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Taipei, April 17th

We arrived in Taiwan yesterday morning. Our flight to Taipei left from Honolulu, Oahu at 1am on the 16th, so we flew from Maui to Oahu early on the 15th so we could have a look around Honolulu. Since we crossed the international dateline it is one day ahead so we arrived on the 17th. We were both pretty tired after a long day in Honolulu followed by a long flight to Taiwan.

Taipei Day 1

Hawaii was nice, but it is still the U.S., I consider that our world travel starts with this leg. We took a bus from the airport with the plan of transferring to the subway to get to our destination. The first thing I noticed was all the scooters. There are more scooters than cars and they drive very close to each other. It is a little like bicycles in Amsterdam, but the scooters mingle with cars and weave around the larger vehicles all the time.

We missed our bus stop, and ended up taking a taxi to get to our living place. Yanmei asked several before finding one who knew the address we had. She learned that from the Amazing Race, always find a taxi who knows where you want to go :). It also helps that she speaks Mandarin.

We're staying at a place we found on AirBnb, it is a spare room in an apartment. The couple renting to us are Canadian (wife) and Dutch (husband). Although it is near a busy street, it is down an alley so it is surprisingly quiet. Here is a picture of Yanmei at the entrance.

We had naps and changed into clean clothes (we'd been wearing the same clothes since Maui), then went to meet Amanda, a friend of Yanmei's that she met in the UK. We took the subway to get there. The Taipei subway (MRT) seems very good. The stations are announced in four languages one of which is English, so I could find my way around even if I didn't have Yanmei to translate. It's busy but not extremely crowded like the Beijing subway. Also the price is good only about $0.65 per ride.

Amanda works at the Mandarin Training Center.

Amanda showed us around the MTC for a while, then we started to head back to our room while looking in a few shops. Yanmei is looking for a hat. I told she has to get a good one before Egypt because she will need it then.

We got off the subway one stop early to visit the Shilin Night Market, although it wasn't quite dark yet.

Picture of a stand where Yanmei bought some fruit. The free samples were delicious, but the actual fruit we got wasn't as good. I think we could have bargained for a better price too.

We got back to our room and retired early to try to adjust.

 

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Honolulu

Guest blog post by Yanmei today.

One day tour of Honolulu (April 15th)

In Chinese, Honolulu is called sandalwood hill. A farmhouse revolution leader/hero, Sun Yat-sen lived there before. That is why I was very interested to see Chinese people's life there. Also, I wanted to buy sandalwood as gift for my family and friends. I was trying to get some sandalwood as souvenirs as sandalwood can make people feel better from depression, etc. unfortunately, I did not find any. At China town, all I saw were small grocery shops. Similar feeling as Oakland Chinatown, old, short, messy and poor. It is even hard to find a souvenir shop. I was disappointed.

But we had a great free tour at Pearl Harbor in the morning and a vegetarian dinner in the evening.

In the morning, we visited a Pearl Harbor, which has a kind of sad history in the US. I was so impressed by how Americans look at their history objectively and with an international perspective.

Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec 7, 1941. A beautiful Sunday morning at Honolulu. The radar detected attack flights, but the leader of the army said it was a flight from California. Chinese saying, you underestimate the strength of enemy, then you will lose. Over 2000 sailors and marines died. The most damage was to the battleship Arizona, which exploded and sank. After that, US declared war with Japan. Then later on, the US dropped the atomic bomb to force Japan to give up the war. This is definitely a very crucial incident in history.

At the beginning of the tour, we watched a documentary film, I liked what they said,”this is about life and death, which to remember, to understand, to inspire….” then, we took a ferry to the Arizona memorial. I like the design of the memorial, which based on the distorted Arizona boat, white color, whole wall of names of died solders, especially, people who survived the incident and later put their name and ashes together with their comrades.
 
 

We found a vegetarian restaurant and I really enjoyed the veggie noodles. Seemed every dish I saw is great, I told David, I wanted to have a chain restaurant like panda express but vegetarian and will have locations around the world.

General speaking, Holunono is a city, not like Maui, which is very natural. She has tall buildings, shopping malls, heavy traffic, instead of trees and flowers, and beautiful sunshine and fresh air, but it still can be beautiful.

– Yanmei.

 

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Big Island

Yesterday we went on a one day tour of the island of Hawaii, aka the Big Island. I wanted to see an active volcano and lava. Unfortunately it was a disaster. It poured rain almost all day and was foggy a lot too, so we couldn't see most of the sights very well. Plus the tour spent too much time at gift shops, and we didn't get to see any lava. There is a town currently being destroyed by lava, but we didn't go there. I guess it's callous to watch people's houses destroyed by lava, but it's evacuated and there is nothing left to to but watch. The guide said they are going to start giving tours there soon.

Towards the end of the day the sun finally broke out, but overall we could have spent the day better on another activity.