Taipei – refreshing city…
So it’s like mid-October. Time for the baseball playoffs! Fortunately, we’re in a baseball-friendly country; unfortunately it’s 12 hours ahead of the east coast. So hopefully we’ll (okay, it’s more like I’ll, since John thinks baseball is boring – WHATEVER!!!), be able to watch some baseball.
Anyway, after a quick 1 hourish flight, we landed in Taipei’s airport. Luckily, our hostel, Taiwanmex (owned by a Taiwan/Mexican couple), had extensive directions (which of course, we kind of followed, but then kind of did our own thing – as usual). It was pretty nice – we ended up in the 2nd bldg – 2 twin beds which we pushed together; common area with TV room/free internet/laundry. Oh, and a really cute kitty. I mean, what more can you ask for?
And we saw Kevin! John and Kevin did a cultural exchange dealie in Seattle before Kevin went back to Taiwan; we went to this curry place near our hostel at like 8:30 pm since Kevin works like a mad-man – they work a lot in Taiwan. The next night he took us to this totally cool and out of control night market…John LOVES NIGHT MARKETS! Especially since we don’t speak or read Chinese – so most of the time you can just point and pantomine to get something – not like restaurants where we have to look for restaurants with either English or pictures…and it’s all these little snacks so you can try a bunch of different things. And if you hate something; oh well, you only paid $1 USD for it anyway.
Anyway, we really liked Taipei after Hong Kong. Not nearly so many people. It was a bit more relaxed. The only hard part is hardly anyone speaks a lick of English (since Hong Kong was a British colony a lot of people speak a smattering of English and there are usually English menus). And it’s not like other languages that use the English alphabet (like French, Spanish…) where you can kind of guess what you’re ordering – it’s all pictures – hard adjustment…
After 3 days we knew we had to get the heck out of Taipei or else we would never leave and see the rest of the island…so we went to the train station and bought tickets to Hualien on the east coast…
Tags: hualien, RTW Trip, Taiwan
JohnCin
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