We completely overslept this morning, day 2 of our Taiwan
adventure. Perhaps our jetlag experiment didn’t work… or we just were really
tired from our journey. Actually, I think it may be the latter, because it’s
22:15 as I start writing this post and I think I am suitably tired, but not
exhausted and I think I will sleep well tonight again. I think we’ll know for
certain tomorrow, but no signs of jetlag yet. Fasting seems to work!
Today our missions were:
·
Check out the Taipei MRT (Mass Rapid Transport)
·
Go see the Taipei 101
·
Go to the Shilin night market
·
Get a little lost
We succeeded in all of these. We were initially planning to
go find the Shilin district to make sure we could get to it later this evening,
but when we got on the train we decided it was a doddle and wasn’t necessary.
Being from gas guzzling South Africa, I’ve had very little exposure to tube
travel, I’ve been on the London underground a few times, on the Paris metro
once, and on the Cologne and Basel trams before but I don’t think any of these
can really beat the Taiwanese. This place works like clockwork. Queues pained
on the platform to suggest where to board and get off the train, I’m sure
London didn’t have those when I was there.
The train itself was super clean and almost too symmetrical.
As I looked down the length of the train, I thought I was in a mirrored
elevator, where the image repeats forever. It doesn’t help that the culture is
so homogenous here…
I saw an advert for “Comfort Women” in one of the stations…
what’s with that? There were signs in the train about sexual harassment, it’s
surprising in such a law abiding country! I also remember hearing the train’s
motors whining like an unhappy puppy…interesting.
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| Old Taipei South Gate |
We got out at Taipei Main station and decided to walk one or
two stations down towards the old city. We walked past the Presidential
building, but unfortunately it was too late to go for a tour. There were
military police everywhere, it was the government district, but still there was
a guy guarding what looked like a bulletin board… what the…? On the other side
of the wall, on which the “bulletin board” was hung, there was a severely
dilapidated single story building in what looked like a traditional Chinese
style architecture… what the…?
We then saw the old south gate of Taipei, which is an
impressive old building; unfortunately it was now a traffic circle so we could
not access it.
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| National Theatre Building |
We then continued on Aiguo Street towards the National
Theatre… now that is one impressive building!
And around the corner was the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial.
Another imposing building!
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| Chiang Kai Shek Memorial |
With a much larger than life statue, and 2 guards with an
hourly changing of the guard ceremony, which we missed.
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| Chiang Kai Shek in bronze |
We then looked around the museum two floors down, where we
met an interesting guy who told us about the exhibition of calligraphy there.
He also said we should go to one of the hot spring spa’s north of Taipei, which
we may try tomorrow. We went downstairs to buy a few curios, and saw a girl stamping
her “passport”. It seems that all over Taiwan places produce stamps for you to
say that you have been there!
So of course I bought one, and have been trying to find
stamps for it ever since!! There’s something about a passport full of stamps ;)
We then went in search of lunch and walked down a random
street into what looked like a mom and pop diner serving deep fried chicken and
veggies with soup on the side. Yum Yum. We tried not to eat the rice ;P and it
was only $100 something like R40. It reminded me of KFC, without the salt and
the batter and the horrible tasting secret herbs and spices. It was just good
crispy chicken. And the soup!! Wow, it was in a huge cauldron with what looked
like chicken, celery, seaweed and egg in it. It tasted divine.
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| Yummy something lunch |
Taipei 101 was a bit disappointing as it was overcast, so
the $500 would have been wasted. The mall was a mall like any other, once
you’ve seen a mall, you’ve seen ‘em all.
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| A rainy Taipei 101 |
The public art in Taipei has been fantastic, it seems like
it’s everywhere. From oil paintings suggesting pictures of trees, birds and
dragons, to these changing photographs shown below.
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| Public Art Changing |
If I remember correctly it’s about the connection between
age and youth.
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| More public art changing |
As the images change each block has text or other pictures
displayed quickly. Some poetry no doubt.
The Taiwanese seem so friendly! On the train we met an old
man promoting a free Taiwan recognised as a state by the rest of the world. I
get his point, but what do you do about it. China is huge, Taiwan is small… I
know it’s much more complicated than that, but I don’t know enough to hold an
opinion.
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| Cabbage omelette something |
The Shilin night market is huge, we got off the train and
went towards it, but missed the main market place for at least an hour while
walking around the other shops in the district. It was vibrant and busy as
expected and the food was everywhere. We had a few things which we have no idea
about, but they tasted good. I think the first thing was some kind of omelette
with cabbage and spicy salt. We had something else that looked like squid
encased in jelly and deep fried, tasted good. We then had a pile of veggies
packed into a cone and smothered in batter, also deep fried, also yummy. We
then went looking for veggies and found the “real” market and it’s food court.
But we were almost full and there were very few veggies to be had, but I see
another trip in the near future.
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| Renalda holding some sweet ginger tea |
There were other interesting things like pigs livers and
hearts and chicken “runaways”/walkie talkies/ie chicken feet. We found a place
to serve us what looked like a pile of spinach on top of another pile of
garlic, with some broth on top…did I say yum? We also found some sickly sweet
ginger tea.
We couldn’t finish it between us. And I finally found a decent
portion of veggies, broccoli, cabbage and seaweed, steamed and mixed with a
spicy salt. The seaweed was fantastic.
After that, home time.
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