About Me

Hi, I am Dokuya the author of this web blog and I would like to introduce myself to you.

I was born, raised and lived all my life in a small town near Chicago in the USA.   The reason for me spending time in Taiwan is that my wife is from Taiwan.  We married almost 25 years ago.  From time to time over the years we would go back to Taiwan to visit family.  I found these trips kind of boring.  One of the problems was that I didn’t speak Chinese so sitting around the house being left out of conversations simply wasn’t that appealing.   There was a 20 year period in which I was visiting Taiwan but I never considered it a tourist destination.  Quite frankly I have never met anyone in the USA who has considered Taiwan a tourist destination.  Worse than that is when I tell someone that my wife is from Taiwan or that I was in Taiwan they almost always respond with something like, “Oh, I heard that Thailand is nice”.

As my wife and I started to contemplate retirement we thought about Taiwan, family being the main reason.  At the moment my wife still enjoys her job and wants to continue working.  This afforded me the opportunity to retire a couple of years ago and I decided to spend more time in Taiwan to see if I would be able to adjust / prepare for retirement there.

Once I started to get out by myself, figure out the transportation and so on I fell in love with Taiwan.  Almost every day was a pleasant surprise.  Every day was a new adventure and a new discovery.  To be honest I am shocked that Taiwan has so much to offer.  I thought that I would run out of things to do but it is endless.

The purpose of me writing this blog is to share my experiences, adventures and discoveries with others.  I think that “others” will fall into 2 categories.  One are my friends who have never experienced Taiwan.  For them this blog will allow me to more fully explain my experiences…but it will still fall short.  For example you can talk about stinky tofu, take photos, make a video but until you smell it and eat it you haven’t experienced it.

The second group of people that I want to share my experiences with are those who are thinking about traveling to Taiwan or are in Taiwan.  I hope that you can get a lot of ideas from me and that we can create a constructive dialog and learn from each other.  Since I cannot read, write, understand or speak Chinese I have developed some creative ways to cope.  So if you are having a problem with something I may be able to help.

I love Taiwan and I hope that you will too.