A photo essay I shot on a trip to the Madou Crocodile King farm, a small private zoo in Tainan County, Taiwan, that features various exotic and mutated animals and one gigantic crocodile. The crocodile, stuck in a tiny pen for several years, has become extremely fat. Seriously. The largest crocodile ever recorded was 8.6 m long and weighed 1,350 kg. This croc, according to the sign, was 5.2 m long and 1250 kg, which puts it in the running for the fattest croc in the world. It’s so fat and slow that you can walk up behind it and sit on it. We did. Check it out.
Culture
Three Reasons to Teach English and Live in Taiwan
In today’s climate of financial uncertainty, where layoffs are rife and jobs are increasingly hard to find in many Western countries, more and more people are looking to Asia for employment. Taiwan is a very attractive option to many people. Here are three reasons why.
Painted Thrice and the Circle Turned: A Glimpse of Peacefest 2008
It had rained lightly and steadily for three days on the festival grounds, a small grassy plateau high in the mountains of Taoyuan County. The dance floor, if you could call it that, was a flat formerly grassy area blanketed in four inches of mud.
The Top Twenty Bizarre English Names in Taiwan
Xpat Magazine June, 2007
At least once in their career, most English teachers in Taiwan stand in the unique position of naming children, or encountering a Taiwanese person, young or old, with a desire to assume an inappropriate English name. Sometimes kindie teachers, spurred by lack of sleep and unmetabolized alcohol, give kids wacky names for their own amusement, but more often Taiwanese people choose these names themselves and are unwilling to give them up despite the protest of their conscientious foreign educators and friends. Either way, Taiwan is a cornucopia of strange, incongruous, and hilarious names. I scoured various Internet bulletin boards in search of the most ingenious, insulting and comical English names that local xpats have come across. Here are the best that I found.
The Taiwan Angels’ Tour for Toys: A Lesson in Perspectives of Poverty
Xpat Magazine June, 2007
“Some of these kids are really poor,” Robert told me. “Some don’t even have shoes. If you see it you might cry.”
I was in the Cosby Saloon in Tainan talking to the owner, Robert Lo. He stood behind the bar with his back straight and his chin up. His black shirt was tucked tightly into his jeans beneath a prominent belt buckle.
A Year of Firsts for Tainan’s 6th Annual May Jam
FYI South April, 2005
What’s New?
Now in it’s sixth year, Tainan’s annual music festival, the May Jam, is expanding in all directions. This year’s May Jam will feature a host of new attractions such as: multimedia releases and international musical acts, as well as drama, comedy, and drumming.
Extreme Theatre in Kaohsiung
FYI South February, 2005
This ‘extreme’ sport trend is ridiculous. People do the stupidest things just to call them extreme; like the attention desperate weirdoes of the Extreme Ironing Bureau who travel the globe ironing their slacks in exotic locales.