Taipei (and back).

The weekend has just zoomed past, and for those of you who aren’t already aware, I was in Taipei with my sister. The trip was a nice getaway, and I think both of us enjoyed it very much.

We arrived in Taipei at about 11pm on Friday night, and the Taoyuan Airport that greeted us was a bit surreal for me, as it really looked like an airport that serves no other function except for tourists to arrive in:

The next morning both of us decided to really be a tourist, and walked around various parts of Taipei. Firstly, the President’s Office:

Then we went over to the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall, which is a stone’s throw from the President’s Office. Once we were there we were actually quite in awe of the grandeur of the entire place. I mean, just imagine how much resources went into building this memorial hall?

The interesting thing is that the current Taiwan government, which is headed by the Democratic Progress Party, has a special dislike for Chiang Kai-Shek, who was apparently labelled as a dictator and thus disliked the idea of having a memorial hall to commemorate him. So what they did was to change the name of the memorial hall to “National Taiwan Demoracy Memorial Hall”:

But the Taipei City Government, which is headed by the Kuomintang, wasn’t impressed with this name change, and given that Chiang Kai-Shek was their eternal chairman (or something along that line), they simply refused to give in to this name change and stuck with the name Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall, as shown in their metro station name:

Now I think if you hop on a Taipei cab and tell the driver that you are heading to the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall he might just give you a blank stare.

So after the CKS Memorial Hall (or whatever name they are happy with), we went to the Taipei Railway Station area for some walkabout. There was this Taiwan Story Museum which showcased a lot of the old Taiwan. For example, old police stations (or a simple remake) which have a portrait of CKS labelled as “The Great Leader”…

… to old-fashioned tea houses…

… to how one should never forget about his motherland while having fun…

… to the next move in reuniting motherland!

To say both me and my sister had a great laugh inside the museum would be about just correct.

After the museum we continued our walkabout and shopabout, and found some time to try the well-acclaimed Tian Bu La from Simending. For me, it’s just wonderful.

Then at about evening time we went to the Taipei Arena for our main purpose of this trip – the Mayday Concert!

The concert was really wonderful – the opening featured a lot of fireworks and some water splash which was definitely cooling – the entire standing area was splashed. The experience of watching a Mayday concert inside the standing zone was quite fascinating, though it meant that by the end of the concert both my feet were hurting because of the prolonged standing and constant jumping!

After the concert we decided to head to the Shilin Night Market despite our tiredness, and it turned out to be an interesting experience, with all the stuffs on sale, and all those wonderful food!

The next morning we headed towards Taipei 101 – the tallest building in the world for the time being (the Dubai Tower is scheduled to overtake Taipei 101). But whatever it is, the view from the observatory at the 89th floor was really quite breathtaking:

After Taipei 101, we went over to the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall, which isn’t that far away. As we walked past the Taipei City Hall, this image shocked me to the extent that I was totally lost for words:

I mean, it was hot in Taipei – but 41 degrees? You are having a laugh.

Looking at Taipei 101 from the SYS Memorial Hall is quite amazing too:

After the SYS Memorial Hall, we spent quite a bit of time walking between Zhongxiao Dunhua and Zhongxiao Fuxing metro stations, looking around, eating around. Following that, we headed back towards the Taipei Railway Station and boarded the High Speed Rail and headed towards Taoyuan for the airport:

The HSR is quite an interesting experience. It was actually fairly fast, as it took us just 20 minutes to reach Taoyuan from Taipei. However, the Taoyuan HSR station is actually still quite a distance from the airport, as we had to take a cab that cost NT$310. Oh well, all for the experience.

And then it’s time to fly back to Hong Kong, and back to reality on board the China Airlines flight. China Airlines is surprisingly good, I think.

So if you ask me what can I take back at the end of this trip, I would probably think along the following lines:

1. The stewardess on China Airlines are generally prettier than the ones on Cathay Pacific.

2. Taiwan girls are generally prettier than Hong Kong girls.

3. Taiwan salesgirls are generally sweeter than Hong Kong ones. The way they speak makes me actually feel a bit scary cos they sound just so sweet. Or maybe that’s just how they speak normally anyway.

4. Taipei is actually a fairly boring place at night – the whole place seems to shut down after 10pm except those night markets. However, during the day, Taipei can really be buzzing.

5. Most Taiwanese are actually nice people. At least I think the proportion of nice people in Taiwan is higher than that in Hong Kong.

So there you have it, a 2-day getaway in Taipei. I would think this has to be my most worthwhile trip ever, and I definitely would go there again soon. It’s not that expensive to go Taiwan from Hong Kong anyway!