Gallivanting around Taipei!



I apologize for the delay in this post, since returning from our trip my life has been frantic with packing and moving (both my apartment and my classroom). But more on all of this on another day, for now, onto Formosa!

Well it happened. Meg and I made it to Taiwan, officially having set foot in 8 countries since February 2009. The trip got off to kind of a rough start, leaving us a little leery on what was to come, but it ended up being fantastic and very fun. We left our apartment on Friday morning around 6:15 am. When we were waiting to check in for our flight, I looked over to my left and to my shock, saw pandas in the airport! Animal hats are all the rage in Asia right now, and 2 kids were hiding behind luggage with only their panda hats sticking out. This sight made both Meg and I giggled and we were off to a fun start.

Meg had Friday off from work, but I did not. So, I was using one of my sick days. The thing is, in Korea personal days don't exist. If you are calling in to miss work you had better be really sick. So as much as I didn't like doing it, I needed to call into work and tell a little white lie in order to have my vacation. Problem was, I couldn't call into work until I was already at the airport. While going through immigration Meg and I were discussing options on where I would find a quiet place to call. I cleared immigration and turned around, only to find Meghan getting sent over to an office. Confused, I waited for about 10 minutes until she came through. Turns out her visa was expired so she needed to get a single-entry visa to be allowed back into Korea. It turned out to be really simple, but this was our first "uh-oh...this trip isn't going quite as smooth as we hoped" moment. From here we started walking the corridor, looking for a spot for me to call CIS. We finally stumbled upon a separate handicapped bathroom and figured this would be perfect. We went in, locked the door, and I got my boss on the phone. Then it happened - the intercom came on with a message about a flight boarding. In a panic, I HUNG UP the phone on my boss. I looked at Meg in shock, I believe saying "I am so fired" as she started laughing. My boss called me back, I waited until the intercom went silent, and then I picked up apologizing that my phone cut out. I finished my conversation, not quite sure what she would say to me upon my return on Tuesday (for the record, nothing happened) and Meg and I were finally off to board the plane.

We arrived in Taiwan to temperatures in the low 50s. Gray skies. Clouds. Wind. Although disappointed with everything (except the temperature) we were sure that the weather would clear up at some point in the next 4 days (and were praying so because we had plans to go paragliding if the weather cooperated) so off we went to get a bus to the city. We landed at the bus terminal in Taipei, armed with a map to our hostel courtesy of the airport help desk. We started off walking and soon realized that something was not right. Our supposedly 10 minute walk was taking much long and we weren't passing any of the landmarks we thought we would. We finally ran into a really nice man in a back alley way who spoke English. He called our hostel and then went into his apartment building and printed a new map off Goggle maps for us. Turns out the lady had told us the wrong way to turn after crossing a bridge, turning a 10 minute walk into an almost hour long ordeal. We arrived at our hostel (complete with a key code entry for the front door AND our room door) only to discover that we were literally the only people staying there. I think we saw two other people the entire time. Our hostel was nice enough, we had two beds and the bathrooms were just down the hall, but the staff was very unhelpful. We asked for assistance with things to do, places to eat, or other general questions multiple times and never got any real answer. This might have had something to do with the fact that English was less widely used. The metro had English of course, but in general not very many people seemed to speak English, or knew just very basic English. Of course, this is not to say that people weren't nice. The people of Taipei were very friendly and welcoming to us throughout the entire trip.

From here we went to a nearby food court to find a late lunch/early dinner. There were several restaurants to choose from, but none of the menus had English on them. Finally Meg and I both settled on pointing to pictures and ended up with some delicious soup for our first Taiwanese meal. As we were leaving the building with the food court we saw a group of people following someone, as well as some policemen and a camera crew. Curious, we joined the fray. After walking a few meters, a guy asked us if we wanted to meet the mayor of Taipei. Of course, we said yes and we were immediately thrust into a circle of people to shake his hand and pose for pictures. He asked where we were from and when we told him Minnesota he said "Oh! The Vikings. Minneapolis and St. Paul...I have been there!" So perhaps Meg and I ended up on the Taiwan news that night or will be in a promotional brochure for the city.

We ended our first day by going to a small street food market by our hostel. We wandered around for awhile but it was pretty dead. We ended up stopping at a nearby 7-11 to buy some hot chili squid chips, seaweed chips, and Taiwan beer to eat in our hostel and called it a night, praying that Saturday would bring us better weather, which would allow us to go paragliding. We woke up on Saturday morning to....rain. Disappointed, we went to the bus terminal to get a leisurely breakfast of coffee and doughnuts. We decided that since the weather was gross we would go to the National Palace Museum, which has been called one of the five most important museums in the world. The museum is technically an art museum, having a permanent collection of over 650,000 Chinese artifacts spanning 8,000 years of Chinese history. At any given time, only about 1% of the museum's collection is on display. The displays are rotated every three months, meaning it would take 12 years to see the entire collection! We took a bus over to the museum and two little kids ended up sitting behind us with their dad. They were probably a mix of Chinese and European decent and were infatuated with us. They spent the whole bus ride sticking their little faces between and over the seats playing peek-a-boo with us and giggling hysterically. Meg and I were practically in tears by the time they got off and they definitely helped brighten an otherwise dreary day!

While meandering through the museum and taking in all the history, an announcment came on the loud speaker telling us that the air circulation system was going to be turned on in order to prevent the spread of H1N1. Meg and I had a good giggle about this as we headed on to our next destination - the Miramar Ferris wheel. The Ferris wheel is 70 meters in diameter, making it the second largest in Taiwan. It is attached to the roof of the Miramar shopping complex, making it 100 meters tall and the second tallest in Taiwan. We thought that being so high up we would be able to get a good view of the city, however, given the gray clouds and location, the view was less than spectacular (a parking lot and driving range). We were also the only people on the ride (I can't imagine why given the gorgeous weather) but we still had fun. By this time, the rain had stopped, so we decided to head down to Taipei 101 to see if the sky would clear up and we could go up the tower. We also were hoping there would be a Chinese New Year's celebration going on (since Saturday was New Year's Eve), and since Taipei 101 is right by the City Hall, we figured if there was a party anywhere, it would be there. Unfrotunetly, we were wrong on both counts...there was no party and the sky was still to foggy to make it worth going up in the tower. Disappointed, we decided to head over to the Shilin night market, one of the biggest in Taiwan.

The market was HUGE and full of knick-knacks to buy, street food to try, and those stupid arcade claw games to play (literally, there were stalls and stalls of them). Meg and I dove right into the food and had a street food dinner that lasted about 3 hours. We tried a wide variety of food - sugarcane juice, yams with peanuts, quail eggs, a huge chocolate crepe, fried condensed milk, an avocado milk drink, candied strawberries and candied tomatoes stuffed with something, stinky tufo (smells TERRIBLE but tastes not too bad), a frog egg drink, and congealed pig's blood pudding (which was rolled in peanuts and cilantro). As you can probably guess from reading the list, some of the food was delicious whereas others...well. We also ran into a glass blower on the street. Meg and I watched him work for awhile and both decided to buy a souvenir from him. The guy was really nice and knew a little bit of English. He decided he wanted to give us each a small gift for free, so he let us pick one of his smaller glass pieces out to keep. As he was showing us the various things we could choose from, he picked up a small Santa Claus and started humming 'Jingle Bells' as he danced the Santa towards us. Meg and I both found this hilarious, and the whole thing was made even funnier when he called "thank you! Merry Christmas!" after us as we walked away. We both ended up choosing small glow-in-the-dark puffer fish for our free gifts by the way. We wandered the night market for a little longer before heading back to the hostel, once again, praying the weather would clear up.

One thing that Meg and I quickly noticed was the amount of rules in Taiwan. There were signs everywhere about things you couldn't do or you would get fined. For example, eating and drinking on the subway. There were also signs simply telling you not to do something, but not spelling out consequences for example, a sign on a bus door that said "No birds allowed". We also saw etiquette signs, such as one about the proper use of cell phones on the metro which included bullets like 'speak quietly' and 'send a text message instead!' Furthermore, the escalators all had announcements that played when you got on that said "Step firmly on the platform" and there were signs running up the sides of the escalators telling you 'to hold on', 'not run', and 'watch your children'. We both found this rather odd, partly because Korea really has no rules, and because these were so specific. We were also slightly worried that we would get fined for breaking a rule we didn't know existed since there seemed to be so many strange ones.

Meg and I were also surprised by the lack of people. Granted, it was Chinese New Year, so apparently a lot of people go home to visit family, but the city just felt deserted to us. We could walk streets without getting pushed. We almost always had seats on the subway (and speaking of the subway, people actually WAITED IN LINES to get on it and boarded it in an orderly fashion...something you will NEVER see in Korea). We were simply amazed with how empty and quiet the city seemed. Upon returning home we discovered that the city only has 2.6 million residents, which explains a lot since we are used to a city with a population of 10.3 million. Of course, this means that when we make it into Apple Valley were are going to be beyond confused by the lack of people running around.

Meg will give you the run-down on our final two days in Taipei, Sunday and Monday, soon. Then we will be writing some posts about moving out (and for me moving in) and reflections back on our past year in Korea!