The things my wife and I enjoy to share on Google Maps are our discovery of planet-based restaurants in Taipei, and to give comments and thoughts to who considering the spots to go to for their next meal. My wife and I are vegan, we are satisfied of stopping eating meat ,egg, and diary since November 2017; to encourage people who have common preferred diet as we do, we are committed to share planet-based restaurant on Google Maps.
The story behind choosing Google Maps as the platform to share all started back to 2013 September.
I was planning a trip down to Orlando FL from Boston MA to give my wife a memorable birthday celebration in Disney Land. It was hard to blueprint travel plan back then, everything had to be worked out from scratch; I was struggling to get every pieces of traveling information together from the internet, seeking advice for whether I should book a hotel in Disney Land or outside the park. The answers I got was either out of the mark or too unreliable to be based on.
There was no Google Local Guide at that time (as far as I could remember), but I still found Google Maps was a reliable source; I was able to draw multiple route lines to easily compare and decide a best traveling plan by directly pinpoint traveling dots on Google Maps. I therefore thought maybe one day Google would leverage its advantage and establishment of Google Maps to develop a way that could help traveler to understand and exploit their destination much in-depth, then, another way around, help local culture/subculture to expose lucidly to the traveler.
In 2017, I realized Google Local Guide had been established and well-running for a couple of years. I used It and it benefited a lot on my trip planning to Istanbul and United Kingdom. From then on, I decided to become a member of Google Local Guide and contribute something for my hometown, Taiwan.
However, I didn’t really find true purpose of being a Google Local Guide, not until 2017 November.
After watching a documentary “What the Health”, my wife and I decided to be vegan, eating only plant-based food; instantly, like OVERNIGHT!!
We were benefited by Google Local Guide in planning trip to Denmark, Sweden, and Norway in 2018, especially in searching for vegan street food and restaurants. The trip were enriched and we were extremely thankful for those contributors on Google Local Guide who made our veganism way of traveling easier and opened our eyes to how Scandinavian eat and live in the way that co-exist with animals, not to treat them as one of human food sources.
At that point of time, veganism became our goal and core concept of being Google Local Guide - we want to show the world that Taipei is a vegan friendly city and Taiwanese way of veganism. We exploit our city to find and pinpoint quality existing and burgeon vegan restaurants on Google Maps, and answer questions to help vegans who don’t live on the island or who is Taiwanese but just starting to east as vegan know more about the specific locations.
Google Local Guide makes every kinds of people to be able to travel in their own ways, and we, for example as minority in eating style, can be truly free to behalf and live in our ideal way while traveling. Not just that, most importantly, we are also inspired by different culture’s veganism in our trips, those of things are all because of Google Local Guide makes the local culture more accessible to people from around the world. That is extremely important, because the ultimate goal of veganism is to influence as many people as possible to be vegan; from that animals can be saved not to be eaten and the Globe can be saved from temperature increasing then decreasing climate change impact.
With Google Local Guide, my wife and I are able to continue devoting to provide Taipei vegan information to help veganism traveler be free from choosing their way of living!!