Travels in Taiwan - Early days

I arrived in Taiwan early Wednesday morning after 12 hours on the plane from Vancouver.

It's now Sunday morning and I've spent 2 days in Taipei, took the train over to the east coast and am about to leave Hualien after 2 nights here.

Does this country have infrastructure.  That's a statement, not a question.  And it all seems to work.  Two comfortable hostels so far, hot water, traffic lights that actually work, crosswalks that drivers sometimes pay attention to, traffic rules, advanced bus and train systems...  It's a long list.

Things I've noticed so far, in this country of 23 million, based just on Taipei and now Hualien, a small city of about 100,000:

There are more 7-11 stores here in one small city that in all of BC, possibly.  From the park where I'm sitting, I can see two.  Correction, three. They are, literally, on every block.

Train and metro systems are easy to use.  There is just enough English to make it simple.  And it's cheap.  Metro rides are about 20 to 30 NT$, about $1 or so Canadian.  A 3-hour train ride cost me about $20 CAD. 

It's warm here.  I'm just north of the Tropic of Cancer.  Anything more than shorts and a tee shirt is seriously overdressed.

So far, the place seems clean and well-maintained.  It's not that there's no garbage around, but it does get cleaned up.

Small motor scooters are everywhere.  Thousands and thousands of them.  They carry everything from 1 to 4 people, sacks of produce, bags of recycling, pet dogs...

The SIM card  I got for my phone cost less than $50 for 30 days, although I only need it for 3 weeks.  It has unlimited data, a good credit for voice calls and gives me 4g coverage pretty much everywhere.  And it was all set up for me by a helpful woman at a kiosk in the airport.