“This Is Taiwan”: A Dangerous Taiwanese Excuse

A few months have passed since I wrote “It’s Our Culture” – Taiwan’s Go-To Excuse, but a friend of mine the other night brought it up and made an interesting point: before “It’s our culture” is uttered, “This is Taiwan” is sure to escape their lips first. As I stated in my other piece, “It’s Our Culture” is often said […]

Who In The World Visits This Site?

After almost two years of running this blog, I’ve seen my hit-count rise along with the number of countries who have read what I have to say.  Of the 200-or-so nations on Earth, 153 have visited my blog over the last two years.  It got me wondering: what might that look like, if it were mapped out? So […]

What It’s Like Living In Taiwan Without Health Insurance

I haven’t had health insurance since 2008, which is a pretty crazy thing to say, given that I live in a country with some of the most affordable and high-quality medical care in the world. National Taiwan Health Insurance, while expensive for the Republic of China (ROC) government of Taiwan, is incredibly cheap for Taiwanese […]

Those Moments of Culture Shock in Taiwan

Everyone that’s spent some time here knows all about those moments of culture shock in Taiwan. The truth is, most people who live in a place far from where they consider “home” will have significant moments of culture shock. It’s a universal part of the expat experience, shared online via a Destination Scanner Blog, or […]

Free McDonald’s In Asia

Free McDonald’s In Asia   If you live in many parts of Asia (including Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong), there’s a good chance that McDonald’s wants to give you free food every day. This sounds unusual, but we’ll get to the reason behind it soon. Many people from other countries won’t get this free food, […]

This Day and Age

I think people have been saying “this day and age” forever. Even Ancient Romans were disappointed in the way things were headed, even though we now know that their dismay at perceived degeneration was actually substantial progress, in the long run. It’s easy to become disillusioned with it all. For me…I write people off as […]

jsphfrtz’s How-To Guide to Taiwan Visa Runs

When you live in Taiwan, chances are you will have to do a “Taiwan visa run” at some point. A lot of the information in this piece is outdated. I recommend you look at my February 2014 piece about Visa Runs. I’ve lived in Taiwan, off-and-on, since January 2008. My total time in Taiwan clocks […]

Paid To Entertain – How A “Talking Bar” Works

Asia’s a unique place, for a variety of reasons. It’s also a huge place with a variety of culture, both indigenous as well as adapted. This is to say that while you will find “Lady KTV” in Taiwan and China, you will not see “Gogo Bars” like you do in the Philippines and Thailand. To […]

This Blog Is Disgusting

This blog has been operational for about a year.  Last spring, I decided to put all my old work on here, for people to read – everything from when I was in high school up until my late 20s.  I put a lot of academic writing on there and a lot of personal writing from […]

Whoring Around Asia

to learn about Taiwan Strip Clubs and Lady KTVs, click here Ever since I came to Asia, I noticed that prostitution was different here than what I was used to back in The States. The differences are almost too many to count, but in this article, I’m going to briefly discuss a few things, focusing […]