Last Day in Taiwan

Day 20

East Coast – last day in Taiwan

We drove over to the east coast today to take grandma to visit some old friends and see the town where Wen Jen (Chandler’s father) grew up. It was really a really pretty drive, and I wish I took more pictures. We stopped shortly after we were near the ocean for a wonderful seafood lunch, and continued north along the coast for many miles to Wen Jen’s home town, which is a very small fishing village. There was little to do there, and we continued to the next town where the family has some friends. We took Chandler’s grandma to see her 106 year old friend. Unfortunately while we were there, Wen Jen’s friend locked the keys in the car, and we had to call a locksmith. The locksmith couldn’t get the door open, so they ended up breaking the window! Luckily it didn’t rain. Chandler and I tried to make the most of it by heading down to the beach, which looked really nice, but they wanted to charge you, so we decided against it. After we departed this town, we continued up the coast and turned inland for another stop to see a friend and to see another small town that was very pretty. We returned home early to have dinner with the family and catch up on everything and pack. Our flight leaves tomorrow at 4:40PM, and we have a long day of traveling ahead…

Having been here for the last 3 weeks, I must say that I really enjoyed Taiwan and and China. But if I had to choose 1 out of the 2 to visit again, I would go back to Taiwan before I would go back to China. It's not that I disliked China, it's just that I like Taiwan better. It's more... civilized, I guess. The culture shock wore off after a few days and I got used to things pretty quickly. It's a lot different, but I definitely like it.

Gahn-Bay



Notes: These items didn’t really fit anywhere, but are interesting.

The Chinese/Taiwanese love malls. They put them everywhere and in strange places like underground, in financial districts, etc. It’s their new favorite thing. Malls are vertically oriented. Eight stories is pretty standard.

People don’t really talk much. The subway is kind of quiet despite all the people.

The most I spent on a beer was 50 Yuan (about $7.50) for a 350mL (12 ounce) bottle. The least I spent was 3 Yuan (about 45 cents) for two 600mL (about 20.5 ounces) for a total of 1.2 liters (or 41 ounces). A beer in Taiwan pretty much always costs the equivalent of $1 to $2.

There are no open intoxicant laws in Taiwan or China. You can buy a beer anywhere and drink it in stores, on the street, wherever. There is little incentive to buy a beer at a bar when it’s very cheap in the stores and you can drink it anywhere.

I could always tell a Chinese person from a Taiwanese person based on how much they invaded my personal space. Believe me, it actually worked – Chandler can corroborate.

People stared at me in China a lot. I guess they really like light colored skin… A lot of people in China wanted to take a photo with me. My guess is that I got asked a total of about 20 times while there. The Taiwanese were unphased by my presence.

Chinese people touch you a lot (the whole invading your personal space thing). I hated it.

Everyone has a cell phone – everyone.

Chinese people drive more Buicks than Americans.

If you want to drive a nice car, you drive a Mercedes, especially in Taiwan. The German car brands are really popular as are the Japanese ones. American cars are prevalent. There are lots of Buicks in China, not so much in Taiwan. Ford has a larger presence in Taiwan, and I saw very few Chrysler products in either country. There are also some French cars (Puegeot, Citroen, and Renault), Italy’s Fiat is around, and a Czech car called a Skoda which is owned by VW. I saw 2 Bentleys in Beijing, and 1 in Taipei. I saw a Ferrari in Shanghai.

We borrowed a Communist policeman’s cell phone in Beijing… He was really nice.

Nobody in China speaks English, and if they do, they’re trying to sell you something, or they’re foreign. Most people in Taiwan speak English, as 12 years of it are mandatory in school.

Pedestrians don’t necessarily have the right of way.

Hua Xi, Ximending... Night Markets are Amazing

Day 17

Traveling

An uneventful day. We did lots of traveling. A flight from Beijing to Shanghai, then Shanghai back to Taipei. We did, however, ride a maglev in Shanghai to get to the airport. 30km in 8 minutes at 300km/h, which was very cool.

Day 18

Night markets and shopping.

Back in Taipei. Chandler had a dentist appointment and a dermatologist appointment today, so we got off to a slow start, but that was ok, as we got in kind of late from the airport and got to sleep in. We made a leisurely start towards the dentist and while I was waiting for Chandler to get finished, I walked around the neighborhood a bit. Not too much interesting, it was pretty standard for Taipei, and I never felt insecure. We departed to meet up with some of Chandler’s friends in Taipei. We took the MRT to somewhere further in the city and met them at a coffee shop playing where they were playing a board game. We hung out with them for a bit and took off to check out a nearby mall which was uninteresting (from my perspective – malls here are very high end).

After this we headed towards a new night market: Hua Xi. This one was cool, but we were there a bit early. This is the night market where you can see vendors kill snakes so that you can drink the blood – apparently it’s an aphrodisiac… We saw the snakes, but never saw one get killed. Apparently it’s kind of a novelty to see that anymore as it hardly ever happens. We grabbed a little something to eat, including chicken testicles, and pig intestines, and squid head, and they were all delicious. This night market had a bit of a different feel to it, which I didn’t really notice until Chandler pointed it out. Most of the time the night markets are filled young people. This one was a mix of young people and old people, and catered to a bit of a different crowd, but it was still interesting and worth a look.

From here we walked a short bit to a nearby shopping area called Ximending. This area was filled with young people, and was not really a night market, it was more like a shopping district, kind of like a big outdoor mall, but since it catered to young people, it was more affordable. It was kind of like Taipei’s version of the Nanjing in Shanghai, or Wanfujing in Beijing. We bummed around here for a while as it was quite large and hopped on the MRT to head towards Chandler’s dermatologist appointment. Luckily for me, his dermatologist’s office is right in the middle of Shi-Lin night market. Additionally weird was that his appointment was at 11:30PM. And if that isn’t weird enough, his mother moved his appointment forward by 2 hours from 1:30AM!!! Weird, right? Anyway, it worked for me, as Chandler just stopped at his dermatologist and I preceded to check out the night market. After he was done we grabbed a little something to eat, as neither of us was very hungry from the testicles, etc., and we raced to make the MRT back to Chandler’s home on the other side of town – we actually ran through a couple of the stations where we had transfers in order to make trains, but we did make it.

Gahn-Bay!

Day 19

National Palace Museum

We got up a bit early today and made our way to the National Palace Museum. Essentially the idea behind the National Palace Museum is this: The museum is full of stuff that was absconded from the Forbidden City in Beijing in 1948 during the Chinese Civil War. At the time the Capitalists were in power, and when they feared a Communist takeover of the government, they started boxing up all the nice shit and shipped it to Taiwan. So when the Communists eventually did take over, the Capitalists fled to Taiwan and the nicest items from imperial China went with them. So that’s the deal. Some of the stuff is still in the Forbidden City in Beijing, but most of the nice stuff made its way to Taiwan. So we spent about 5 hours there looking at all the collections, some of which were very impressive. The royal family definitely lived very lavishly, and the museum had many bronze items in the collection that were 10,000 years old.

After this we were a bit hungry, and we were supposed to meet up with a friend of Chandler’s. We headed to a shopping area with a giant mall, a huge ferris wheel, and a bunch of big-box stores surrounding it. We walked around there for a while and grabbed something eat. After a couple hours we decided to head back early and chill at home for the evening.

There is talk of driving to the east coast tomorrow, but I’m not really sure what will come to pass.

Gahn-Bay

Panjiayuan market day

Day 16

Panjiayuan / Xuishui / Xidan

Ghost market!!! So apparently Panjiayuan used to be really cool. It’s a giant outdoor market where you can buy anything. You could probably spend all day there. Chandler’s Dad said that it used to be awesome, but that it’s still pretty cool. I guess back in the day there were real antiques mixed in with everything else, so you could get really good deals because no one knew their real value, but those days are no more. We still ended up spending about 5 hours there, and we ended up with a lot of stuff at good prices because it’s another market where you haggle for things. We were there so long that we took a lunch break and went back afterwards.

After we had spent too long at Panjiayuan, we wanted to go back to Xuishui to bargain on a couple more things. We hopped on the subway and bargained for a couple more hours until we had had our fill, at which point we debated either going back to the hotel to rest or to go to one last place before we headed back as it was about 5:30. We opted to check out Xidan, which was supposed to be similar to Wangfujing, but was not too much to be excited about. It was some standard department stores and an underground mall (they build a lot of stuff underground here – it’s a little bit weird). I just bought a couple shirts at a store called Uniqlo, which is kind of like H&M here, although they have that too.

We left Xidan and headed back towards the hotel and met up with Chandler’s parents for our last dinner in China. We headed not too far down the street for some place that was famous for its noodle dishes, and everything was really good. It was an interesting place because there’s lots of yelling. When you walk in the door, someone holds the door open and yells to the restaurant how many people are entering the restaurant, and the same for when people leave. Sometimes the wait staff responds with their own yells. It was interesting to say the least.

After dinner we headed back to pack and whatnot. We leave around 10AM tomorrow for a flight to Shanghai, then Taiwan.

Gahn-Bay.

Xuishui shopping

Day 15

Xuishui / Luilichang

We shopped a lot today. We got up and had breakfast at the hotel, then headed towards another exhibition for that auction. We walked around for a bit because Chandler’s parents wanted to see something there that they might bid on. After a little while there, Chandler’s parents departed and we were left on our own to find the Xuishui market. After a little walking we found the building where it is housed and had some fun. Bartering is the name of the game, and you can get some good deals, but you can also get taken. It’s not unusual to end up with something at 10% of the original asking price. It was a big place, and we were wheeling and dealing for about 3 hours, and we both ended up with what we wanted at good prices. From here we departed for another market called Qianmen, which took us a little while to find. It was kind of like a night market, but we were there during the day, and it was fairly deserted. We walked through some of Qianmen towards Luilichang, which is a market area where they sell antiques and stuff (most of them fake). By the time we got here we only walked around for about half an hour before we got a call to head towards a restaurant for dinner, but we probably weren’t going to buy anything here anyways as it was expensive.

We met Chandler’s parents at a restaurant a bit to the south for some very good Xuan Yong, or Shabu-Shabu Lamb (I don’t get it either)… On the table were 2 hot pots with a gas flame underneath that boiled water with vegetables and herbs in it. You receive plates of raw meat, fish, etc., and cook it by boiling it in the water. It was good, but it wasn’t my favorite thing that I’d eaten on the trip, although it is apparently Chandler’s favorite.

After dinner we headed to the auction to see if Chandler’s father could get a piece that he wanted, but he was unsuccessful, and we just headed back to the hotel for some rest. Apparently we’re getting up at 7AM in the morning for the Ghost Market, so I’m going to hit the hay despite it being only 10:30PM.

Gahn-Bay = Cheers.

Tiananmen - Royal Family Excesses

Day 13

Tiananmen / Beihai

We walked a lot this day, but we walk quite a bit everyday. We started the day at Tiananmen Square, which is huge. Apparently it’s the largest public square in the world??? I don’t know how to quantify the size, but it’s very large. We started at the Southern end of the square, called the Arrow Tower, to the north of that is the Mao Zedong Mausoleum (ya, creepy), and the Monument of the People’s Heroes, then various gates and whatnot (including the one with Mao’s pictures) until you reach the Forbidden City. It was all very impressive, especially considering how old it all was. After we made our way towards the Forbidden City, we walked along one of the hutongs on the west side of the Forbidden City towards Beihai Park. Beihai Park is a giant imperial park just to the northwest of the Forbidden City. It’s huge, and its use was solely for the royal family, but it is currently open to the public (for a fee). We ended up walking around the entire lake, which is pretty much the whole park, so we saw a lot of the temples and stuff in the park and it was very pretty, but it was a really long way.

After about 3 hours in Beihai we took a bus to the Temple of Heaven, but we got a call from Chandler’s mother when we got there and didn’t have enough time to go in. We ended up just walking around a bit in that neighborhood and Chandler ended up having an interesting conversation with a local man. We got another call indicating we were running late by this time, and we hopped on the subway to go to Chandler’s parents’ friend’s house, which would be our meeting place before heading to dinner.

Apparently we were really late because we were met on the sidewalk and right afterwards we jumped in cars to head towards a restaurant for some great food. They ordered too much (as usual) and I got to eat more Peking Duck. The dinner conversation was also fascinating as Chandler was translating some of it for me. All the people at the table were probably 40-50 and grew up very poor, and when they tell their children about not having enough food when they were young, their children don’t believe it.

We retired back to the hotel early and got some sleep because it was quite an exhausting day.

Day 14

Summer Palace

Today, Chandler, his parents, and I started at Summer Palace, which is about 20 km northwest of Beijing. This was like Beihai on steroids. It was a giant garden palace that an empress built for summer retreats in 1750. This was also solely for the use of the royal family. The centerpiece is a manmade lake about that is about a mile square (2.2 km^2) and the excavated dirt was used to build Longevity Hill at about 200 feet above the level of the lake (60 m). Think about those numbers for a minute, and remember that it is all man made… in 1750… ya… Apparently this empress funneled money that was meant to fund the Chinese Navy into the construction of this park, which turned out to be a bad idea later due to a lack of defenses. Lots more walking… There was also an impressive temple at the top of the Longevity Hill with a ‘thousand hand Buddha,’ which really only has like 30 arms. The park was beautiful, but daunting in size.

We stopped at a restaurant nearby for a little lunch and headed towards the Beijing Botanical Gardens, which were very pretty, but again, huge. There was another pretty cool temple in the BBG called ‘Wofo Temple’ with a sleeping Buddha. It was all very pretty, and we only saw a fraction of the Beijing Botanical Garden before departing.

From here we made our way to the Olympic Park area to snap some photos of the Bird’s Nest and other buildings. By this time we were all pretty exhausted, and we rode the subway back towards the hotel for some relaxation before going out to a casual dinner near the hotel.

That is all for now. Cheers.

Beijing

Day 11

Forbidden City

Chandler’s Dad woke us up around 8:30 and we went downstairs to the restaurant to grab some breakfast. The plan was that we would go to some auction exhibition and look at all the stuff you could bid on. Apparently Chandler’s parents were interested in bidding on a couple items. This auction was huge. It was in multiple buildings, and it was like being in a museum, except everything was for sale. This was the exhibition part where you could actually like touch 1000 year old vases and ink stones used by emperors and whatnot. Needless to say, I couldn’t afford anything… We ran into some of Chandler’s parents’ friends at the exhibition and went out to lunch with them. Since I am writing this three days after the fact, every meal I’ve eaten with these people has been amazing, but huge. They order way too much food and for some reason expect me to eat a lot. Perhaps it’s because I’m American.

After lunch, Chandler and I branched off and headed towards the Forbidden City for some sightseeing. We were there from about 2 until closing at 5, and I don’t think we even scratched the surface – the place is huge, more than 7000 rooms. What we did see was pretty cool. All the buildings in the center of the city are for the emperor’s use and are palatial. Pretty much these guys had giant palaces with chairs in them. There must have been about 5 giant buildings with a throne used for different purposes and nothing else. It was very lavish, especially for something 500 years old. We were pushed out of the Forbidden City as it was getting close to closing time, and we went to the top of Jingshan Hill just north of the Forbidden City for an extraordinary view of the Forbidden City and much of Beijing. Jingshan Park was an imperial garden that the emperor used and even one emperor committed suicide there. It did provide an amazing view.

After this we made our way back to the hotel to meet Chandler’s parents so we could go out for dinner. We went to a place not too far away from the hotel and I got my first taste of Peking Duck. It was really good. All the Chinese people really like the skin, and it’s supposed to be the best part, and they always want me to try everything, and often let me try to best parts, which is great, but can be a bit too much food after a while.

Afterwards we headed back to the hotel because we were underslept and wanted to get some sleep.

Day 12

Hauirou / Houhai area

This day was amazing. We started fairly leisurely with a light breakfast and met up with some of Chandler’s parents’ friends around 11AM. We then proceeded to drive (in personal cars) about an hour and a half northeast of Beijing towards Hauirou. The trip alone was beautiful. After about 30 minutes we were driven out of Beijing and after another 30 minutes we were no longer on an expressway. We made our way to a tiny restaurant with fish ponds where we caught our lunch. It was some kind of trout, and it was prepared both raw and cooked, each were really good. After we had finished lunch, we took about a 30 minute hike up to an abandoned part of the Great Wall. It was awesome. There was absolutely no one there, and this part of the wall was completely unlike what you see pictures of. It was totally falling apart and hadn’t been fixed in probably hundreds of years. We climbed all over it. Despite the signage discouraging any climbing, even the Chinese people I was with were into it and wanted to climb around to look for bricks with dates on them (apparently they’re valuable). After some time here, we hiked back down to the restaurant where we had lunch and took a break for some tea before heading back towards Beijing.

When we got into town, we were dropped up in a bar district on a lake called Houhai that was supposed to be cool for young people and foreigners. Chandler and I walked around there a little bit and were not extremely excited about it. We did, however, find a really cool fruit/vegetable market nearby where we picked some odd fruits native to China that were quite good. There was also a grocery store here where we found 600mL Yanjing beer for 3 yuan (about 40 cents!). While we were walking around here it started raining though, and we decided to split for a different scene.

We went to Wanfujing, which was supposed to be a night market area. There were some stores and stuff and it was a designated shopping district with a nice mall as well. We walked around a bit for a little something to eat as neither of us was very hungry. We were kind of underwhelmed by the night market in Wanfujing and asked around for suggestions on late night activities. We were recommended a couple and ended up going to Huixiantang, which was very close to Houhai, and on the same lake (which is quite large). We walked around here for quite a while as it was quite a large area with many bars to choose from. We were kind of turned off by a large section of the area because everyone was soliciting your business by trying to get you to come in. We didn’t like that and returned to an area where the atmosphere was more nonchalant, but unfortunately this was the trendy and expensive area. We could only afford one beer here, and left around 12:30AM to get some sleep.

I’m still one day behind, but I need some sleep…

Cheers.

China

Day 5:

In Shanghai, the buildings are entertainment

I woke up this morning to Chandler’s housekeeper yelling at me in Chinese at 5:40AM as we had a 9AM flight for Shanghai. Chandler’s parents dropped us off at a bus depot where we boarded a bus for the airport. We made it into the Shanghai airport around 11AM, and we boarded another bus to take us into Shanghai where we got on the Shanghai MRT to take us to the hotel to check in.

We are staying at the Huana Hotel on the edge of town. It’s a bit out of the city, but it’s not much of a problem with the MRT. Shanghai has really good public transportation, and the first thing we had to do was buy an MRT card, which will work for anything except a taxi. Anyway, the hotel is also very nice.

By the time we were all settled it was about 3PM, and we wanted to go into the city, so we hopped back on the MRT and went into town. We headed towards the Yuyuan Garden Shopping area which we heard was pretty cool. It was a very large shopping area and we walked around for quite awhile. We were also hungry so we grabbed something to eat. The Yuyuan was very cool and also pretty crowded. There was a temple nearby that was pretty large, but by the time we found it, it had closed.

After we had had enough of the Yuyuan area we started walking towards the financial district in the center of Shanghai. It was a very pretty skyline and we kept walking towards it until we got to a river and couldn’t easily cross (apparently called The Bund). There were lots of people on the river walk around this time (about 6PM) and we couldn’t really figure out why We thought the city was cool during the daytime, but it was even more amazing about an hour later near sundown. In Shanghai, when the sun goes down, the lights come up, and buildings are the entertainment. It was an awesome show, and some of the best free entertainment I’ve ever seen. Every building had something going on and buildings change colors, and do crazy things. Totally awesome!

After the crowds started to subside on The Bund we decided to try and find “fake street,” a place where people sell all kinds of counterfeit stuff. We found the appropriate bus and got off where we thought it was. Chandler wanted to walked down the street we were on, but I could see lots of lights on the next corner and wanted to walk in that direction. The next corner happened to be a shopping district called Shengdena Shopping Disctrict. This was also amazingly cool. The lights were spectacular and all the colorful neon signs with Chinese characters were especially cool. This is where I maxed out my camera memory. It was so cool, there were so many lights! Oh, and we did actually find fake street nearby, and it was so shady that I pretty much had to force Chandler to walk down it. It wasn’t all that scary, but it was shady, and we didn’t buy anything. Shengdena was far cooler. We ate something and walked around forever. We left the area around 10PM as we didn’t know what time the MRT discontinued operation, and it was really busy. We made to our transfer and some girls told us (and by us, I mean Chandler, in Chinese) that we were just barely going to make a transfer by about a minute to get back to the hotel, but they were also going there so we should follow them. It was a close call, and the trains were really busy (especially considering that they’re probably about 500 feet long).

We got back in around 11AM and were pretty whipped and we knew we wanted to get up early the next day for the Expo so we just hit the sack.

I’m still behind by a day, but I’m tired, so I’m going to bed. Also, the Chinese government really DOES censor Facebook, so I’m unable to update with pictures. Correction, I just tried to update the blog, and that’s blocked too. Not sure when this will actually go up…

Cheers.

Day 7

Shanghai Expo = a lot of hype

We got up kind of early because we knew we wanted to be at the Shanghai Expo kind of early, but by the time I got Chandler out of bed and we ate and rode the MTR, it was about 11:00AM, and the gates opened at 10. We got in and made our way to the China exhibit, as that was the thing that we both really wanted to do, but you needed a reservation, and tickets were all sold out, so we were kind of bummed. We ended up heading over to some other exhibitions that Chandler had heard were cool and checked those out. We saw the UK, France, Poland, Spain, and Ireland. Nothing was particularly worthwhile. It was just propaganda for each country, and the worst part was not only waiting in line, but having to put up with the Chinese people. In a word, they suck. They’re very pushy, and the cut in line. When you’re waiting in line, you can always feel them right behind you. At first, the wait wasn’t terrible. For our first exhibit we only waited 20 minutes, but later in the day we were standing in line for an hour to walk through an exhibit that took about 5-15 minutes to see. There weren’t a whole lot of international people there. It was mostly Chinese people, although we did run into a group of Australians that were nice. We also met a girl named Fangli, who heard us talking English and spoke little bit as well. She was there by herself and had been there the day before and recommended exhibits that were good, and we ended up spending part of the day with her. We were going to go multiple days, but it was less than thrilling, and after a full day there we decided that we didn’t really want to go back. There were just too many people. It was worth the roughly $25 cost of entry just to say that I had been to a world’s fair, but it wasn’t worth it to go again.

Cheers.

Day 8

Capitalism at work in China

After our travails at the Expo the day before, we woke up to light rain. We ate the complimentary breakfast at the hotel and looked for something to do that was inside. We decided to check out the Shanghai Museum. We hopped on the MTR to the People’s Square, and walked through it to get to the Museum. The Square was actually beautiful and huge. It was really pretty, kind of like Central Park, or Rock Creek Park. The Shanghai museum was on the opposite side from the MRT station, so we got to see quite a bit. Apparently the museum has an exquisite collection of bronze and porcelain from ancient China. It was all very impressive, and we were there for probably about 4 hours, but I really liked the furniture exhibit. I make furniture, so I really appreciated the 400 year old desks and such that didn’t have any screws holding them together. In all, it was very cool.

We departed and headed towards the Nanjing Shopping District on the other side of the People’s Square. We headed into a mall area where people were selling all kinds of goods in very small storefronts. All the clothing and such were fakes, and it was really funny and blatantly obvious that they were so. I did, however, find some scrolls with Chinese characters on them, and I haggled one lady down from 300 yuan to 40 for one of them.

We walked around for quite a long time after this looking for something to eat and ended up in something like Shanghai’s version of a night market. It was pretty similar to that in Taiwan and we found somewhere that we thought looked good and ordered up some food. It cost us about $10 to eat dinner and it was amazing. All the people there were really interested to see a white guy, and I got pretty good treatment – the people running the place let me try the dish that they had prepared for themselves to eat.

We had quite a fiasco trying to get on the MTR from here as the line on the map was not open yet. We ended up running into some friendly Hong Kong girls that spoke English and knew how to navigate the area despite the absence of the MTR line; however, when we got to our transfer to get out of town, we had missed the last train. Fortunately, we had been debating the idea of going to a bar/club district anyway that was fairly close to this MTR stop, so in light events we did so.

We ended up going to a bar and only 1 beer as they were kind of expensive. It wasn’t very busy for a Friday night (apparently China isn’t a very big party culture), and some girls working there came over and seemed to be relieved that they had someone to talk to. Chandler talked to them for a long time in Chinese as they didn’t know very much English and they also showed us how to play a dice game that was kind of fun.

By the time we left there it was almost 1AM, so we took a cab back to the hotel and hit the sack.

Cheers.

Day 9

The French Concession, Shanghai World Trade Center

We slept in a bit, but got up in time for breakfast. We weren’t sure what to do for the day, so we looked up some stuff and decided on heading towards the French Concession. It was an French enclave from the 1800s to the 1960s, and boasted very nice residential areas, tree-lined streets, and some art deco architecture. It was also the home of Sun Yat-Sen, a former president of China and one who was pro-Democracy. He also founded the political party that eventually fled to Taiwan (if I remember all this correctly). Chandler was kind of excited about touring his home in the French Concession so we headed there. It was interesting to see some of the things that he did, and his actual home where he lived with all the furnishings well-preserved, but I think Chandler enjoyed it more than I did.

We were there for about 2 hours and walked down the street towards a tea room for a spot of tea and some light fare. The place we ate at was very cool and only cost us each about $6, but had awesome food and atmosphere, and was somewhere that would have cost us each $15 in the US. From here we walked down the main thoroughfare for a bit and walked in a few stores. The street was called Hauihai, and was kind of like M Street in Washington, DC. It wasn’t too interesting, as most of the stores were things that you could find in the US, and there were a lot of people.

By the time we were done fooling around there, we headed towards the downtown financial district because we knew we wanted to go to the top of the Shanghai World Trade Center and it was a very nice day to do so. We walked around in that area for a while and checked out probably the largest mall I’ve ever seen in my life. It was huge, but slightly more interesting than Hauihai, as there were some different shops that I had never heard of. We headed down to the SWTC and made our way up to the 100^th floor of the building, which is the highest observation deck in the world. The views were spectacular and we timed it well so that we were there just before sunset, so we got the daytime views and we waited long enough for it to get dark so we could see everything at night.

We rode a ferry back across the Haungpu River and made our way back to the Yuyuan Garden for some dinner. We had another good and inexpensive dinner and decided to call it a night after that as it was kind of late, and we had a flight to catch the next day. Tomorrow afternoon we leave for Beijing for 7 days.

Cheers.

Day 10

Shanghai Airport

Due to unfortunate circumstances we ended up spending pretty much the whole day at Shanghai Airport, but after several hours on standby we did get on a plane and had an enriching conversation with an American expatriate that works for Pfizer in Asia. When we arrived in Beijing we were welcomed by Chandler’s parents and they took us out for some food despite it being about 12:30AM (or 0:30, as everyone uses military time here). Right now we’re going to bed as it’s about 1:30, and we’re apparently getting up around 8:00 for some antique auction.

Cheers.

Juifen

Day 3: Juifen

So far, I have neglected to mention how hot it is in Taiwan. It’s really hot!! Think 85-90 everyday with high humidity. My only comfort is that even the Taiwanese people think it’s hot. However, this day was gorgeous. It was so nice out, probably about 70-75 everywhere we went with light sun, absolutely the nicest day so far. Chandler originally wanted to go to the National Palace Museum, but I talked him into doing something outside for the day, so we went to a coastal area called Juifen for pretty much the whole day. Juifen is about an hour and a half bus ride from Chandler’s condo and was very pretty. Apparently the town experienced a gold rush in the 1960s, but now is a popular market area. When we got there we went right to the market street and it took us probably about 2 hours to get to the end after checking out some of the stores. As usual, there are lots of food vendors, and we had to try just about everything. I ate something that came out of a shell that looked like giant escargot which was good but chewy and we tried some local sausage things made out of boar’s meat. Oh, and there are bakeries with various kinds of cake and whatnot. I brought back a variety box of pineapple, blueberry, etc. cakes, but I have no idea where they went. The market was very cool, and we walked up and down it twice. I saw a belt that was pretty cool for about $9 that I almost bought, but decided to wait, and if I really still want it, I’m going to make Chandler go back later.

Juifen’s other attraction is Keelung Mountain. It is a mountain right alongside the ocean and it’s just under 2000 feet high. The entrance is just a short walk from the commercial area in Juifen. As there are no laws on open intoxicants in Taiwan, Chandler and I each grabbed a beer at a convenience store at the base and commenced the climb. Surprisingly it only took us about 35 minutes to climb to the top, but when you leave Juifen you are already about halfway up. The views that the summit afforded were absolutely worthwhile. You could see Taipei about 30 miles away with the Taipei 101. I must have taken about 30 photos of the Taipei skyline from this vantage point to ensure that I got some that came out. The views of the coast are beautiful as well and you can see Juifen behind you. In short, it was awesome. We stayed at the top for about half an hour and climbed back down, which took about 20 minutes as it’s really steep with hand laid stones everywhere that are difficult to traverse.

By this time it was about 5:30 and we fooled around in Juifen for about another hour and hopped back on the bus for Taipei. We saved about a half hour of bus/MRT rides on the way back because I was positive that if we got off at a certain stop that Chandler’s building would be just around the corner, and I was right! I wasn’t very hungry when we got back, but Chandler’s mother made us some beef dish that was really good, kind of a soup with a couple sides that were also tasty. I have to refuse a lot of food in Taiwan, otherwise you just keep eating. After that, we just watched some tv and went to bed.

Danshui in the Rain / The Dong Po Lo was amazing

First of all, why do I get up so early? It’s like 8:30AM…

It ended up being a relatively uneventful day, especially when compared to my first day. We went to lunch with a lot of Chandler’s relatives, which was spectacular. The Dong Po Lo was so good! It’s like some pork dish with syrup on it that is very tender. The restaurant was very nice as were his family. I must admit that I was kind of a novelty. Everyone wanted to meet me and the young children seemed especially interested.

From there we made our way towards Danshui, which is like a wharf area where the large river in Taipei meets the ocean. We stopped and got some salty eggs on the way (pretty weird). We also checked out Guan-Da temple at the stop. From here we continued to Danshui, but when we got there it was raining so hard that we decided not to stay. However, we got back in the car and Chandler’s father insisted that we walk down the street. He drove us over to the street and dropped us off. Chandler, his mother, youngest brother, and myself shared 2 umbrellas, but we still got pretty wet. It was very interesting though and well worth it. There are a lot of food vendors there selling eccentric things. In the 20 minutes we walked around I tried octopus balls, fried bird eggs, a potato on a stick, candied tomato, and some strange rice thing. Since there’s an MRT stop in Danshui we’re going to go back some day when it’s nice because it looked really cool, and I didn’t really get a chance to check anything out.

We got back to Chandler’s around 6PM and I promptly fell asleep for about 2 hours. Chandler got me up and we went to a Thai restaurant near the condo that was very good and we stopped at a convenience store and picked up some local beers to drink when we got back. We just fooled around a bit back at Chandler’s and I went to bed.

Today looks promising. It’s mostly cloudy, but dry, and I don’t think it’s going to rain. I’m not sure what the plan is, but I heard something about climbing a mountain coupled with a hot spring??? Or possibly the National Palace Museum, which I understand is roughly equivalent to The Henry Ford…

Cheers.

Day 1

Taipei

Day 1: On a Clear Day, You Can See Taipei 101

Arrived around 11PM in Taipei after about 8000 miles and 16 hours on airplanes. Chandler picked me up at the airport and we arrived at his house around midnight. I went to bed pretty quick after we got there. Around 7AM the next morning, Chandler’s grandmother accidentally woke me up. She was really embarrassed and speaks very little English, and I don’t speak Chinese, so that was interesting.

Chandler’s parents’ condo is amazing and huge. It has an amazing view of Taipei, and you can see the Taipei 101. First thing in the morning, Chandler, his parents, and his grandmother took me out to breakfast to Mr. Brown Coffee then we went to a flower market. There were an awful lot of flowers, more than I’ve ever seen in one place. After that, Chandler and I went into the city around 10AM. We hopped on a bus to the nearest MRT (subway) station. I can’t imagine how many miles we rode the MRT, but it must have been about 20 total for the whole day, and it cost about $100Taiwan, or about $3USD.

Anyway, our first stop was Longshan Temple, a Buddhist Temple that was pretty cool. Chandler wasn’t very knowledgeable about what everything means, but we did light incense for the 7 gods. Our next stop was Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall, a giant city square roughly attributable to the National Mall with a memorial to President Chiang Kai Shek that is kind of like the Lincoln Memorial. That was cool, and very large. We also watched a Changing of the Guard that was very similar to what they do at the Tomb of the Unknown. From there we walked to the President’s Palace and Peace Park then to a mall to get some lunch. Beforehand Chandler got us each a giant bubble tea that was actually pretty good but was so filling that I barely at anything for lunch.

We had been playing phone tag with Alan all day and agreed to meet him at Taipei 101 at about 4PM. We walked around a giant (and very high-end (I couldn’t afford anything.)) mall at the base of Taipei 101 for a bit then went up to the observation deck on the 89^th floor. We were there for a couple hours and it afforded pretty sweet views of Taipei. When we got there it was light out, and we stayed long enough for it to get dark and the lights came on around the city.

From there the three of us rode the MRT to Shi-Da night market where we were going to find dinner. This was crazy. It’s a market that’s only open at night and is full of stores and eateries. We walked around and found a place that we liked and concocted a dish for $280Taiwan, about $9USD, that fed all three of us and it was awesome. It was a crazy place where you put your food in a basket and they boil it is some soy sauce like liquid. It was delicious. We had planned on eating more at other places, but we were too stuffed.

After this we met up with some Taiwanese girls that Chandler and Alan knew and went to a club for a couple drinks. I was totally whipped by this time as it was about 11:30 PM and I was a bit jetlagged so we only stayed for about an hour. I had a ‘Taiwan Beer’ on tap that was actually pretty good – better than Bud Light, anyway. We took a taxi back to Chandler’s as the MRT had discontinued operation by this time. I took a shower and went to bed.

Right now it’s about 10:30AM on Sunday and it’s raining. We’re supposed to meet a lot of Chandler’s family (like 20 people) for lunch in about 2 hours. The rain has put a damper on our afternoon plans, and I’m not quite sure what we’re going to do. The itinerary changes about every 15 minutes.

Cheers.