Taipei, Taiwan - June 14-19, 2010

We left Thailand after living there for almost three years. On our way to the U.S. for the summer, we wanted to stop somewhere along the way to break up the trip. So we decided on Taipei.

Day 1 - Flight from Thailand to Taipei

An uneventful flight from Bangkok to Taipei had us arriving around 6:00 PM. After finding a bag drop facility and an ATM that didn't work, we exchanged some money (lucky for that - we don't normally carry a lot of cash) and decided to use a taxi to get to the hostel where we are staying. After much discussion amongst the taxi drivers and a few phone calls, they decided they knew where we were going. I'm guessing the short straw got to drive the big foreigners...

The hostel is in a mall/highrise building, with the main office on the 22nd floor and our room on the 24th floor. Quite interesting, really. To get to our room from the elevator, we walk past a small alternative medicine place and a few small offices. The room is typical hostel: small. But it's clean, although a bit warm since we're restricted to keeping the air-con at 26. (Celsius, for your Americans...that's 79 Farenheit. I know...we're spoiled.) Oh, and the shower stall is only a little bigger than the shower we had in our RV we used to own before deciding an a life of travel and adventure. But Devin likes it due to the high volume of water. It's the little things, I guess. Speaking of little things, the towels we were given were quite little also. One towel for each of us to dry off after the shower. Mine was completely wet after drying off my arms and chest. The towels are likely made for the locals, as I likely have twice (or more!) the surface area of most of the people staying at the hostel. Oh well...nothing like air-drying after a shower.

After getting settled in, we headed out for dinner. Given that David didn't get much lunch on the plane, he was starving. And given that he's a picky eater and allergic to eggs and nuts, we can't just take him to any old restaurant around the block. So we asked about the stand-by: McDonald's. Jennifer, from the hostel, gave us directions to two different McD's. We chose the one in a food court, as it was closer. Devin and David got McDonald's. So I decided to try something local. I found a place near McD's, pointed to a menu item that looked like a chicken dish and waited for the result. Turns out, it was great! Devin sat slack-jawed watching me eat. Just three or four years ago, I'd have been eating McDonald's with them, rather than sampling local food that consisted of sprouts, zucchini, bamboo, tofu, rice, chicken and a fried egg. (And some spices, etc.) Yes. It's true. I really am a changed man. Crazy things happen when you travel, I guess.

Sleeping that night was a bit challenging to each of us for different reasons. David complained of being too hot. Devin complained about David complaining. And my bed was too short by about 14 inches. Oh well...I was tired enough after the travel and two hours of graduate school work that I passed out pretty quickly. David wasn't too far behind, which then allowed Devin to get a little sleep also.

Day 2 - Science Museum

We woke up to rain and decided to head to the nearest Starbucks for some comfort food (translation: Devin needed caffeine) and a look at our guide books and maps to decide on the day's activities.

Our plan at this point is to go to the science museum and the astronomical museum, both right next to each other. After riding the Metro light rail, we had to take a bus to the science center. After waiting in a queue with a bunch of locals, the bus we were waiting for was the wrong bus. Then our bus went by, but it said "I3" instead of "R3" like we needed. Um. wait...the "I" is a symbol and not the letter "I" so that's our bus! Oops...gone. So we waited. Bus 5, bus 255, bus 18, bus 5, bus 277, bus 5, bus 18, bus 318, bus 303, bus 5...and finally our bus showed up. Of course, we really had no idea where our stop would be and whether it would be obvious. Luckily, we figured it out.

First stop, the astronomical museum. Fun stuff, although nothing other than labels in English...but David had fun running around. We made our way to the science museum, which has lots of stuff in English for us foreigners. I think we had the most fun taking a tour of the human digestive system. Yep, after getting swallowed, mashed up in the stomach, nutrients extracted in the intestines, and stored in the rectum, we got pooped out the anus. Great fun was had by all.

After finding our bus back to the train and getting back to the hostel, we relaxed for a few hours before finding dinner nearby. Dessert was at Cold Stone Creamery. Woohoo! I thought I'd have to wait to get back to the U.S. before having Cold Stone. Life is good.

Check out the pictures below.  Remember you can click on each image to see a larger version.

Day 3 - Dragon Boat Races, Shilin Night Market

Today was a day of adventure and perseverance. I wanted to go to the Dragon Boat Races today, and was told by one of the hostel staff that we could watch them in one of two places: Up by Danshui or at Bitan. Of course, these two locations were on opposite ends of the train line from where we were. Since the Danshui area offered a lot more cool stuff for the day, we figured we'd find the boat races there. So after a leisurely morning (and some intestinal discomfort on my part) we headed for the train station to go up to Danshui.

When we arrived there, I found a tourist information booth with a nice guy that spoke great English. (Side note: When you tell a local that he/she speaks great English, he/she will tend to downplay your compliment and say his/her English isn't all that good. In my mind, since their English is far better than my understanding of Taiwanese, I remain in awe of multi-lingual speakers.) Anyway, after the guy got done asking me about America and telling me his dream was to move there, I asked him about the boat races. He told me they were at Bitan. Yikes! We came the wrong way. So we hopped right back on the train and rode for about an hour south, going past our hostel, and arriving at the Xiobitan train station. David was starving at this point, so we found a quaint little Italian restaurant, hoping for some pizza. They had none, but Devin and I enjoyed a great lunch. So we asked our waitress where the Dragon Boat Races were. She said we had to get back on the train and go to Xindian Station. Ugh! So we hopped on yet another train and got to Xindian and followed the crowd. Low and behold, we FINALLY found the Dragon Boat Races. So we walked around a bit, got David a corn dog, and started sweating like stuck pigs. It was hot and muggy. Finally, a boat race happened, which we could barely see. Drenched in sweat at this point, we walked around trying to find a stall with water. And another boat race happened that we could barely see. We finally found some water (translation: Devin found a big cup of Coke) and watched the end of one more race. At this point, we were all overheated.

So we hopped back on the train to the Gongguan station to visit the Museum of Drinking Water. Yes, you read that right. We actually visited (after much walking around trying to find the place!) the Museum of Drinking Water. Underwhelming, to say the least. Devin was about to pass out from heat exhaustion, so we found a Starbucks and sad in the air-con for a while to cool off.

Back to the hostel for some much-needed rest and a snack. Then back on the train for a trip to the Shilin Night Market. The best way I can describe the night market is this: A crazy mass of humanity! In many ways, it compares to the Chiang Mai Night Market in terms of sheer volume of people, but this seemed much more like a local market than a tourist market. Yes, there were tourists around. And to be honest, outside of people that look like us, it's hard to tell a local from a tourist. But in general, this looked like a pretty normal mode of business for quite a few people. We started in the covered area that was only food stalls. We sampled a few things, then went out to the street area and kept sampling food throughout the night. I can't even recall everything we tried, but by the end of it all, we were pretty full. We saw (and sampled) plenty of local food, along with Indian, brats, pizzas, and a small Mexican food stall. I'm sure there were other types of food that we missed. I'd say we covered maybe one-third of the area of the market, but that's really just a guess. It was massive. We spent about two hours in all walking around. Heck, they even had a carnival area with typical carny-style games that reminded me of a state fair. Weird...a night market in Taipei reminding me of the Central Washington State Fair in Yakima. How does that work? Crazy.

We're all exhausted, but it was a fun day.

Check out the pictures below.  Remember you can click on each image to see a larger version.

Day 4 - Danshui Festival, Bali Waterfront Bike Ride, Museum of Archeology, Taipei 101

We had lots of fun today. We got a bit of a late start, as we all slept in a bit, but after getting ourselves going it was a full day. We took the train to Danshui and happened upon a local festival with a parade, firecrackers galore, dancing and drums. Apparently it was a local festival to pay tribute to the Chinese gods and bring good luck in the upcoming year. We walked along with the parade for a while, getting plenty of stares from the locals wondering what the heck we were doing there. Lots of them wanted to practice saying, "Hello. How are you doing?" We found the ferry to take us to the Bali Township where we rented bikes and rode almost 4 km to the Museum of Archeology. My current graduate class is studying the success of past human civilizations and the collapse of others, so this was a cool stop for me. Given Devin's college background, she was loving it. And of course David was up for just about anything. The museum was great fun, with very cool architecture also. And we found the staff very helpful. They even showed us the Introductory video in English even though it wasn't scheduled. The museum brochure claimed that there was a restaurant on site. It turned out to be a mom-and-pop storefront around the corner. We ended up with some chicken nuggets for David and hotdogs for Devin and I. (Yes, Devin and I were hoping for more local fare here.) Back to the museum to finish up, then we hopped on the bikes to get back to the pier and the ferry ride to Danshui.

After the 10-minute ferry ride, we enjoyed the "tallest ice cream in the world" (so the guidebook says...see picture of me below). We walked along the waterfront soaking up the sights, sounds and smells, then took the train to Taipei Main Station. Along the way, Devin and David had a long conversation with three tourists from Hong Kong. I was standing to the side and got to observe the whole conversation. It was gratifying to watch David interact in a mature way with them, once he got his playful/shy/weird part out of the way.

We transferred trains and got off at Taipei City Hall to make our way to Taipei 101. At one point, this was the tallest building in the world. Having been to the World Trade Center Twin Towers in NYC in 1994 and the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur in 2008, I was interested in how this would compare. (And up to this point, as $1140 New Taiwan Dollars - about $40 U.S., this is by far the most expensive tourist thing we've done so far.) The visitor center at the top was pretty cool, and you could walk around the entire viewing area to get a 360-degree view, albeit in parts. David and I walked up two more floors to the 91st floor for the outdoor observatory. The elevator ride was probably the coolest part, as it only took 37 seconds to get from ground level up to 386 meters up, on the 89th floor. Our ears were popping along the way. On the ride down, I heard some Thai in the elevator, so we ended up speaking to a couple from Chon Buri, right near where we lived in SriRacha. It's a small world!

We found some dinner on a ground-floor food court, did some shopping at an over-priced grocery store and went home after a long day.

Check out the pictures below.  Remember you can click on each image to see a larger version.

Day 5 - Laundry, Dance Performance at Taipei Eye

Due to the heat and humidity, we were sweating through more clothes than we planned, so we hit the laundromat to catch up on laundry. This gave Devin and David a chance to relax in the room for a while to recover after four hectic days of running around. I got some school work done while waiting for laundry as well. Our evening plan was to visit Taipei Eye for a cultural performance that included a mini-version of a Chinese Opera (The monkey fights the spider goblin). Devin really wanted the real-deal opera, but we didn't have any luck finding one. So this would have to do. The first half consisted of dances and a kung-fu demonstration. Some of it was great, but the kung-fu was underwhelming. Intermission allowed us to get a preview of the Opera and interact with some of the performers. During the second-half mini-opera, we all sat wide-eyed in awe of the performance. The costumes were amazingly colorful. I tried to take a few pictures, but they just don't do it justice. Luckily, after the opera we got our pictures taken with some of the characters. The performers were very gracious with us foreigners. We all left with smiles on our faces, having watched a memorable performance. Our conclusion was that this was a fabulous way to spend our last night in Taipei.

Check out the pictures below.  Remember you can click on each image to see a larger version.

Day 6 - Children's Art Museum, Handicraft Center

For our last day in Taipei, we hopped a train to the Children's Art Museum. This was quite a small facility tucked in the bottom of an apartment building, but it was very cool. We started with making some small clay pendants to hang from a necklace. Then we went through the exhibits. There were a few groups of kids being led around by tour guides, but we didn't understand the language so we kind of kept to ourselves. After seeing most of the exhibits in about fifteen minutes, we went and asked what we were missing, as it seemed like there should be more. So the docent that knew the most English volunteered to give us a tour in her self-described broken English. Of course her English skills were great, and vastly superior to our understanding of the local language. It turns out we had missed the best part. Hopefully the pictures below do it justice. Lots of cool exhibits where we got to interact with art. When it was all over after about an hour, David wished it were bigger.

Then we had lunch and found our way to the Handicraft Center for some touristy purchases. Sadly, our luggage was quite full and our wallets quite empty, but we found a few cool pieces of art to take to Romania. Our collection of art from countries we visit is slowly getting bigger.

Unfortunately, our time in Taipei came to an end. We put this on our list of favorite places, as we found the people to be very friendly and the city to be full of life. Our next visit to Taipei will include the rest of Taiwan also.

Check out the pictures below.  Remember you can click on each image to see a larger version.