Because of the rainy weather forecast for Koh Samui, we booked our airline tickets onwards to Taipei (Taiwan) for Dec. 26. Our “Boxing Day” would be spent in airports and airplanes. After breakfast at the hotel, we took the taxi to the nearby airport. We were again impressed by the pleasant airport in particular the departure area. In reading some magazine on the flight from Koh Samui to Bangkok (Air Bangkok), we learned that Koh Samui’s airport had repeatedly won one of the best 10 airports in the World. After a stop-over of a few hours at Bangkok’s airport, we flew with Eva Air to Taipei. We had never heard of this carrier before but we were impressed with their roomy seating and friendly agents. We took a 50km bus shuttle ride from the airport to the downtown. It was well after 11pm when we checked into our hotel (King Shi). We quickly discovered that Taipei was a different place than those visited to-date – starting with the price of the hotels. Victoria was very impressed that our room was label ed VIP.
After a good night sleep, we appreciated the hotel’s free breakfast before venturing out to discover Taipei. On our first experience with the subway system, we bought “Easy Cards” (smart cards) for Taipei’s extensive public transit, including its Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) subway network. We had found these types of cards quite practical in Hong Kong. On our first day, we decided to visit one of the tallest building in Asia, the Taipei 101 building. A very impressive building not only by its beautiful architecture but also by its technology. The elevator ride up to the 88 floor took a mere 30 seconds or so – thanks to one of the two world fastest elevators – both installed in the Taipei 101 building.. After our visit, we set our eyes on the nearby Sun yun-se Memorial building. Although this building appeared close, we could not understand why we had been walking for so long time until we realized that we were misreading the street direction. Another unique characteristic of Taipei, the street names are not overly obvious or clearly labeled. The address numbering is even more confusing nonetheless we learned to be more cautious after our long afternoon walk.
On our second day, we did a bit of laundry and then went to visit Taiwan Science Education Center. We finished the evening at the very popular Shilin Night Market where we bought food from different street vendors. Jenny even treated herself to some famous Smelly Tofu.
On our third day, we visited the nearby Maokong tea growing area with a great many tea houses in the southern tip of the city. To reach this area, we took the MRT and a 4km gondola, part of the public transit system. Guided by a map of trails, we walked a few kms of them with the hope to reach an earlier gondola station but we eventually reach an impasse. We concluded our visit by catching a local bus down the mountain. In the afternoon, we headed to the north of Tapei to bath in some hot springs near Beitou. The public hot springs offered different pools varying in temperature from the hottest at 43-45 Celcius where it is hard to say more than a few minutes to others with slightly cooler water. Thankfully there were even a few pools of cold water to counter the hot ones. On our way back, we stopped once again at the Shilin Night Market for other evening meal. Near our hotel, we discovered a very lively neighborhood (Ximen) with some nice pedestrian streets.
On our fourth day, we visited the Museum of World Religion in the morning and the town of Danshui in the far north of Taipei in the afternoon.
On our fifth day, we had planned (or more like convinced Jenny that Taipei was a very bicycle friendly town) to cycle along some of convenient bicycle paths. Unfortunately, after walking 20 minutes to the bicycle rental office, we learned that we needed our passports to secure the rental of any bicycles. Ours were left in the hotel safe. We offered the rental attendant a cash deposit, a credit card, in lieu of our passports but to no avail. Unwilling to walk back to the hotel, we gave up on our planned cycling day. The day was further marked with frustration after we failed to find a free shuttle bus to a shopping mall and got different walking directions from some locals. In the afternoon, we visited the location of the 2011 New Year Eve party (near Tapei 101 building) that was meant to start later that afternoon. We could appreciate that the organizers expected a lot of people to converge on this site based on the various special alternate routes posted throughout the MRT subway, by the presence of numerous first aid stations and by the dozen of dozen of portable toilets. As much as we thought that the experience would be unique, we did not care much for dealing with large crowds. Late afternoon, we were successful at reaching a tea store where we got the opportunity to taste and learn about the growing of the famous Oolong tea in Taiwan. On the way back to the hotel, we experienced sizable crowd build up in the MRT subway – all folks on their way to the New Year Eve party. We could only imagine what the situation would look like at the end of the party. We were very glad that we were planning to watch the fireworks from our hotel room window. Taiwan was only celebrating the New Year Eve but also the beginning of a year of celebration marking the country’s 100th birthday.
Over and above the efficient public transit system of Taipei, it is the politeness and the orderly nature of the subway passengers that struck us the most. As in many subway stations across big cities in Asia, there is usually markers on the floor advising transit users to queue here and allow existing passengers to exit before entering the trains. Only in Taipei did we notice that people were following these directives. We were also impressed by the bicycle friendliness of the city (except for the bicycle rental attendants!). We really enjoyed our stay in Taipei and hope to see more of Taiwan at our next visit.