Back from Taiwan!
I just got back from Taiwan last night. I was a fun, but difficult, four days three nights. I'll try to give you a quick summary.
Day 1
We got to the airport early to pickup the plane tickets. We had breakfast at McDonalds and walked around before we went to board. This is the first time for me to fly EVA Air. I haven't even heard of this airline before but Diana arranged the tickets and the price was pretty cheap. My review for the ride, it is a little bumpy. Maybe it was the air condition in Taipei. Even though the flight attendants spoke to me in Mandarin all the time, I thought they were quite friendly and a few were pretty as well. The plane trip was fast, the flight time was only an hour. We were playing tetris but the in flight announcements kept pausing our game play. Upon Arrival my first impression was that everything in Taipei seems a little old. We stayed at the Leo Foo Hotel. We didn't do much but just walked around discovering Taipei. We spent an unusual amount of time looking for stickers...some fetish the girls have. One thing that really amazed me was the size of Partyworld, the local Karaoke (KTV) company. They have huge buildings built all around Taipei for Karaoke. I have to mention the motorbikes and scooters. There are tons in Taipei. It seems a little crazy, they ride and park everywhere.
Day 2
We had a lot of fun on day two. We got up in the morning and went to grab some local sandwiches, they were great. After we made our way over to Taipei 101 (the world's tallest building since 2004 apparently) we walked around looking at the various shops. We had originally planned to take the elevator up to the top but the weather was cloudy with poor visibility so I'll save it for another day. What surprised me was that I found a Roots store in Taipei 101. Stop by the AT (Afternoon Tea) store if you get a chance. The portion sizes are pretty big and it was great to relax after walking around so much. We checked out many of the malls in the area. One of my personal highlights for that night was going to Din Tai Fung, one of Taiwan's most famous restaurants. There are two located in Taipei, we went to the old one first but got there at 9 (right at closing time). Our schedule in Taiwan was pretty tight, but I really wanted to try the xiao long bao (or shao long bao) at that restaurant because they were so famous. We took a taxi to the second location , the newer one, which actually closes at 10. After dinner we headed towards Shilin night market for more food and sights. It was a long exhausting but fulfilling day.
Day 3
We spent day three trying to get our souvenirs and our much needed chores done. We went with Diana to get her Taiwan ID renewed but because of some paper work issues she needs to go back to Taiwan again to get it done. We went all over buying souvenirs, we spent tons of money at the local 7-11 and Wellcome. We picked up a few cakes from the local bakeries. One nice one in particular is Amo; Tel (02)2306-3752. Diana gave me a box of "cookies" from Kobayashi and I must say they tasted amazing, I would highly recommend trying these. We went out to Danshui that night to take a look at the Fisherman's Wharf. The area is actually pretty plain, but the wharf/bridge is quite beautiful all lit up with lights. We took quite a few fun pictures here. There really isn't anything else to do but take pictures and to relax. There are a few local snacks to try in this area though. The one thing that I wanted to do today but could not do was to take the girls out to see a horror movie. Being Halloween I wanted to celebrate a little but we were pretty tired from walking around. Too bad we found out later, on day four, that there was actually a movie theater really close to our hotel.
Day 4 (Final Day)
We tried to do our last minute shopping here before our plane flight. Something terrible happened though, I left my digital camera inside the taxi. I was pretty lucky because Clare had taken a picture of the driver's license information. We had to call the police to report it missing they sent out a policeman to talk to us and he walked us over to a nearby police station. Luckily they reported that the driver turned the camera in at the office and that we could go over there to pick it up. We decided to hit up a few shops and an art bookstore before going over. We raided another 7-11 and packed up our things to go to the airport. Nothing really special happened after that, I think we all enjoyed Taiwan but couldn't wait to be back home.
If I have time and money I would love to go back and see the things that I missed out on this trip. Culturally there were many interesting things about Taiwan. It was interesting to compare the brands and stores in Taipei versus the ones in Hong Kong. Culturally I found Taipei to be a cross between Japan and China. Completely different than the culture in Hong Kong.
Taipei has good food, generally well mannered people (fairly quiet rides on the Metro with few people chatting on their cell phones), and some nice interesting scenes. It is a more relaxing environment compared to Hong Kong but not as convenient.
Pictures are up for my friends to see (day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4)
posted by Tempest7 @ 13:03
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home