Van Break-in!

Someone broke into our van last week.  We did not use it for about two weeks and it was just parked on a road outside our office.  

This is already the second time that something like this has happened to our van.  The first time the van was broken into, the person tried to steal the van.  He was unsuccessful and I had to spend money to fix up the damage – some wires were cut, a side window broken, and the lock on one of the doors was removed.  I changed the locks as I suspected that the thief took the lock to make a key that would open and start the van.

On this second break-in, a window was broken and the engine hood was opened.  I learned later from the shop that the thief was probably trying to steal the van’s computer.  On gasoline VW T4s, this computer is located just next to the car battery.  Fortunately, our van is a diesel and on this model there is no computer.  This computer costs about NT$40,000 new.  And there were a bunch of vans in the shop waiting for the suddenly out of stock computer which had to be shipped from Germany.

We reported the break-in to the police and were advised to park the van near a residence area instead of just anywhere.  Thefts are also probably up because Chinese New Year is just around the corner.  Everyone needs more money for the holidays.

Hsiang San

This past Saturday, we took Maita and Erika to the nearby Hsiang San (Fragrant Mountain) train station.  This train station is said to be the oldest wooden train station still being used in Taiwan.  It was interesting to see as this station was built during the Japanese times.  The station itself was small and it was manned by only one person.  I could see some beams infested by termites.  I hope someone is aware of this and will someday fix or replace these termite infested beams.  It would be a pity to lose this historical site.

The highlight of the trip was the train ride to a nearby stop – Chunan.  Maita and Erika were both very excited to be on the train.  You could see how difficult it was for Maita to suppress her smile while she was on the train.

The ride to Chunan was short but had good scenery.  The train tracks were near the sea and we saw a lot of those new windmills for generating electricity.  When we got to Chunan, we looked for a place to take lunch.  We had some noodles and rice at a nearby food stall.  Then we went back to the train station to wait before taking the train back to Hsian San.  While at the train station, Erika kept wanting to ride the orange train.  The particular train that we took was blue and the orange train was another line.  A new word for Erika that day was “cargo” train.  Cargo was the word that came to my mind when Erika pointed out the black train that looked so different from our passenger train.