Date: June 16, 2009 - Author: Rob Williams
Our Computex 2009 coverage is long done with, but this article isn't about what we saw on the show floor or learned during a meeting. Rather, this article takes a look at things from a different angle: the experience. We'll talk both about what life is like during these trips, and in this particular case, what it's like to spend time in Taiwan for just over a week.
Here at Techgage, we attend a fair amount of trade shows throughout the year, and report on each and every one of them. We keep you up to date with what's important and notable while at these shows, but with this article, we'd like to give you a slightly different angle on things. Rather than summarize the Computex event as a whole, I'm going to instead give you a "behind the scenes" look at what it's like to travel to a place like Taiwan, and what goes down when we attend trade shows in general.
Computex is quite a bit different than other trade shows we attend, and most of that is attributed to the fact that it takes place in Taiwan. But even aside from that important fact, Computex showcases many more of the products most of our readers are directly interested in, such as system components and cutting-edge technologies. So overall, it's easily one of the most enjoyable, and important, trade shows we attend each year.
We've never done an article quite like this before, so I'm pretty-much just going to wing it. If you folks enjoy what you see here, then we'll definitely consider doing more such articles in the future for any of the major shows we attend, not only Computex. Our goal is to give more to you than just show coverage, and let you experience the trip along with us. Hopefully you enjoy what you see, and maybe even pay a visit to Taiwan yourself in the future!
If you've been a computing enthusiast for a while, you're probably well-aware that Taiwan is where many of the components in your machine come from. The list of companies from Taiwan that you've heard of could likely fill an entire page here, but a few notable ones include A-DATA, ASUS, BenQ, C-Media, D-Link, DFI, Foxconn, G. Skill, GeIL, Gigabyte, Lian Li, MSI, Realtek, SilverStone, Thermaltake, VIA and more. Chances are, a product from one of these companies is in your machine right now.
It's the companies that bring us to Taiwan for the show, but it's Taiwan itself that makes us look forward to going back (you know, aside from the 20 - 30 hour travel duration!). I won't tackle any of Taiwan's history here, because it's far too complicated, but I do recommend reading up, as it's absolutely fascinating (and even a little disturbing). Officially, the country's proper name is Republic of China, but most often, people refer to it as Taiwan (ROC). Again, the reasons behind all of this are found in the country's history, and it's far too complex to tackle here.
As a part of China, Taiwan's national language is Mandarin, or "Chinese". While China mainland adopted Simplified Chinese for their written language long ago, Taiwan has stayed true to its roots and stuck with Traditional. Both languages are the same spoken, but Simplified was developed half a century ago in order to, just as it sounds, simplify the language. Many characters are shared between each of the written styles, but Traditional for the most part is a little bit more complex.
The currency in ROC is the "Taiwan New Dollar", and at the time of writing, $1 USD is equal to $33.12 NT. "Cents" don't exist over there, but rather everything is measured in dollars. Like pennies over here, Taiwan has a $1 NT coin, all the way up to a $2,000 NT bill ($1,000 NT bills are far more common, however). While shopping, it's sometimes easy to become a little ambitious and spend more than you believe you are, but for the most part, almost anything is less expensive in Taiwan, so you're usually still coming out ahead.
This goes far beyond food and drink, but spreads out into transportation, accommodation and more. Take my hotel room during the trip, for example, the "Hsuan Mei", part of the Beauty Hotels franchise. Here's a photo of both the room, and also the washroom:
 - Taipei, Taiwan)
 - Taipei, Taiwan)
Alright... it felt just a little too weird to actually post a picture of a bathroom, but don't worry, we're not going to turn into a travel site anytime soon. The reason I post them is because, even if you travel often, you'll likely guess the value of this hotel room wrong. I've stayed in many places in the US, and I tend to average each hotel room out to about $200/night, and none at that rate have ever come close to this one. After all, this one even includes a freaking hot tub... and a heated loo! Would you believe that it costs just $100 USD per night? Should I even mention that some motels in the US can cost almost $60/night?
Then there's transportation, which aside from flight, is always less expensive than what you'll see in the US. Prior to Computex, I hopped aboard Taiwan's "High-Speed Rail", a train transit system that caps at speeds of 300km/hour, and took it from Taipei (properly "Táiběi") down to Taichung (properly "Tàizhōng"... pronounced "Taijung", kind of). This commute takes about three hours in a car (I've done it before to know this), but on the rail, it took exactly 50 minutes. Not bad for $18! After I hopped off the train there, I took a taxi to where I needed to go, which was about a 25 minute drive. That set me back just about the same, around $15.
But of course there's affordable food as well. Below is a drink that I tend to have often when in Taiwan, even though I'm sure it's hardly good for my health. It's a simple can of cold coffee (sweetened... it's not exactly like brewing coffee and chilling it), and that particular offering costs $23 NT, while another brand I buy is larger, and costs $28 NT. In USD, that's $0.75 and $0.92, respectively. How much does a 600ml Pepsi cost again on these shores?
Enough about all that though, because there's a lot more to Taiwan than the affordability-factor. As you'd expect, any foreign country is going to differ from your own, but when it comes to Asia, the lifestyles there are stark contrasts to what we experience in the US or Canada, or even most of Europe. This is all for better or worse, and definitely a matter of opinion. While I love some aspects of Taiwan, there are a few others that get on my nerves. The same can be said for where I live in Canada, though.
If there's one aspect of Taiwan I don't really care for, it's that most of the city streets look exactly the same. What I mean by this is that there is very little variation in between buildings and advertisements, and as is typical of much of Asia, many buildings have similar vertical signs hanging off the side, stating the store name or what's sold there. This is very interesting at first, but it becomes a little frustrating after turning a corner and essentially seeing the same thing. I could be of the minority here, but I do know of others who've thought the same thing.
To really experience Taiwan, you need to leave the main stretch of town, and that's something I really haven't done in the past, but plan to in the future. Despite Taipei and all of Taiwan's major cities being so large, there's a remarkable amount of nature on the island, and even inside of the towns. In the photo above you can see trees right inside the city, and that's pretty common. All of Asia is known for having horrible pollution, so the more trees, the merrier, I say.
In my limited travels though, I have stumbled on some fairly interesting things. Some just in the same general area, like this park (which I forget the name of) near a popular night market in Taichung:
Of course, one of the most unique features of Taiwan and Asia in general are "night markets", streets lined with various vendors selling food, clothing, accessories and whatever else people might want to buy. A lot of the wares are hand-made or cooked fresh, which really adds to the appeal. In the picture below, you can see the market I referred to above, both in the day, and the evening (the second picture was taken last summer).
Again, the price of food here is rather surprising. For $60 NT ($2 US), I purchased a plate of chicken rice that filled me to the point of content, and I washed it down with a $25 NT ($0.82 US) banana milkshake. Not bad eats for just under three bucks.
Taichung isn't a tourist town, but sometimes you wouldn't know it. Despite this being Taiwan, there's quite a few familiar restaurants and stores that almost make you feel like you're home... you know, until you realize all of the employees are Asian's who don't speak perfect English! In the photo below, you can see me posing with a cute waitress inside of a TGI Fridays, which happens to be right across the street from the Chung Yo department store's Starbucks location. In my travels around this city, I even saw a Ponderosa, although I'm not so sure those are too common.
You can't visit Taiwan without trying out some traditional food though, and night markets are the best place for it. Personally, I've never tried anything truly "crazy", but one snack that's very popular in Taiwan and other parts of Asia is called... "Stinky Tofu". Yes, that's the real name. Created with the help of fermented vegetables, stinky tofu has an undeniable odor that can be pinpointed anywhere in a night market. Just how bad is it? Right before the first time I tried it, I literally thought I smelled sewage. That's how bad.
Don't let the looks deceive you... this is one smelly dish. It's one of those things that tastes better than it smells though, although I certainly don't recommend being a smart-ass and pushing your face as close as you can to it and then taking a massive whiff. I swear I almost fainted. Given it's tofu, at least it's healthy!
Shopping in Taiwan can be a unique experience as well. I'm not talking clothing, food, or anything simple like that. Rather, I'm talking about stuff we really care about... computer parts! In North America, it's just not that common to walk into a store and find numerous motherboards or graphics cards for sale, and if you do happen to stumble on such a store, then chances are the selection is weak and the prices high.
For computer enthusiasts, walking around in Taiwan can be quite the experience. In a certain part of Taipei, there's a general area many call the "computer mall", which in fact is a building with various shops. But along the road are even more shops, selling anything from motherboards to graphics cards to CPU coolers to peripherals to notebooks and whatever else. On top of it all, the selection is actually good, and chances are if it's a new product, it can be found somewhere amongst these stores.
Here's a few pictures I took of this area last year (hence the slightly outdated models):
See? Imagine needing a computer part of any kind, any kind at all on any day of the week, and actually being able to go to a place like this and finding exactly what you need. It goes way beyond computer parts too. Some shops sell every intricate part needed to build your own circuit boards... I'm definitely not that hardcore. The computer market is certainly one of the most interesting places I've ever been to, bar none.
I haven't touched up at all on the business side of things when traveling to Taiwan for Computex, so I'll tackle that a little bit here. Sadly, I rarely take pictures of events, dinners or parties, and this Computex was no exception. I'll be sure to take more in the future for those who are interested. While at such a conference, our days usually work on a pretty frantic schedule. After waking up and getting whatever we need done, done, we head out to grab a taxi and head to wherever we need to go.
More often than not, our days are filled to the brim with meetings with companies, and sometimes it's hard to fit them all in, in a single day. At this Computex, for example, I had seven meetings to take care of between 10:00AM and 5:00PM, and there was very little room to relax in between. Typical days are like this, although as the show progresses, the days become a little easier.
The day doesn't end when the show floor or meeting rooms close. Rather, it's rare to even have the time to go back to the hotel room and write any, because I'm expected to make it to a dinner shortly afterwards. This of course can also be stressful. After one long day in particular, I really felt like I had to go back to the hotel and relax... which I did, for about five minutes. I realized I had a dinner with Intel thirty minutes after I got there... you want to talk about a mad dash! How I ever managed to fit a shower into that 30 minutes, I have no idea.
Generally, most of our writing happens after the day is all over and done with, when I can finally relax at the hotel and don't have to worry about anything, except of course getting to bed in order to get more than four hours of sleep! Usually, the process is get up, go deal with the day, go to dinner or a party, go back to the hotel and write, sleep and then... rinse and repeat. There's very little down-time on trips like this, but that's really a good thing.
 Drinking games? It's what the media is all about! |
Should we do more articles like this in the future, we'll be sure to capture "interesting" photos of such parties or dinners. Most of the dinners are rather simple... just a few people getting together to chat, but some are a little more exciting. This past Computex, during a Gigabyte dinner of about one hundred people, someone came up with the idea for a drinking game. Seeing as how I have a bit of a gut, I guess it seemed I was a perfect candidate for one of the teams, so I was thrown on one of the teams alongside two North American Gigabyte reps, our friend Tuan from Tom's and someone else I don't quite remember. Long story short, our team came in second, but I know better than to point the blame at the team's weak link!
Hopefully you enjoyed our little trip through Taiwan, which is easily just as interesting, if not more so, than Computex itself. If you've never been to Asia but are thinking about it, I wholeheartedly recommend going, and don't let the language barrier scare you. As long as you are well-prepared and have documents handy with the Chinese writing on it (especially important for taxis), you'll be fine. Plus, a surprising number of people speak broken English around Taiwan, so as long as you keep near the major cities, getting around shouldn't be a problem at all.
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