Taiwan – Part 1 – Say bye to Meg, Say hello to Kris, and Say hi to my backpack!! » Backpacking in your 40's

Taiwan – Part 1 – Say bye to Meg, Say hello to Kris, and Say hi to my backpack!!

Carol August 9th, 2016

Bye Philippines – I will miss you! Hello Taiwan! Everyone says that the food is great here and this the home of the bubble tea – list of must try bubble tea places !! I didn’t realize how much Taiwanese food I was introduced to when I first moved to California. My first roommates were from Taiwan (and Leah the cat – Siamese cats are very talkative). 3 cup chicken, bubble tea, beef noodle soup, the best Taiwanese restaurants in our area, and desserts (shaved ice dessert where the ice is shaved very fine and melts in your mouth like snowflakes, without melting into a puddle of water first)! Thanks Julia for the introduction! Now it is time to try the food in Taiwan!! Say bye to Meg and Mirielle (probable no more pictures of food and myself), say hello to my cousin Kris, who has been teaching English in Korea and say hi to my backpack!! I know – amazing that I have not used it yet – I will be traveling for a couple of months without my buddies!!

Arriving at the airport w/ my large green backpack! Don’t worry about the random kid w/ the chic suitcase (just kidding Mirielle!!).

YongKang Street: We got into town for an early dinner (the foodie street in Taiwan) – I will have to go back, beef noodle soup, soup dumplings, scallion cakes, shaved ice all in one location w/ lines out the door! We had black bean noodles, veggie sides – egg plant and green beans, and shared mango milk shaved ice (milk shaved ice is creamier than shaved ice). I will have to go back for the beef noodle soup, soup dumplings, and scallion cakes. I will take Kris when he gets into town – hopefully – there a ton of places to eat and see!

National Place Museum: No pictures allowed, they rotate exhibits every ~3 months and the rotated exhibits may not be seen again in ~ 3 years. There is ~ 10,000 years of history – there is a gold, porcelain, jade, bronze, and curios – anything made w/ different types of material (that is the explanation from the audio tour) sections. I took the English audio tour and probable spent ~1 hour in the calligraphy room to listen to the introductions to all of the different rooms. Below are some pictures of the outside of the building. The cafe windows have a famous calligraphy inscription on them and the trash cans are modeled after ancient containers (the info. is hidden in the audio guide). I didn’t see the famous white and green jade cabbage w/ insect or maybe the top of it only (I skip entire jade sections of the museum since there were ~5 people deep in tourist for some of the exhibits, but I did see several hundred replicas in the museum shop). Even in a crowded museum, it is easy to find a quite place, since some of the side exhibits are not a famous as others. Everything was nicely presented and the audio tour was great! Great morning by myself!

http://www.npm.gov.tw/en/ – Official web site

National Taiwan Science Education Center, Taipei Astronomical Museum, and Shihlin Night Market – I know strange combination, but basically they are all in the same area!! I actually didn’t go into the Science or Astronomical Museum, except the lobby – I was meeting Meg, Meg’s friend Bonnie, and the kids (Bonnie’s kids and Mirielle). I walked to the Shihlin night market during the day! When the kids were done playing at the science museum, we went to play ping pong. I am really bad at ping pong, Max, Bonnie’s son won by 20 to 10 – something like that! Max was happy!! Bonnie lives Connecticut, US and speaks Chinese fluently and was interested how I got a round – I told her so far so good, I use google maps, look at signs, did a lot of pointing (remember to point palm down), look at the last character of the city name on the buses/trains, and ask for directions. Hanging out w/ Bonnie is fun and made traveling a lot easier – she would just tell the taxis where to go and we didn’t have to do any pointing and displaying google maps!! Google maps seems to work well in Taipei and everyone is really nice. My backup plan is to make sure I have extra phone batteries so I can message Meg, just in case I get lost, have a biz card of the hotel, and have enough cash to get me to familiar territory! It is ok – I have ~10 months to put my travel skills to the test!! Let the fun begin!!

Jiufen, Jinguashi (Gold Mining), Pingxi Branch Rail Line (Shifen – Coal Mining and waterfalls) – Don’t forget Kris (my cousin)!!

https://munchies.vice.com/en/articles/in-jiufen-you-can-eat-your-way-through-a-miyazaki-film – Jiufen is supposed to be the town in “Spirited Away“. I though that this link had a great comparison btw the town and the movie
This area is the location of POW camp during WWII and the the setting of the movie “A City of Sadness” (This movie talks about 1940’s “White Terror”) – This movie is on my list of things to watch.
Jiufen and Jinguashi – views of the bay and street markets (This street market is hidden, we accidentally stumbled on it in a small ally next to the 7-11 store walking down from the gold museum – there are a lot of different stairways to choose from…)
Gold Museum – Renovated Japanese mining town houses – most likely for the managers of the mine, using the same building technique, old tracks, and very cute warning signs – not sure if that is a bubble bee, most likely a wasp. We missed a bunch of stuff, that that is ok – see the other blog link, there was a 2nd and 3rd story to the museum that we missed. It would have been cool to see it, but we meander through the alley ways – tried everything – sweet taro balls on shaved ice, beef noodle soup, bubble tea – I think I will have to leave off the bubbles – too filling and too many other things to eat!! Fun day!! Hey can you see Kris!!
Shifen waterfalls and paper lanterns! Normally they release paper lanterns during the lantern festival, but it seems like it is so popular that you can purchase the paper lanterns to release at anytime.

Taipei 101, City Hall, and National Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall

The gift shop sells post cards and stamps! The green postbox is for domestic mail and the red postbox for overseas mail. There are miniature solid gold ants/insects, marble w/ jadeite, red coral, here is a very large copy of the famous cabbage w/ insect on it from the National museum. You basically have to walk through very expensive and fragile gift shop before exiting the observatory.
Mass damper w/ Mass damper mascot! Cute!! There are several different colors w/ different personalities. Some how I only took pictures of the red one. It reminds me of Raymond! Red is lucky!
Inside the building – huge mall/offices (It would be fun to talk to the office workers to see if their elevator was as fast as the tourist elevator to the 89th floor)
Taipei 101 – you can see this tower everywhere in the financial district of town. It is supposed to have the fastest elevator to the 89’th floor and the largest visible tuned mass damper (help with stand high winds and earthquakes). I call it ribbon tower – it looks like there are ribbons on the different section. The funny thing is that we will will see 88 Sky Tower – which was built by the same architect.
City Hall: The guide book say that City Hall is a good place to start the tour of Taipei. The city hall has a area that provides a brief history of the city/island. However museums in Taipei are Geschlossen on Montag (Closed on Monday’s – the only phrase I remember in German, because I kept going to museums on Monday in Germany).
National Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall: the changing of the guards and museum stuff!!
Salted Cheese Tea: Finally tried it – it tastes more like salted caramel. They are advertising salted cheese tea everywhere and Meg and I were reluctant to try it. It tastes like salted caramel. Kris took one for the team!
Other random pictures. Mo has a entire franchise named after her! Stops lights have strutting men that walk faster, when the light is close to turnning red. There are separate scooter section at the stop lights. The Taipei main station (subway and high speed rail station) is huge! Meg would get a kick out of the dog with the swimming pool drink holders. Kris and I tried dry aged beef noodle soup – I not sure if I like dry aged or the non-dry aged beef. I thought this was funny because Raymond and I went to San Francisco to try the different dry aged steak restaurants and I don’t think it was worth 2-3x the price of non-dry aged beef (I guess I grew up on non-dry aged beef or I just don’t like paying that much).