Taipei Taiwan 1/2

This is the first of two posts of our trip to Taiwan.  I wanted to keep it short, but it was it's own adventure and Mike and I loved it there. Pictures are at https://picasaweb.google.com/kjhansen24/.

Nov 20

The 5 hour flight was not a big deal at all.  It seemed to go by quickly. Immigration was a breeze and cost nothing.  We picked up some cash at the ATM after 10 minutes of confusing ourselves about the exchange rate and hopped a bus into Taipei City.  2 hours later we were searching for the hostel and found it with the aid of a nice gentleman walking his very fat Chihuahua at midnight on a Thursday.  The sign for the hostel was business card sized.  Turns out it’s illegal to have a big sign for a hostel.  Not sure what the issue is there.

Alex, the owner and night attendant, was not impressed at our late arrival, but took our apologies and gave us room keys.  Our room was clean and comfortable with bunk beds!  After a quick tour and explanation of the place, we crashed for the night.

Nov 21

The next morning Alex gave us directions and a note in Chinese for traditional Taiwanese breakfast.  This consisted of fried bread wrapped in a fried tortilla and a fried tortilla wrapped around a fried egg with soy milk.  It was pretty tasty (we skipped the egg), but our tummies hurt after from all the grease.

We headed immediately to Langshan Temple which is a big attraction apparently for both locals and tourists.  It’s a beautiful Buddhist temple in the traditional Chinese style with huge incense pots and carved pillars.  The back area had these columns with little cards all over them.  I think they were names of ancestors, but I’m unsure.  Many people were praying and making offerings of food, flowers and incense.

Afterward, we took a trip to the zoo.  The transit in Taipei is so similar to Tokyo, I was very impressed.  The metro took us almost anywhere we wanted to go.  We bought Easypasses which are just refillable transit cards that can also be used other places to pay for things such as the zoo and 7 Eleven (7 Elevens are EVERYWHERE here).  The metro dropped us off after just one transfer at the entrance to the zoo.  The zoo is a sprawling park with plenty of attractions.  Our favorites were the rhinos, zebras and chimps.  One feisty young chimpanzee had a stick he was using to terrorize the older chimps.  He would carry it in his mouth while he loped after someone then throw it when he was close enough and scamper off before he could be caught.  It was hilarious!  We watched for about 15 minutes and none of the other chimps managed to catch him.  What a little imp!

On our way out of the zoo, a woman and her mother stopped to talk to us in English.  They were very nice and friendly.  The mother said I have a nice physique and looked like a model.  Yay!! That made me smile.  They suggested we take a romantic ride up the gondola to the top of the mountain to see the sunset and city lights.  It would cost a little over $3USD each.  Done!  The ride was lovely.  We had a spectacular view of the sunset and the city once the dark overtook the day.  At the top, we walked to a tea house that served us greens and mushrooms with rice. YUM!  The ride back down landed us in a “crystal carriage” meaning it had a glass bottom.  Unfortunately, it was too dark to see much out of it.  We enjoyed the few minutes it looked like we were floating anyway.

Nov 22 – Shilin and Xinbeitou

This was museum day.  We hopped the metro with some bread from a street vendor and rode to Shilin to see the National Palace Museum.  The bus stop was right next to a fine art gallery with free admission so we opted to check that out first.  We really enjoyed the exhibit. 

Across the street was the National Palace Museum.  It’s a huge structure that I assume used to be the Emperor’s Palace in Taipei.  As we walked up, we found the Garden of Perfect Benevolence and decidedly couldn’t miss it.  We fed the koi and wandered around in the rain.  The garden was lovely, well-kept and perfectly benevolent. 

The museum was a zoo.  There were huge tour groups everywhere.  The people in them seemed to have no respect for anyone else.  A group of 35 people would come stampeding into an area I was marveling at a jade carving and crowd me out.  I dislike crowds anyway, but you add in pushiness and I’m done.  I probably missed some really cool stuff because of that.  It’s ok though.  I saw enough wine containers, cauldrons, jade carvings, snuff boxes and calligraphy to last me a good long while.

We took off back to the metro and rode to Xinbeitou to sit in the hot springs.  It’s a walk up a river to the public hot spring.  We found outdoor exercise equipment to play on for the amusement of the locals.  Since apparently we could only go in at a specific time, we had time to walk up to Thermal Valley, where a river of hot water floods the area with steam. Neat!! 

Back at the hot spring, I was amused to find that I was the only female in a bikini and the only one not in a bathing suit that looked like a short wetsuit.  Interesting… The hot springs were varying temperatures.  The hottest at the top was 45 degrees Celsius.  My toes were tingling the whole time we were in there.  I lasted only a few minutes.  Then we moved on trying out each temperature of pool.  We did everything wrong from trying to go into the hot spring too early to not knowing to bathe our feet between spas to not putting my hair up.  We did not last the whole 90 minutes we paid for.

On the way back to Mr. Lobster’s Secret Den, we stopped for dinner at a vegetarian restaurant we had seen in Shilin.  It was pretty good.  I like kimchi. Shilin is also the location of a major night market.  We wandered through the throngs looking at all the weird street meat and clothing.  We finally got to a fruit stand and paid probably way too much for some dragon fruit, pineapple, star fruit and an apple like fruit.  The pineapple was amazing!