FYI - Cathay Pacific allow 20kg of checked baggage, they don't have the option to purchase a second bag, and charge $60 for any extra kgs! So here is my first challenge. How to squeeze enough "essentials" for 9 months of life in Taiwan into 20kgs. Good job I invested in a Kindle.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy describes as Towel as follows:

"A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough."

So no advise for travelling to Taiwan, but you get the gist.

First Post (here goes): The days are counting down now until I fly to Taiwan. Most things are sorted, Visa, University acceptance...and of course I have my Towel*

The other stuff, i.e. where to live I will just have to sort out when I get there.

* Towel - see Post Number 2