Tag: Travel

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Back to Taipei

We had a little look around Chiayi before we caught the train to Taipei.
Temple in Chiayi

 

Me in the temple with my hat

Unfortunately that is probably the last picture of me in my hat. I mistakenly left it on the train when I got off at Taipei 🙁 . My new Tilley hat that I bought for this trip didn't even last through the first month.

Anyway that was Friday, and we got settled into our new place in Taipei. It has a small stove so Yanmei can finally cook. She misses cooking her own food.

Saturday we decided to mostly rest, not be too busy. However Saturday morning we went out to the local morning market to get some stuff for Yanmei to cook. She told me to stay back because she thought she wouldn't get good deals if she was with a foreigner. So I decided to just look around the market myself, maybe I could find a new hat, and it shouldn't be too difficult to find her again. Not a good idea. After a few minutes I went back to find her and I couldn't. I circled the whole market with no luck, then realized that wasn't the whole market, there were other little alleys leading off here and there with more stalls. I circled a couple more times and finally saw her walk across the other end of an alley, so I caught back up to her. Didn't end up finding a hat.

So we mostly rested Saturday. I followed the Raptors losing game 3, we're 12 hours ahead here so Saturday morning I can follow the Friday night games. Although we were resting we'd recently heard it was firefly season, which is late April-early May. I wanted to go see them, because if we ever come back to Taiwan it will be in the cool season, like October or November. It's not even the hot season yet, but it is still hot and humid most days.

Anyway Saturday evening we went to see the fireflies. The small mountain behind the pedestrian suspension bridge is where the fireflies are.

Bridge to mountain trail

 

Unfortunately, because the weather was good and it was Saturday, it was extremely crowded, and thousands of people trying to go up and down a narrow mountain trail doesn't work very well. It actually felt pretty dangerous in spots because there was no railing, and if someone tripped in the dark they could easily push you off the edge.

We saw quite a few fireflies. I was hoping to see a giant cloud of them, and maybe that existed, but the line basically ground to a halt so we turned back. Fireflies don't photograph well, and my pictures turned out worse than I hoped, I need more practice with my camera in low light situations.

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We also got to see some nice night Taipei skyline views.

-David

 

 

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Taipei day 3

We're in Tainan now and it is raining out, so I'm trying to catch up on the blog.

So Sunday April 19th, we got a bit of a late start. First we tried to go to a local buffet we went to on the first day, but it was closed. We decided to go to the National Palace Museum which was close to where we lived. Although it was hot and humid we decided to walk, thinking that we could find a place to eat along the way. It was a 30 minute walk and nothing was open except the 7-Elevens. Although it is interesting to walk through a foreign city, given the heat, maybe not a good idea.

The National Palace Museum is Taiwan's equivalent of the Palace Museum in the Forbidden City in Beijing. Many of the artifacts are from Beijing and were evacuated to Taiwan when Japan invaded prior to WW2.

After the museum we took a bus to Taipei Main Station, which is the rail station. Yanmei wanted to check it out and buy tickets for the next day. We got there and it seemed very easy to buy tickets through the automatic ticket machines and the trains seemed to leave every 15 minutes so we decided we didn't need to buy ahead of time.

I still wanted to go to Taipei 101, but we looked around at the shops near the station for a while, but many were closed, I guess because it was Sunday. Then it started to rain heavily. We went into a 7-Eleven and bought an umbrella for $2. Due to the rain we gave up on Taipei 101 and went back to our room.

-David

 

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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