Taiwan

Posted August 24, 2016

I got into Taiwan at around 3:30am. The immigration lady was having problems verifying my hostel location and I showed her all these maps and reservation confirmations but she still wouldn’t accept it. Finally she wanted the phone number of the hostel; and, when I gave that to her, she let me in. I grabbed my bags, head to an ATM to get money, and got a cab. I knew the rate should be around 1200 TWD/$48 CAD because I asked the hostel this previously. It took about 45 minutes to get into Taipei and the cab driver was a bit worried to drop me off into the alley. The hostel is located in a “lane” but it takes a bit of time to find it because it’s on top of a tattoo shop. I got to the front entrance and found a note with my name on it. I got into the hostel with the security code they provided to me in an email and went to the office. Everyone was asleep but I knew my room key would be there. I was happy to find everything so organized. I slept for a few hours and woke up ready to see what was going on in Taiwan. I met Joe from Wisconsin, and Cody from New Zealand. A few of us went to eat breakfast at a cheap, local joint. I ate an omelet wrapped in a crepe which was cool. Joe and I decided to hit up the National Palace Museum. We bought a 48 hour train pass and headed to the stop where the museum is. We realized we needed to take a bus after that as well. When we got there, we bought tickets and audio guides. We realized soon after, we didn’t need the audio guides. They were far too detailed about each of the thousands of displays and it was hard to stay focused. We walked around the museum and after we were tired headed to Taipei 101 to eat some dumplings. Joe had heard about this place called Din Tai Fung which was famous for it’s food. It was about a 20-minute wait but well worth it. We ordered a few dishes and they were all pretty amazing. We finished eating and headed back to the hostel pretty tired but had some beers. The next couple of days I sat around the hostel updating the blog. This isn’t an easy thing to keep up ya know, ha ha. I went out and enjoyed some local street food and then would come back to relax in the nicely air-conditioned hostel. It’s too hot in Taipei right now.

The next day I met a new bunk mate, Nick, from Seattle. Nick will be going to school here to learn Mandarin and he’s already amazing at it. I’m so impressed when we go out and he practices with vendors. It’s super cool to see someone learning a language and doing a great job. We went out to grab some fried rice and dumplings for breakfast. We went for a walk and went past an entire block filled with pet stores with lots of adorable dogs. It was so surreal to see a pet store with dogs and cats after so many years. We went back to the hostel and watched movies with a group of people. The next day I was determined to be up to date with this blog so I started my post on the Philippines. It took the entire day to write one country ha ha. I was happy to have accomplished that small feat. I still have to write one more post on Vietnam to be all caught up. I decided to write Taiwan as I go so it’s not so stressful after I leave the country. At night, a group of us (Freddy, Nathalie, Alvin, Tina, Erick, and Joe), decided to do a walking tour with Yve. We went to a traditional Taiwanese restaurant and ordered a bunch of dishes which included baby bamboo shoots, the loofa vegetable, a mushroom dish, pork slices, fried pork, cabbage, a tofu dish, egg omelet, some Taiwan beer and rice. It was a great dinner and after, Yve took us for a small historical tour of the city. He explained that in 1949, Chinese refugees came to Taiwan and most of them lived in green spaces outdoors. The government quickly built them houses and after so many years they decided to preserve some of the area for history. We got back to the hostel and hung out with a group of people at the hostel.

The next day I lounged around a bit working on the blog. That night, we went out with Alvin who took us to a nearby restaurant to eat. He was super nice and told us what the different things were. We enjoyed some vegetable dishes, wontons, some tea eggs, pork rice dishes, and pork noodle dishes. Then he kindly walked around with us and showed us some common breakfast foods, meats, teas, and other delights like stinky tofu at the night market. Stinky tofu is gross by the way. I couldn’t even force myself to try it because it smelled so bad. Kind of like a sewage canal..hmm…haha.

In the morning, I woke up at around 7am and Nick was already up. I got ready and we headed out for breakfast. At our usual breakfast spot, we saw Joe eating breakfast. We asked him if he wanted to join us on a hike and he agreed. After breakfast we walked to Elephant mountain and we could feel the temperature in the air rising. It’s been really hot in Taipei around a high of 36 degrees everyday. We started walking up the stairs, maybe about 600 stairs in total and it took us about 15 minutes. I was definitely out of shape-all that eating and drinking in Vietnam and the Philippines did not help. Oh well, time to get back into shape. We got to the viewpoint and saw the entire city of Taipei. It was beautiful.A lovely viewpoint area to see the city. We saw a lot of older people exercising at the top; and, there was even a mini gym set up there. Great to see people taking care of themselves in Taipei. We walked back down and met Jocelyn, from New York, who lives in Taipei and Dani from Victoria, Canada. They were really nice and I learned that Dani had also done the Annapurna circuit in Nepal a few months earlier. We told the girls we might meet up with them later and headed to the mall. I needed new hiking boots because mine have been destroyed after all the walking I’ve done this past year. We went into Taipei 101 and of course this mall is for millionaires with only super expensive stores. We walked back to the hostel, showered, went out to eat some lunch and grabbed some fruit. I made sure Nick was with me because he spoke Mandarin. The night before, I tried grabbing some fruit and the woman wanted $4 for one mango. Alvin, the Singaporean guy who was with us, spoke fluent Mandarin so he translated for me. I politely said no to her. Then I asked him what a tomato type fruit with a plum in it was. He said I should try one and asked the vendor if I could have a piece. She said no and was pretty rude. Alvin looked at me in shock and said he asked if his friend, who’s a foreigner, could try this tomato prune fruit. He said she could be a bit racist since not all Taiwanese people are used to the idea of an Indian looking foreigner, but they do love white people. This girl Freddy, who was with us from Germany, asked what happened with the fruit lady. Then she said she didn’t understand because she loves that fruit lady and that the day before the same lady tapped her shoulder and offered her a free piece of fruit. Alvin and I both looked at each other and Alvin said well it’s probably because she loves that you are white. Then we all laughed. Anyways, I thought it would be best to get fruit from another vendor today, and bring my friend Nick with me. We successfully got some bananas, a tangerine, and some passion fruit. I haven’t had fruit in probably a month since the Philippines doesn’t have much of it. We came back home and back again I went to updating the blog!

The next day I spent relaxing in the morning, and for lunch a bunch of us went out for noodles. The group included Cody from Australia, Nick, Eric, and Tina. The noodles were pretty cheap and delicious. The menus here are mostly in Mandarin so it’s impossible for me to know what anything is. I rely heavily on my new friends to help me out and translate for me. I came home and talked to my two other bunkmates from the U.S who’s names are Vince and his gf Sermin. I also met Gustova, from Brasil, and we all had a really good discussion about politics and world experiences. It’s so great to learn from people around the world who have different experiences. I worked like a busy bee till 3am and I finally finished the blog on Vietnam!! Yaya, victory for me! In the morning I decided to stay another full day. I went out for breakfast with Gustovo then lunch with him and Nick at the place Alvin took us before. I came back to the amazing air conditioned common room in our hostel to do some research on Taipei and some other areas I’d like to visit. Let’s see if I actually make it to them, since I’m pretty comfortable at this hostel and the internet connection is so fast.

The next day Nick took me for a small walk around the streets to see some temples he had come across. The temples here are really beautiful. Taiwanese people use lots of colours like gold, red, blue, and green in the artwork around their temple. The dragons are always the main feature to me. I love how intricate with detail they can be. I had to get a photo with our favourite breakfast spot gal. Her parents are the owners of the restaurants and she’s working there for now to help them out. Her English is pretty good and she mentioned she’s fluent in Japanese as well. Nick had given me a traditional Chinese plum cake try. It wasn’t anything incredible for me; but I’ve noticed a lot of gifts, are these types of cakes. I went out with Sermin and Vince for a walk and to try to convert some Laos currency. I tried a couple banks but with no luck. It was hard for me to explain the country Laos an even on a map it was hard for people to understand. We figured maybe there’s a completely different word for Laos in Mandarin and because it’s not a popular currency most people don’t know it.
After the banks closed, we took a walk and found “Coco” , a popular bubble tea place. I ordered a strawberry tea with bubbles. I haven’t had one of these in years and it was awesome. We continued and found a large mall complex with small sheep and figurines to take poses with. We arrived to a massive book store called Esquire and wandered around it just to see how a book store in Taiwan looked like. They had a large variety of books and magazines from all around the world. After the book store we wandered until we stumbled upon a Japanese looking memorial site. As we walked further into it we noticed beautiful parks had been set up around it and even a large pond. We found a café to rest our legs at while Vince enjoyed some waffles. We headed back home; happy to have gone for a nice long walk in slightly cooler temperatures.

The next day Nick and I went for breakfast and had a really nice conversation about China, and his perspective of the country since he had lived there teaching English for a year. After we hit the market and found a lady who made really tasty custard and red bean filled cookie cakes. We headed back to the hostel and I tried booking a tour for Gustavo, Vince, Sermin, and myself to some cities ,but the tour company mentioned all bookings must be made 48 hours in advance. I took Gustavo with me to their office downtown because my friend Cat who I met in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam told me she was able to get tickets for the next day. When we arrived to the office, things looked very promising and the agent made it look like we were getting tickets. Unfortunately, she called the tour operator, and they said the same thing, they weren’t accepting any more passengers for the trip. We said ok and decided we would do the trip on our own with buses. As Gustavo and I exited the agent’s building, we saw a lot of lights in the area, kind of like Time Square in New York City. We decided to go and explore the area since we never heard about it. It was amazing, filled with restaurants and tons of hustle and bustle. We even found the “Modern Toilet” restaurant, which was featured on the Food Network as one of the strangest restaurants. We popped our heads inside to take a peak and were surprised to see how small the place was. We came back home and told Sermin and Vince the plans for the next day. We all went to bed early since we had to leave the hostel by 6:30am.

I got up early the next day to get ready for our day trip. We were going to Yeilou National Park, Keelung, Joffin, and Jinguashi, We figured out the routes on our google maps but my data had not been working outside of the hostel these past few days. I think there might be something wrong with my phone as it did a similar thing in the Philippines. Yeilou was amazing. The national park had many natural formations like rock which were shaped by the winds. Some of the formations looked like a queens head, a princess, a whales tale, etc. We spent around 3 hours at the park exploring all corners of it. It was probably best we didn’t do the tour because we would have had time restrictions. We wandered around Yeliou and came across a beautiful school for children and watched them play outside. This was clearly a fishing village since there were so many fishing boats in the harbor and restaurants displaying freshly caught fish of the day. We grabbed a bus and got off the port city of Keelung to switch buses, took a few pics of their harbour front characters, and walked around inquiring where our next bus stop was. We got on the bus and headed to the popular tourist city of Joufen. I didn’t realize it was a city built on the mountain side, it was incredibly beautiful. Windy roads brought us to the top of the bus station, where we got off and explored the day markets. Everything was overpriced and geared towards tourists. We walked around and saw buildings, temples, and tried the local burrito ice cream. We walked about 3km to the next city which had the mining museum. We got there around closing time so we got to see a glimpse of this beautiful town but not much more. We walked up a flight of stairs, through a park area, to get to the golden museum building. There we heard the sounds of what I thought was caicadas insects, and we saw a massive orb spider eating in it’s net. We spent some time taking photos, and then headed down to see the large Conficious statue and then grabbed the bus back to Taipei City. We got back to the city and walked back to the hostel. I grabbed some amazing Thai food at the
restaurant below our hostel and was planning on heading to bed early when I thought I should check my flight. OMG, it was at 10am, not 10pm and I wasn’t prepared. I thought I’d have the entire day to finish off this blog post and pack. Also have lots of time to say good bye to my new friends. Unfortunately it was a bit rushed but I said good bye to them at night, packed in the hallway, woke up at 5am to get head to the airport. I woke Gustavo up and said goodbye and Nick met me at the hostel at 6am. He was so nice to bring breakfast to me, and walked me to the hotel, where the airport bus would pick me up. We said our good byes and I was looking forward to my long journey to Medellin, Colombia.