Into 2024 and back from Taiwan

Hello subscribers (and welcome new ones) - Happy New Year!

For me 2024 has had a very good start. On Thursday I returned from my 19-day trip to Taiwan and that trip was just fabulous. Luckily, none of my health issues ever got seriously in the way and I had a superb time all round, with lots of memorable impressions, very good food & drink, and of course plenty of dark tourism too.

I’ve just uploaded a kind of intro Blog post about Taiwan, just a teaser really, with a few examples of the various dark-tourism categories covered on this trip. These revolved in particular around the former Chiang Kai-shek dictatorship years and the associated former political prisons, the Japanese occupation that went before, the military confrontation with mainland China on the outlying islands of Kinmen that lasted up until the late 1970s, the devastating 1999 earthquake in central Taiwan, and I also included a couple of bits of urbexing. Do take a look at this new overview Blog post about Taiwan.

The photos featured in that new Blog post (including the one above that shows an earthquake-destroyed temple) are just ones quickly gathered from those taken by smartphone. Of course I took tons of “proper” photos with my pro dSLR, but now I first have to develop all those thousands of RAW format photo files, process and sort them and then make selections. It’s going to take weeks, if not months. But it will eventually lead not only to several more specific Blog posts but also to dozens of new and/or expanded chapters for my main website. In other words: I won’t get bored any time soon … and you can expect more posts and Newsletters coming your way.

I hope you’ve all also had a good start into the new year. May it indeed be a better one.

Best wishes,

Peter