The ride up was uneventful except for my bus driver who would not shut up the whole way up, I'm not sure what part of sleeper bus he didn't understand but his noise made it hard to get much sleep. Suffice to say when we rolled in to Incheon at 445am I was tired. Geoff had gone to the airport the night before so I was to call him around 530, which I did. We then met, checked in with Cathay Pacific and cleared customs, and sat down with a much needed coffee.
The flight down was uneventful and our bus ride in was easy. On the way we met a girl from California named Laura who was also an esl teacher in Korea and who was down for three days to see Taipei. We jumped off at Taipei Main Station and headed north. Note - if you are ever in Taipei there are many hotels north of the main station, many have rooms for less than a single room at a hostel (though dorms are obviously cheaper). We got a room with two beds, no windows and an unused, but open condom on the bathroom floor for $1000 Taiwan dollars a night ($30 TND = $1USD. That's 3/5ths of class. :)
Even though we were both beat it was only noon and we were keen to see the sights. Our first stop was Longshan temple, which was amazing. Longshan, unlike many temples in SE Asia and Korea, is actually a functioning temple, and Geoff and I may have been the only tourists there. It's a Buddhist temple nominally, but there are altars to several of the gods is the Mahayana pantheon. Anyway a really neat temple.
Next stop was a hop on the MRT (Taipei's amazing subway network) to MRT City Hall to see Taipei 101. Note - if in Taipei invest the $500 Taiwan dollars in an easy card. It gets you on the subway, gondola's and ferries at a discount, and it's beyond convenient. Anyway, oddly enough,Taipei 101 was probably the only thing I wouldn't recommend doing, or at least would not get people too excited about it. While it is a cool building it is only really amazing on clear days (of which, admittedly, we didn't have), the excessive cost to go up, long lines both up and down and the constant noise of sales people trying to sell anything and everything the whole time really takes away from the vibe. On Kurt's recommendation, we tried the beer float up there (Geoff did, I chose to avoid the dairy). Beer and ice cream together at last.......... Kurt's other recommendations were all amazing so I won't hold that one against him :) However, Taipei 101 does have maybe the most extensive food court in Asia, so make sure to drop by the basement :P
After that we were tired but decided to go to Shilin Night Market, Taipei's biggest, anyway. This was possibly the highlight of Taipei, so much so that we spent more time there on the Saturday night as well (I'll write more about it on the day 3 blog). At the time I was too tired to shop so we just ate the spiciest noodles that have ever been made, fruit juice a New Zealand expat sold us (who'd been living in Taipei for six years - she was quite helpful as well) and walked around. By that time it was 9pm and I hadn't slept in 36 hours, so we decided to head back to the hotel.
Before bed we did manage to watch some fairly interesting Hong Kong horror film and an inning of Chinese Professional baseball. It was interesting to watch, and it reminded me a bit of the Korean League and the same rules and status of the league exists as the Korean one. Then I crashed.
Longshan Temple
Whatever it is, I want it
Taipei 101
Taiwan Lager. Not too bad
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.