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Published: October 23rd 2007
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At 4 o’clock in the morning we jumped on the scooter while freezing our buts off, to get me to the Gumi bus station. I said good bye to Gary and off I went.
Like always, in a Korean bus, there is some kind of noisy electronic device that is continuously being used during bus rides. This time at 6 o’clock in the morning, everyone was sleeping, this guy started looking for a radio station on his portable radio (at full blast) and it went on and on and on….. The Korean bus rides never seize to amaze me.
At the airport everything went smoothly and off I went to Taiwan…
Before I could say Taiwan-taitwo-taithree the plane touched down at Taipei Taoyuan Airport. All my luggage being hand luggage, I got out of the airport quickly and caught the Free Go Bus (doesn’t mean it’s for free) to my hotel. At 12:30 I was dropped in front of the Sunworld Dynasty Hotel. This hotel is enormous and very exclusive. I got a beautiful room on the 10th floor, big enough for 2 people.
At reception I found a city map and the directions to the nearest MRT
station (Mass Rapid Transportation System) Nanjing East Road Station. My first stop was the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall. Dr Sun Yat-Sen is known as the Father of the Republic of China. He had a vision of China being a Republic and he spent most of his adult life pursuing his vision with his Nationalist Party.
2nd was the Taipei 101, the highest building in the world. It stands 508m high with 101 floors and has the fastest elevator in the world. It moves at 1010m per min. It took us 46 sec to go from floor 89 to 5. Its design was inspired by the bamboo stem. It has a mass damper that absorbs movement of the building because of the very strong typhoons and earthquakes in Taiwan. The 8 sections of the building represent the lucky number 8 witch means blooming or success. (Currently there is a new building being built in Dubai that already overtook the height of the Taipei 101, but it will only be seen as the highest building in the world when it is completed.)
Back on the MRT, I went to Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. Chian Kai-Shek was the Nationalist leader after Sun
Yat-Sen died. Eventually he lost China to the Communist Leaders in China and he fled to Taiwan. There I also found the Great Gate of Centrality and Perfect Uprightness, and it was beautiful. On the square there were groups of young people practicing dance routines over and over, with one person instructing them over a loud speaker and it looked like they were having a lot of fun.
It was now getting late and I still wanted to go to the National Palace Museum. I arrived there via the MRT but it was already too late. I quickly visited the Shilin Night Market. There one can buy simply anything - I even saw some Korean food stalls. After battling through the crowds, I went back to the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall to take some more pictures. By this time my feet were killing me and it was time to go back to the hotel. In my cozy hotel room I had a long relaxing bath and while surfing the TV channels, I found Star sports and…. I watched how we won the Rugby World Cup!
I woke up at 6:30, had a quick breakfast, checked out of the hotel
and left my baggage at the hotel. I decided to go to the mineral baths at Xinbeitou. During my research of “What to do in Taiwan” I read about the mineral baths. You can book into a hotel/spa for an hour of 2 or just go to the public mineral baths (and you wear your swimming costume…but…). I decided to go to the public mineral baths…. with my bikini in my bag and paid my 60 NT$. As I entered the bath area - a sea of Asian men’s heads turned in my direction and looked up at me with this approving gleam in their eyes… I quickly took a photo, turned around, begged my money back and left. ‘Uncomfortable’… was not the word but ugh… (There were 3 Asian women and no foreigners…)
While walking around looking for the other spa’s, a man came running after me…He could barely speak English and indicated ‘photo-photo…’, so I thought he wanted me to take a photo of him and his friends. It turned out his 2 Vietnamese girl fiends wanted to take a photo with me in it…huh?, and kept on saying…”you beautiful-you beautiful”. With his cell phone camera he took
a photo of us and then took one of the girls and me with my camera.
Back on the MTR I went to the National Palace Museum. The National Palace Museum was started in 1925 in Beijing but because of the civil war in 1949 it was shipped out to Taiwan. There you can find collections of the Chinese art and culture as far back as 6000 BC. There was so much to see and never ending. Everything is kept in class cases that are temperature controlled to preserve the pieces- it was truly amazing!
It was almost time to catch the bus back to the airport but I had a few more minutes to kill and decided to visit the famous Flower and Jade market. With directions form a stranger I found it under a high way pass. I took a quick look around, dashed to the MRT, picked up my stuff at the hotel and took the bus back to the airport.
Taipei is a great city. It’s not so ‘crowdy’ like other cities I have been to in Asia and much more relaxed. It is very modern, the best transportation, endless shopping and the people
are not spitting or snorting the whole time… something I still can’t get used to….
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