Taiwan
Saturday
Got to the airport and grabbed a taxi, the ride was long and not very pleasing to the eye. It was about 40 mins and all you could see was old industrial buildings that looked very run down, dirty and left to rot. Eventually we made it to Taipei, and everything changed, the city looked pretty organized and typical of a standard big city. Out hotel was nice and very chalet-like, after chilling for a little bit we went out to walk.
A few blocks away from where we were there was a pedestrian shopping area. All the shops were pretty much what one would expect from asian street markets, a lot of stuff for pretty cheap just all over the place, chaotic to some degree, but definitely fun to see. A lot of the stores had a platter with fruit at the entrance and a small furnace-type thing in which they burned trash; we later found out that they are offerings for the gods that bring them protection and good business. We ate at a “burger” place, and it was fun to order because only one person spoke English and it was hard for him to understand. We got ketchup when we asked for salt. I ordered a rice-patty roast beef sandwich, it was pretty delicious.
We headed back to our hotel, it was really hot. And we got ready to meet with Charles, the guy who convinced us to go to Taiwan and got us our visa appointments; he invited us to eat that night. Of all places, he invited us to Shin Yeh the restaurant on the 80th floor of the Taipei 101, the second tallest building in the world. The dinner was incredible, they ordered several dishes for everyone at the table to share:
-squid
-mushrooms
-chicken
-beef
-liver
-beef wraps
-eggrolls
-fish
-rice with beef
-rice with eggs
-fish ball soup
everything was absolutely delicious, and covered in delicious sauces and vegetables.
Then there was desert:
-almond flavored…liquid with tapioca
-mango version of the same
-coconut version of the same
-mango flan
THEN, since it had recently been Maria and my mom’s birthday the people sang happy birthday to them and brought us peach longevity cakes. Pictures on facebook. The place was really fancy and beautiful looking, the service was impeccable and the view, of course, unique.
As drinks, Charles ordered wine, beer and tea for everyone, and told us about how in Taiwan it’s better viewed to not drink alone, because that way you know that you’re drinking with friends and it won’t become a problem, so we all took drinks at the same time. His wife Angela, and his kids Tracy and David were with us too. Both of his kids study economy, and David was made fun of a lot because he supposedly studied Spanish for 5 years but did not remember a lot.
We had a really good time eating with them, the conversation was great. We really felt like we were among friends.
Sunday
The next day we went out for some walking around and sight-seeing, we went to see the presidential palace which was well guarded by police, who asked us nicely to keep moving and not take too long taking pictures. We randomly found a really nice park in the middle of the city that although, very simple looking, had that very distinct “asian forest” feeling.
We arrived at this complex that contains the national concert Hall, the Theater and a Huge monument that is still in construction. The buildings really feel otherworldly, no matter how many times you’ve seen the style in movies or whatever to see them there in front of you and realize that for them it’s just the natural way to do things is a feeling that’s hard to describe. (Pics on the facebook)
This is when we realized that had no local currency, we tried to get some through an ATM and my mom’s “international card” but it didn’t work. It was about lunch time and Charles had told us the night before about what is known officially as the “best dumplings on earth”, they are sold at a restaurant called Din Tai Fung, so we had decided to go there. We asked a policeman about where we could exchange some currency, again it took a while because his English was not all that good and our Chinese wasn’t either :P. But this guy had decided that he was going to help us whatever it took. Being a Sunday he told us that there would be very few places that would exchange currency so that was going to be really hard, but after we told him where we were going he stopped a cab told him where we were going and…listen to this…grabbed some money from his pocket paid the cab driver and told us that it was his gift to us for visiting his country! I still find it hard to believe, the guy’s picture is also on the facebook.
The dumpling place is crazy, they have SO much business but they have decided that they’re not going to expand, they want to make sure the quality remains the same and expanding makes it harder to control that. The way it works is there is a huge line outside the place and you get there and you order they keep your number and about 20 mins later they call you and THEN you get a table, once your food is ready, really smart system if you ask me. We used those 20 mins to try and look for a place to get local currency…we couldn’t so we sat down and ate the most delicious dumplings in the world and we had no way to pay for it.
Hmmmm…what to do? For whatever reason my mom decided to ask if they took US dollars as a form of payment and they were like yeah, why not? oh wait but we’d have to give you change…in the local currency! Damn right! so that was awesome. The dumplings were delicious I ordered us some pork, some chicken, then a huge one…I think it was pork too, and a beef soup.
I have to say that although I am completely ignorant when it comes to dumpings they were really delicious, so I believe it. We used out newly acquired usable cash to take another cab and go check out the area around the Taipei 101 building. The building itself is full of really fancy and expensive designer clothing stores, which is to be expected, there is a food area in the basement where we enjoyed some tasty KFC. On our way out we found a water fountain which my sister enjoyed very much. We decided that we had seen what we wanted to see for the day we had done a lot of walking and it had been really hot, Maria had been really good all day so we figured we would stay there and let her play as much as she wanted…so a lot. She got soaked, ran, jumped, danced, and had a blast, she pulled me in there and got me really wet too. After a while, a security person came and told us that at 7 every day they have a little light and music show with the water, so we stuck around for that; it was surprisingly good.
Cab home and bed.
Monday
We met Charles again for breakfast at a Taiwanese version of an “American diner” and then he took is to his work where he had scheduled some people to meet and listen to my dad talk about the stuff he presented in Bhutan. Meanwhile my mom found herself a Spanish speaking lady at our hotel and went asian-shopping for really cool cheap stuff.
By the time we met again we did not have a lot of time left, we walked outside the hotel and went to see the gate to the old city. On the way back we crossed the shop of a shoemaker; I forgot to mention this before but about half of the sole on my right shoe had become loose and was flapping every time I took a step, the guy saw it and demanded that I give it to him so he could fix it. He got to work like a beast it took him about 2 minutes to fix that, and then fixed like 3 other things that were not optimal perfect about the show, then proceeded to fix the other one. It was really cool to see him work so fast and passionately, to him it was like a game, like a challenge and he was really enjoying it. When he was done like 10 minutes later he charged me like 5 dollars worth.
We took a cab to see the palace museum, our last stop in Taiwan. It was pretty cool, we got to see these scrolls that basically created the rules for Chinese typography and all the ways to practice and master it. They also used some ancient paintings and recreated some of the scenes portrayed in them using 3d animation. The museum was really crowded though. Another really interesting thing that we saw there was a stamp station, My guess is they put them in interesting places to motivate tourists and locals to go visit and get the stamp from the place, neat.
Another Taxi took us to the airport in a ride that made us a little nervous; there are 2 airports near Taipei, and although we knew which one we needed to go to and tried our best to communicate that to our driver, we were not sure whether he got it or not. But it all worked out, at the airport we had some dumplings and spaghetti, which were surprisingly good and then…to China
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