Have I mentioned that I LOVE Taipei?!

There was a long weekend at the beginning of November so Elspeth and I took advantage of it and jetted off to Taipei, Taiwan. The plan - check out the city (at a bit of a slower pace for me this time!), shop, eat amazing food, shop, oh did I mention shop??!!

We woke up early and made our way to Centrair, the fancy-schmancy airport near Nagoya. We had a moment of panic when the guy at the counter told us we were on China Air (if you want to see something terrifying google their name and the word 'safety') but it quickly disappeared when we realized he'd just told us the wrong check-in area. A few hours later (after checking out the airport shops) we were tucked into our JAA (associate of the posh JAL) seats with our gold leafed dessert and green tea soba noodles in front of us.

We were even served Canadian glacial water. If you were wondering where our melting glaciers are going, well down the throats of thirsty Japanese travellers is the answer...

It must have been stupid o'clock because I have quite a few pictures of the safety guide. We found this one in particular quite hilarious. Good lord, why did they draw him with his eye open like that?


TAIPEI

We found our names on a sign at arrivals and waited patiently with the other Japanese tourists for our 'good-looking' guide (as the woman who met us called him). He turned out to be very friendly and ushered us all onto a 2 story-tour-bus thing that looked like it was decorated in what I thought was the style of a 70's French 'boudoir'. Of course, we had to stop at the duty-free but it gave us time to exchange some money and buy mint m&ms at the convenience store next door. We finally made it to our hotel, dropped off our bags and headed off to Longshan Temple.

Longshan Temple


Once again, this place was crowded, loud, reeked of incense and was completely fascinating. The decorations are so ornate and detailed. People sway back and forth with their bunches of incense or offer plates of beautiful fruit or sweets. While we were there everyone started to chant and sing...I wish I knew what they were saying.






National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall (or whatever it's called now...it was in the news recently)


Above: Where's Elspeth??

So once again, we stumble upon great things. This time it was an outdoor craft sale/fire performance. We moved closer to see what everyone was watching, only to see these guys with flaming swords start fighting. About 30 minutes of dance/fight/fire insanity followed. Of course I filmed part of it...





Shilin Night Market

Possibly my most favourite place in Taipei. I love the smells (some great, some pretty awful), the sounds, the sights...even the crowds don't seem to bother me. Who knows what this guy (above) was having done though - he had a candle in a jar in his ear and after a while the guy pulled it out, cut open the remaining bit of candle and showed him the crap inside...

There are amusement-type games for adults and kids...

And of course glorious market food. If I were more adventurous I would have tried so many things. As we were a bit wary of ingredients (lets just say lots of things looked like 'insides'), over the next two days, we tried heavenly fried chicken, bubble tea (I actually liked it), grilled sausage served with a stomach searing serving of raw garlic, chewy and crispy dumplings, freshly made fruit juice, mango ice and strawberry ice! Thank goodness we did a lot of walking too!



Drool...mango ice...so good...really, tell me what is better than fresh mango, shaved ice, mango ice cream and condensed milk?

Day two started with me almost falling out of the super high bathtub and pulling all of the muscles in my back. Not the way I wanted to start our full day of walking. There was no way I was missing out on my beloved Taipei, so I downed a few Aleve with breakfast (which was in a room that looked like a cross between a bad 80's prom and a Church basement) and hobbled along...

Above: Notice that there's no four. 4=death.
Below: The streets near our hotel were dead when we left in the morning...but hopping with young'uns when we got back late at night. Shoes were bought along this street. Cute boys were also spotted (there were many in Taipei! And they were very polite too!)



The Lin Family Mansion

Somewhere there must be better directions to this place than, 'walk for 8 minutes from the station,' which is on their website. We had no idea in what direction to start walking for 8 minutes so we finally asked a woman in a store. She didn't speak English but figured out what I was asking and kindly drew us a map and wrote the characters for the name. So nice.

We ended walking through a small market, which was cool. You could have your fortune picked out of a box by a small bird in a cage. Or have your nails painted with crazy patterns. We finally found the entrance. Thank goodness Elspeth was there to keep me on track...I might have gotten sidetracked by the street sights!

The Lin Family Mansion is this property in the middle of the city, which contains a house and garden. You can only see the house on a tour and since all the tours that day were in Chinese, we didn't go on one. But really, that didn't matter because the gardens were amazing. It was surprisingly empty (I guess everyone else was on the tour?) so Elspeth and I wandered around, taking pictures and trying to find the stamps hidden throughout the property.





It felt like something out of a movie. There were bright flowers, weepy trees, strange shaped doors, tunnels, caves, lakes...it was a kind of magical place right in the middle of a very busy city.








We eventually left the garden, ventured through another street market and made our way back to the metro station.




The Jade and Flower Market

The Jade and Flower Market was high on our 'places to see' list. It's located underneath a highway overpass. The Jade Market was kind of disappointing until at the last vendor we found some kick-ass bracelets. Presents for ourselves? Yes, please. The flower market was really cool. I love the 'Harry Potter' plant (above) and the teeny-tiny cacti (below).


Orchids were EVERYWHERE but I must admit my favourite were the flats of bright green sprouts I saw on the way out.



Taipei 101

When we arrived it was rainy and misty and the now second tallest building in the world was hiding in the clouds. We decided to wait a bit and see if it cleared up. Where better to wait than Coldstones. Bring on the apple pie ice cream, baby! (oh and weird thing - a waitress came around and served us cups of HOT water. Guess they thought ice cream + cold water = extra brain freeze)

It didn't really clear up so we decided against going to the 91st floor. We did check out the HUGE bookstore inside (where I overheard an unfortunate foreigner trying to persuade a woman to meet him for "English lessons") but the books were expensive so we didn't buy anything.

Of course that night we headed back to Shilin Night Market, where we finished our Christmas shopping and ate some more mango ice (this time with strawberries!). That night I discovered the power of Tiger Balm (that stuff is amazing) and we watched random English programs on the Discovery channel, while contemplating all of the amazing stuff we had bought.

Because we are super travellers, we got up early on our last day and headed to the National Palace Museum. There, we were brave and went on the English tour, which was made up of a pushy German couple, an annoying Asian-American man and possibly his Tawaniese relative and some others. The cool thing was, we got to use the audio thing which allowed our guide to speak or even whisper and we could hear her perfectly. The tour was very interesting...

After waiting forever for a bus, we hopped in a cab and somehow made it back to our hotel about ten minutes before our guido-san told us to meet him there. After yet another stop at the duty free we were back at the airport and flying back to Japan.


Oh Taipei, how I LOVE you!