If you have a tendency to be a bit geeky at times, Asia is a great place to be.
If you like fiddling with computers, cameras or mobile phones, or having the latest high-tech toys, you can find all you’d ever wish for here, and more.
In Europe, if you want the latest electronic gadgets in the real world, you head to MediaMarkt. In the US it’s BestBuy.
In most of Asia it’s different – and much more fun. Instead of one or two enormous stores, there are hundreds of small ones which sell everything you can get in Europe and the US – and a lot more.
There are shops that specialise in computer motherboards or cables. Others do microphones, or lighting equipment for video calls. There are some that only sell tiny electronic components, individually, for pennies a piece. Others sell second-hand computers and cameras, after they’ve been reconditioned.
Some specialise in games, or gaming accessories, and there are even tailors nearby to make you look exactly like your favourite Anime character. Some are software specialists, able to recover your photos and other files from a broken hard drive.
In most major Asian cities all these stores are all located in one part of town. In Tokyo it’s the famous Akihabara district. In Hong Kong most of the electronic stores are in a labyrinthian building in Wanchai.
In Taipei, they are all located in and around two massive shopping complexes, known as Guanghua Digital Plaza, as well an almost-impossible-to-find underground mall nearby.
There are, literally, hundreds of geek shops, and we love going to this district, greatly because it fuels the imagination about what’s possible.
Ooh! This thing means we can connect this to that! That’s so useful!
One of the biggest delights is coming across entirely new products which aren’t sold in other places yet, and sometimes never will be. This is partly because Taiwan is home to many cutting edge electronic technology firms, and has some of the world’s largest component and device manufacturers*. Innovation is the fuel that keeps this industry going.
Another Taiwanese innovation is E-scooters, which are increasingly ubiquitous on the streets.
Scooters are both a blessing and a curse in Taiwan. With 14 million registered in a population of 24 million, they are everywhere. They allow people to travel around quickly, cut congestion and are cheap to run.
But, as well as cluttering up the pavements, where they are parked, they also create a lot of noise and pollution. So it is (a bit of) a relief that the number of e-scooters is growing so quickly.
Mostly, these have been developed by a company called Gogoro. Rather than sounding like angry insects, as normal scooters, their bikes whizz and whoosh through the streets, making sounds like cars from 1950s science fiction films.
As well as being voice activated, the noises they make when they are switched on and off are programmable. The really clever bit is that the batteries are interchangeable.
Across the island there are hundreds of battery swap stations where people can exchange out-of-power units for fully recharged ones in a few seconds.
Thanks to these bikes the air is just a little bit cleaner. And, yes, they carry dogs.
* Though you may not have heard of many of Taiwan’s high tech companies, six rank in the Fortune 500, the list of the biggest companies in the world. TSMC – the world’s largest manufacturer of semiconductors with a turnover of $50bn. Hon Hai Precision? It employs nearly 800,000 people, and makes the iPhone, among many other devices, under contract. It’s bigger than Exxon, Daimler and AT&T. Pegatron? Wistron? Quanta? Compal? They are some of the biggest electronics companies in the world too, and all are Taiwanese.
Gogoro bike getting new batteries: Gogoro