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| Taipei 101 and downtown Taipei from the top of Elephant Mountain |
Having
finished our tour of the Philippines, we boarded an Air Asia flight and jumped
across to Taiwan; the second country in our Southeast Asia tour.
Since Taiwan is a fairly small island we had
planned on only spending two weeks there, but of course that didn’t happen
(currently on day 18 and still have about a week of things to do).
The trip was going to be quick and easy we
thought.
Since having a friend that
lives in
Taipei, the capital, we had planned to stay with him and use his house
as a base of operations to go out into the rest of the country.
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| Baoan Tample garden |
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| Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial |
Things
went sideways fast though on this trip.
Flying a red eye out of the Philippines put us in Taiwan a 1 am in the
morning and coupled with the long line at customs meant we really didn’t get
out of the airport till around 3 am.
We
knew we would be getting in super late so we had booked a room at a hotel for
the first night and planned to move to our friends house the following morning,
but in hindsight we should have just slept at the airport.
Jumping in an expensive taxi we rode into
Taipei with who would turn out to be the nicest taxi driver I have ever meet
(thanks for your help Henry!!!).
We
arrived at our hotel, located down an alleyway, but the door was locked and no
one would answer the door.
Sleeping
outside crossed our mind, we had done it before in the Philippines, but this
was different.
This was an abandoned
alleyway in middle of
Taipei with no where to hide away.
Fortunately, we had Henry.
After he made repeated phone calls to the
hotel with his phone, banged the door a few times, and yelled at the non-existent
worker on the other side of the wall, he finally offered to drive us for free
to find another hotel.
There weren’t
many options at that time of night, but he found one and Henry convinced the
owner to give us a considerable discount after recounting our earlier
story.
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| Longshan Temple |
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| Prayer and meditation at Longshan Temple |
After
resting up in what was the nicest hotel I have stayed at in a long time (they
even had free snacks and drinks), we went out to find our friends house, where,
except for leaving to get dinner that evening, we vegged the rest of the
day. This would turn out to be a theme,
and reason why the beginning of this trip took so long, for the rest of our
time in Taipei. Having just come off a
grueling month-long tour of the Philippines we were tired and needed some down
time; plus, I was way behind on this blog.
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| Bopiliao Historical Block with a movie production in the background |
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| Northern gate of the old walled city of Taipei |
We
spent our first 14 days in
Taipei, which really could have been done in
probably three, but it was nice.
Taipei
is a large city but due to the train and bus system you can easily get around
the town with ease; there is also an extensive bike share system in all of the
large towns in Taiwan.
Sleeping in most
mornings, we spent the evenings exploring the town and seeing all it had to
offer.
Though it was easy to get around,
it wasn’t so easy to order food.
Most
places are, of course, in Chinese and since neither of us speak Chinese we
mostly wondered around searching for the rare places that had English
translations or pictures.
This, in turn,
lead to us eating a lot of dumplings.
Don’t get me wrong, the dumplings here are delicious, but I have
probably eaten my weight in different types of dumplings.
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| Fried dumplings at our regular spot outside the house |
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| Spicy noodle and wonton soup |
Ordering
food became easier over time (we still can’t read Chinese, but I’ve gotten good
at matching the symbols to foods I know).
We found that the night markets are the best place to go in the evening.
Each district has their own and they consist
of a street or alleyway lined with shops and stalls selling an array of
consumer goods and food.
The food in
these markets is delicious and usually consists of small bite size portions
meant to eat on the go.
Besides these
markets we tried a few restaurants that were recommended to us as well; like
the best noodle soup places in town, Din Tai Fung in Taipei 101 (a Michelin
starred restaurant), and the Toilet Bowl restaurant (where everything from
bowls to chairs is toilet themed).
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| Store in a night market selling only dog clothes and carrier bags |
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| Kabob stall in the Sanhe night market |
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| Me eating a hotpot at the Toilet Bowl restaurant |
It
might seem that most of our focus in Taipei has been on food and you wouldn’t
be wrong (but really how can it not be with so much great food around), but we
did do other things as well. Wandering
the streets of Taipei, we visited countless temples, hiked Elephant Mountain to
get a view of Taipei 101 and the town below, visited a few historical sites and
museums (one of which we found out was closed after we had walked 45 minutes to
get there), took a gondola ride to drink tea at the top of a mountain, hiked
Teapot mountain in the northeast, and strolled the wharf of Tamsui Old Street
(I admit there was food involved on this one).
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| Drinking Oolong Tea on the mountain top after the Gonola ride |
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| View of Teapot Mountain from the drone |
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| Red Fort in Tansui, Taiwan |
Taipei has been a great place to visit and well worth the time.
The time being spent, we now venture out to
the rest of the country.
Deciding to
take to the road for the rest of the trip, we will no longer be staying with
our friend, but jumping from town to town as we see what the rest of Taiwan has
to offer.
We have the largest Buddha
memorial, some hiking and camping, fun on the beach, and a few exciting
festivals to see on this part of our journey so I am excited to see where it
takes us and I hope you are too.
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| The drone getting a little camera action of its own atop Teapot Mountain |
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