amount of kids in the swimming centre, although I believe that most days the swimming centre generally doesn’t have that many kids and most are people of the older generation.
The price
The price is probably the biggest factor when it comes to deciding whether or not this type of relaxation/exercise is too expensive or not.
For me, one ticket to gain entry into this place only cost me $100NT. (Although, for this deal you have to pay $500 and also have a student ID upfront and you get 5 tickets) There are other membership options, which I’ll find out about. However, for this specific deal, I used my student ID when I was studying some Mandarin at Feng Chia University. If you have a friend who’s studying at a university or who is a student and can prove it, then bring him along and you’ll also pay the same price as me. Otherwise, I believe the cost for a single ticket for those who are not students is around $200NT. – While not being much different in price, it can soon add up, so I would try to find a student to come with you and you can purchase as many tickets as you want, or even a one month membership deal based upon the same pricing a student would pay if you brought along someone who is a student.
You check on this swimming centre’s website for more information:
http://www.dongfeng.com.tw/about_us/index.php
by Jonny | Mar 27, 2012 | Travel
I recently came across this beautiful swimming centre, and I’ve now dedicated myself to go this place for at least a day per week!
It is in Taichung and I haven’t actually seen it advertised on the internet yet. However, as the forgetful person I am — I’ve actually forgotten the name of this swimming centre.
It features jacuzzi’s, hot tubs, swimming pools, sauna’s and basically the whole lot. It includes facilities for children, older people and generally works for everyone. They even have a tub which is full of ice water which, perhaps, could be perceived as relaxing — although I’d rather not catch a cold, so I prefer to use the hot tubs.
I’m going again tomorrow, so I’ll take some pictures and take note of the actual name of the facility itself — along with the address. It takes around 20 minutes on foot, from Taichung station and around 10 minutes by bus to get to this place. I would say it is above average in terms of the swimming facilities you can find in Taichung.
Cost
It costs around $200NT per person for one visit. However, I paid $500NT for 5 visits using my student ID card, so ensure you bring that along with you; if you have that. If not, it will cost $200NT –, however there are other pricing options which I’ll ensure to get down when I travel there tomorrow! 🙂
by Jonny | Jan 26, 2012 | Updates
If you have been reading my blog, which likely isn’t the case, you’ll have read that I went back to my parents place for Chinese New Year/Lunar New Year. I took a few pictures here and there, and they were large files which meant they needed compressing before I could upload them to my blog. I looked at a few software’s and most if not all I came across either placed a watermark on your image (As it was the free version of that particular software I downloaded) or you had to compress files, one by one; a timely process if you have lots of images. I have my laptop, on which I had already installed a software before-hand called “Fast Stone Image Viewer“.
As you can see from the image above, there are lots of options and this may look complicated, especially if you are only looking for a simple image compressor to compress your large files. However this gives you lots of options. For example, as you can see in the image above, you can add a border to give off a nice effect around the image itself.
You can also see me highlighting with my cursor on the “Batch Covert” option in tools, once you have highlighted the images in the Fast Stone Image Viewer browser. Simply click that and you’ll be brought to this part of the program:
From the above image, you can see that it has all the images listed on the right hand side. You can make additional changes, such as adding a border, changing the names of the files etc in batch and generally selecting the best options which you want personally. This tool is very handy. It has compressed my images from around the size of 3-4mb to 1mb. (While keeping a very high resolution of over 2xxx by 2xxx) You can of course make the resolution smaller, which will significantly cut down the size of the file, while seeing no reduction in quality.
Best thing of all about this software? It is free. When I mean free, it isn’t that bullshit, which comes with Ad-ware or you do not get messages popping up all the time suggesting you to buy the “pro version”. This is totally freeware. Although they do sell a version which you can buy, you really don’t need it, if the above is all your are looking for.
You can download the software on their website here: http://www.faststone.org/
by Jonny | Jan 26, 2012 | Travel
Yesterday, I turned up to Feng-Chia for the first time in 4 days and all I could see was a sea of people. Previous to the four days, everything was calm and relaxed and there was hardly anyone on the streets or around the night market. It was as if things had ‘died down’ a bit.
I guess it is the Chinese New Year/Lunar New Year holiday which has caused this vast increase, in the amount of people swarming the night market of Feng-Chia. Here are some pics: (They aren’t good pics as there were too many people and I couldn’t really just stop without blocking anyone behind me)
by Jonny | Dec 2, 2010 | Updates
Life in Taiwan
Life in this country doesn’t look too bad especially for my future. However I have to move into this other apartment where my uncle isn’t as he is the biggest idiot I’ve witnessed in my family. The goods here aren’t as cheap as I thought, and clothing is quite expensive, if not even more expensive than back in London. Not sure if I could setup a business, however some of the electronics are cheap, so I’ll have to be very selective.
My internet sites
Namely my armoured vehicle website is doing best. I’m continuing adding articles of high quality and also blogging on the recent incident in the Korean Peninsula. That has brought in a little traffic and November saw the highest amount of traffic this year, hopefully December shows similar results. As for my webmaster website, I’ve only added small amounts of content, as of recent, however in terms of traffic, just in the month of November I have got more traffic than any previous months in that year combined. So I’ve done well in that aspect, seeing I do next to no advertising.
