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Published: March 1st 2014
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Ni Hao!!!
After Ghana I went back to the Netherlands where I spent one week and saw some family, friends and acquaintances again. Then I left from Amsterdam aboard China Airlines to Taipei, Taiwan with a quick stop in Bangkok, Thailand. I didn't originally plan to visit Taiwan but since I had an option to stay there a few days, I took advantage and did it. I spent 6 days in the country. I found the country to be clean and very modern, the people I dealt with were friendly with superb customer service which the rest of the world could learn from! Taiwan is also known as "Republic of China" because officially it's not an independent country. China still considers Taiwan as part of its territory. It's a very complicated issue, but I consider it as its own country and I call it Taiwan. Taiwan is not ruled by the same government as China and Taiwanese people have a way better quality of life and wealth than people in China. During my stay, it rained very often and therefore I couldn't always do or see much. The idea was to also spend at least two days outside of Taipei,
but the fatigue combined with the weather didn't let me do so. Taiwan is a big island off the coast of China and is just smaller than the Netherlands but has 23 million inhabitants. I really enjoyed the food in Taiwan and it wasn't expensive at all! A lot of food is healthy and they don't fry a lot of food like we do back home. Therefore I didn't see many overweight people around. The metro-system is excellent; it's called "MRT". One of my former students in The Hague who has been in Taiwan to study, gave me his student card which I could easily charge with credit and use in the metro-system with cheaper fares. They use a similar system like the "OV-chip card" in the Netherlands. It's called "Easy Card" and can also be used to pay at shops or supermarkets.
Taipei is the capital of Taiwan and has about 3 million inhabitants and would be 7 million when including its direct surroundings. After arriving at the airport early afternoon, I took a bus to the city centre, then walked to my hostel (10 minutes). I was very, very tired and fell asleep straight away. Later in
the evening I woke up and went to the Q-Square Mall at the Taipei Bus station. There is where I had dinner and the following days I ate several times there. Due to jetlag and Taiwan being 7 hours ahead of the Netherlands, I couldn't fall asleep early enough.
The next I woke up early afternoon and it was raining a little bit. I went out to the mall to eat, then I decided to go for a walk. I walked through the beautiful "228 Peace Memorial Park" and then continued towards the huge, impressive Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. I was there, luckily enough, when the guards started marching and lowered the Taiwanese flag. There is a big, white gate and after entering there are two buildings on each side with the typical Chinese pointed roofs and a beautiful garden. The memorial hall itself is a big, white building with blue roof and inside there is a big, bronze statue of Chiang Kai-Shek. He was ruler of Taiwan and also of mainland China. During the Chinese Civil War in the end of the 1940's, Chiang Kai-Shek wanted to save the arts and they sent some of the most precious
and expensive pieces of art to Taiwan. Today it's possible to visit and see these pieces of art at the big National Palace Museum, where I went on my third day in Taiwan. The museum has a collection size of over half a million. No pictures are allowed to be taken at the museum! After the visit at the museum I went to the Longshan Temple. It was raining quite a lot but then it became less and was just drizzling. This temple was built in the 18th century and is used for worshippers of Taoism and Buddhism. I happened to be there "just in time" to experience a worship ceremony. Everybody was singing / praying together, looking at the main building which had some gold-coloured statues inside. Many were holding incense sticks (sensia / wierook) and the patio in front of the had tables full of fruits. It was very interesting to see this.
I really liked the Ximending area in Taipei, which looks like a mini Times Square (New York) full of billboards, neon-lights etc. A very busy and vivid area where people hang out at night. I didn't go out in the area, but I did
go out one night with a big group of Japanese guests at the hostel. Most of them come from Okinawa, which is a Japanese island not far from Taiwan. We went to a club called "Luxy". Entrance fee was US$ 22, including two drinks. It is a very nice club, beautiful and with class. It was a long time I didn't go to such a club. We had fun and some of them drank too much hahaha. When I arrived at the hostel, two of them were asleep on the couch in the common area...wasted! Because I went out and came back late to the hostel, my whole biological clock was a mess again and the jetlag persisted during the rest of my stay. Another day I went with one of the Japanese guys to Yangmingshan National Park, not very far outside Taipei. The weather was good but deteriorated a little bit while we were on the way. We hiked a small part of the park and went to an area where they have hot springs and we stayed there for a bit while it was raining and went back to Taipei. The park is quite big and has several
interesting hiking trails but due to the weather we couldn't do much. The next day I went to the Sun Yat-sen Memoriall Hall, dedicated to Sun Yat-sen who was a Chinese revolutionist and considered the founder of Republic of China (Taiwan). The hall consists mostly of shops, conference rooms etc but there is one exhibition room where you can see and read about Sun Yat-sen, the development and political history of Taiwan throughout the years. From the big, beautiful garden of the memorial hall you can clearly see the tall "Taipei 101" which was the tallest building in the world between 2004 and 2010, consisting of 101 floors and 509m in height. A climb of more than 900 steps brought me to the top of Elephant mountain, from where I enjoyed beautiful views of Taipei at night! After going back down I went to Taipei 101, walked through the mall and went for dinner at the food-court. A "must" when coming to Taipei is to visit its night markets. They are busy, fun and with lot's of food!
That was all for Taiwan. I hope to be able to come one day again and see a little bit more
of this country. I met and spoke with some foreigners who teach English in Taiwan and some of them are not even qualified teachers, they never worked as teachers before. The pay is not too bad so I was thinking it might be something for me too. We'll see!
My flight left Taipei at 23:00...so I took the MRT, then a bus to the airport where I boarded China Airlines. After two flights, (12,5 hours together), I arrived at my next destination.
Regards and till the next blog!
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Carmen
non-member comment
Nice!!
Heerlijk voor je Elton, om al die mooie plekken te kunnen bezoeken!