Tag Archive for ‘Travel’
Ask Matt: Studying Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan
Share Dear Matt, I am trying to find a Mandarin course in Taipei, Taiwan which starts in October (anytime) for myself and my husband. We have never been to Taiwan and do not speak any Mandarin. We have found a course which starts in December, but we just can’t wait that long to go! Emily Dear Emily, Although [...]
Midget Boxing in Manila
Share “Who’s the winner?” The tattooed Filipino man holding the microphone asked me. I couldn’t make up my mind. Neither midget had tried very hard. As far as I was concerned the whole fight was a sham. But everyone in the bar, which included seven drunk tourists, thirty bored-looking strippers, one greasy Filipino announcer, and [...]
A Few Random Pictures from My Trip Home
Share I’m from a small town in Canada’s Rocky Mountains called Cranbrook. Cranbrook has a population of about 20,000 people. The main industries are mining, logging, and tourism. There are numerous trailer parks and it’s likely there are more people living in trailers than houses. The surrounding area is checkered with farms. Wide brimmed cowboy [...]
Ten Quotes About Walking
Share Today wrote a a query letter to a magazine editor about an article about different walks that a person can take in Taiwan. While looking up quotations to use in the query I suddenly remembered how much I used to enjoy walking. When I first started traveling, whenever I arrived in a new city, [...]
Check Out This Month’s Action Asia Magazine
Share Check out this month’s Action Asia magazine for my profile of one of Taiwan’s most prominent and longstanding foreign paragliding pilots, Malcom Vargas.
Yenshuei Fireworks Festival 2010 Photo Gallery
Share The Yenshuei Fireworks Festival (Yenshuei Fong Pao) is a festival held in the Yenshuei township in Southern Taiwan every year. During the festival millions of fireworks are shot out of large hives into crowds of revelers dressed in heavy clothing and full-face motorcycle helmets. Each hive may contain as many as sixty thousand fireworks. [...]
Portfolio
Share Click a thumbnail to view a larger version of the picture. To navigate the full-size picture gallery click on the arrow icons, the picture itself, or use the arrow keys on your keyboard.
Learning to Fly: Paragliding in Fang Liao Taiwan
Share Recently I’ve been working on a series of articles about paragliding in Taiwan. I’ve been learning how to paraglide, and about the evolution of paragliding in Taiwan, from Malcom Vargas who is, as far as I know, the only certified foreign paragliding instructor in the country. These are some photos from one of my [...]
Help Me Pick My Best Travel Photos
Share For the last few days I’ve been working on my application for the Glimpse Correspondent Program. I’ve gone through all of my old photos, picked out my favorites, and touched them up. I now have a total of thirty-three pictures. The problem is, I need to narrow my submission down to twenty. If you [...]
Watch it Now! The Vice Guide to Liberia
Share A few years ago Vice Magazine, a punk counterculture magazine that started out as a welfare work scam and grew into an international trend setting voice for youth culture, started an online television station called VBS.tv. Like the magazine, The television station produces borderline gonzo new journalism style documentaries about the edgiest and wildest [...]
An Interview with Gary Arndt of Everything Everywhere
Share Ranking travel blogs is a tricky business. There is no way of knowing exactly how much traffic a blog gets, and how long visitors stay for, unless you’re the administrator of the blog. There are several tools you can use to rank other peoples’ blogs, but none are completely accurate. However, whenever I read [...]
There’s Treasure Everywhere
Share When I first moved to Taiwan I was fascinated with everything. I walked around stupefied, a silly grin permanently plastered to my face, amazed at the incredible world that I had discovered. That lasted for about three years. I don’t smile like that anymore. I haven’t for quite some time. About a year-and-a-half ago [...]
Five Awesome Travel Quotes
Share In no particular order: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” – Mark Twain “A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” – John Steinbeck “A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” – Lao Tzu “One’s destination is [...]
Standing in the Fireworks: A Trip to the Yenshuei Beehive Fireworks Festival, Taiwan
Share On Febrary 27, 2010 a Chinese New Year fireworks celebration in the Guangdong province went awry and killed 19 villagers. On February 28th, 2010 I was in Yenshuei Township in southern Taiwan facing a several hives containing tens of thousands of fireworks set to fire into the hundreds of people that were crowded around [...]
Ghosts and Angels on the Beautiful Island
Share When I woke up around nine that Sunday morning my cell phone showed that I had 33 missed calls. It rang again in my hand. It was the head teacher from the school I worked at. “We’re at the hospital.” She told me. “Jana was hit by a bus.” On the way to the [...]
Snorkeling, Rum, and Island Hopping: Five Days in Coron, Busuanga Island, Philippines
Share To escape the suffocating traffic and staccato of firecrackers that besiege Taiwan every Chinese New Year, several friends and I booked tickets on a budget carrier, Spirit of Manila, to the city of Coron on Busuanga Island in the Philippines for five days of snorkeling, island hopping, and rum drinking. The tickets were very [...]
A Proposition
Share I was contacted today by Lidia Nyiri, a PR Consultant for TravelGrove.com. She asked me if I would write a blog post reviewing her company which, “helps users find cheap offers on airfares, hotel and car rentals, cruise deals and vacation packages”. She said the review didn’t have to be nice. It could be [...]
The Best Budget Trip for Chinese New Year
Share This year Chinese New Year vacation is expected to be from February 13th to 21st. It’s already a bit late to buy tickets, and many flights are already sold out, but there are still some good deals to be had. Since Thailand and the Philippines are both relatively cheap countries with postcard beaches and [...]
Living Under the Volcano
Share Well, I finally arrived in Guatemala. When I say finally I mean that I arrived after: – A twelve hour bus ride from Cranbrook to the Calgary airport (don’t even ask why it took so long). – Two hours of sleep. – Two hours detained by a mongoloid U.S. customs officer for no reason. [...]
Why I Travel
A short humorous essay by Matt Gibson about the nature of travel, independence, freedom, travel scams and chicken busses.
Up the Nose Without a Guide
Share Originally published in XelaWho March, 2009 The Mayan Nose, a peak that resembles the profile of a person reclining, looms over Lake Atitlan. When you’re in San Pedro the Nose is a more attractive peak than the volcano because, whereas the volcano always lurks behind you, this nasal peak stares you in the face, [...]
Change
Share Xpat Magazine September, 2007 I pen this letter from a remote stretch of shore on Kootenay Lake, an enormous, unmolested body of water hundreds of kilometers long, slung in a deep valley in British Columbia’s Rocky Mountains. As a child I spent countless summers running barefoot through these cedar forests. Today is the first [...]
Borne of Disaster
Share Published under the pseudonym Salvatore Paradisio Xpat Magazine December, 2005 Ever since I arrived on this cursed island 14 months ago disaster has rained down on me like a subtropical thundershower. Xpat Magazine was borne of this disaster. But I will have to explain that a little later. As with all stories, I must [...]
I'm a travel writer and photographer currently based in Tainan, Taiwan where I founded and edited Xpat Magazine, one of Taiwan's largest and longest-running expatriate periodicals. My writing and photography has been published in various print and online publications including Taiwan Today, the Taiwan Fun Magazine Group, and TransitionsAbroad.com. I speak English, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese (to varying degrees) and am available for assignment. I can be reached through the form on the contact page of this website, or at xpatmatt (at) gmail.com.
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