Month: April 2015

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Taipei, Taiwan, day 2

Our second day in Taipei, we had a lot of options for things to do. I suggested we go to the Maokong Gondola first since I'd read there can be long lines for it, if you don't go early. It is easy to get to on the MRT and also next to the Taipei zoo.

On the way to the MRT station we stopped at a local shop with a decent sized line up for breakfast. That is one of our strategies for picking places to eat, if there is a line it is probably good. I had a Chinese pastry and sweet soy milk, Yanmei had salty soy milk which had a much thicker, lumpier consistency.

One other thing I noticed about Taipei is the 7-Eleven stores. It seems like there is one on every block. We walked past three on the two block walk to the MRT station. They don't seem to sell slurpees (although with the temperature here I'm not sure why not), but they do have the hot dog rollers, as well as local style foods such as tea eggs, which are eggs hard boiled in tea. Yanmei likes their stone baked sweet potatoes.

After that we headed to the gondolas. There wasn't much of a line, but we waited for one of the crystal cars, which have clear floors. Unfortunately the gondola cars are plastered with hello kitty decals which make it harder to see the views.

The haze in the photo is mostly humidity. It was hot and humid and it was still before 11am. Anyway we went to the top which has a lot of tea houses and restaurants.

We stopped at a shop that was selling green tea soft serve ice cream cones.

We sat down to eat the cone. Another couple walked in and bought a cone, they started posing and taking selfies with it and ended up dropping the ice cream on the floor. They told the shop owner about the ice cream on the floor and left. A guy came out to clean it. He picked up the bulk of the unmelted ice cream and took it somewhere to throw, leaving a small green puddle on the floor. While he was throwing that out another couple came in with about a 2 year old son. The boy was looking up at his parents and stepped right in the puddle of ice cream. He then proceeded to wander around like boys that age, leaving a family circus style trail of green foot prints around the shop. The guy came back out with a towel to clean the puddle, and the look on his face when he saw the trail was hilarious, he went from shock to annoyance to resignation as he saw the mess, then followed the trail with his eyes to see whose fault it was, then realized he couldn't get angry at a young boy.

I burst out laughing at this, we were far enough away so it wasn't obvious what I was laughing at. Yanmei was sitting facing a different direction so didn't see it and she asked what I was laughing at. I relayed the story to her, then spilled our ice cream on my Tilley hat, which I'd set down on the table, which was also funny. She said “that's what you get for laughing at others.” 🙂

After that Yanmei found out they serve a vegetarian lunch at Zhinan (指南宮) temple in return for a donation. The temple was one stop away on the gondola.

 

The golden cards are wishes, more on that later. After quite a bit of searching Yanmei found the vegetarian lunch, we had to go down these small steps to a level below the main temple.

The food was quite good, and it was a unique experience. I think not many foreign tourists find this spot.

After that we made a donation and got wishing cards to hang on the tree. Luckily it was multiple choice so I didn't have to write Chinese. Here is mine:

I'm told I wished for wisdom, health, safety and peace. Yanmei doesn't want me to post hers. I think she wished for a baby.

We took the gondola back down to the Taipei zoo, which is Asia's largest. With our entrance ticket we also got a ticket for a 10 minute viewing time at the giant panda exhibit. To be honest, once you've seen a few zoos there isn't much new to see.

After the zoo I was planning on going to Taipei 101, but the heat and humidity had drained our energy, so we decided to call it a day and head back to our room.

David

 

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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.