Taipei
I got to Taipei around 11:00 AM, it felt a lot later cos of the one hour time change and the fact I got up at 4:45. Then I stepped outside the airport and it felt tropical. The heat is intense, and it was 20F higher, and much more humid than what I’ve been used to in Korea.
By the time I had gotten to the hostel, checked in and got my stuff organized it had cooled off somewhat so I headed out. There’s tons of scooters here, everywhere but despite there being far more than in Korea, they seem to drive on the sidewalks less. My hostel is only a couple stops on the metro from the main station so it’s really easy to get around. I started at the main station and just wandered around for a while, coming across the memorial peace park and eventually ended up completely by accident in the Ximen district. It’s like the Shibuya of Taipei. Young people everywhere, clothes and electronic shops all over the place, lcd displays advertising all sort and no shortage of small food stands.
There’s 23 million people in Taiwan, and almost half of them are in the Taipei metro area. So it’s a really big city. Full of small street vendors offering all kinds of chinese, taiwanese and other varieties of food. It seems more popular to eat this way than actually sit down in a restaurant, and everything is cheap. The also have night markets all over the place here, every district has it’s own. They offer just about anything you could think of to buy or eat.
The common language here is Mandarin Chinese but there are many dual lingual signs in English too and the amount of people understanding (and actually speaking it to me) English seems to be considerably higher than Korea or Japan. that may just be Taipei, but it’s nice for sure.
Tags: Taipei, Taiwan, Travel
Adam
junk car
Taipei » TravelBlog Archive » Breakfast in Tokyo, Lunch in Cape Town & Dinner in Medellín