Yesterday, we flew into Taipei, Taiwan, at around 6:30. One of the first things we saw in the airport was a Subway. Sigh. Although hungry, we chose to bypass Subway and found a food court. We chose a noodle and vegetable place and it was a mixture of ramen type noodles with vegetables. Some of the vegetables were a bit unique. Stephanie described one of them as looking like skin, as she was worried about the potential of eating meat. There was also a spongy, squidlike vegetable, with tips that looked like mushrooms, so we assumed it was a mushroom. We still don't know for sure. It was super chewy though, so hard to eat. I won't be eating another one of those again.
We took the train from the airport into Taipei Main Station, and then took another train for one stop. We were then half of one block from the hotel. I booked this hotel exclusively for one reason. I wanted to find a hotel with laundry facilities that would allow us to do it ourselves. This was the first one that I was able to find using google searches. I knew nothing about the area, though it did look close to a station.
The hotel is in the Ximen district. As I said, I knew nothing of this area. When we arrived, around 8:00 PM, it was all lit up. Like a clean, condensed version of what you would imagine Tokyo and or Las Vegas would look like. It has a big area where the roads are closed off to cars, with tons of lights, shops, and street vendors. We went into the hotel, which is beautiful in the inside. Unique art is found all over the building, and when the elevator doors opened up to other floors, there were different pieces in each. I mention doors opening on other floors because our room key would only allow us to key in our particular floor. We also had a login for our own wifi connection just for our individual room, which is new to me.
Everything is modern and high tech. In order to get into the bathroom in the lobby, you have to press a button on the wall, and a sliding door opens, James Bond style, to reveal the bathroom. As with Vietnam, water bottles, and in this instance, small cakes, were provided free of charge in the room.
Although tired, I was excited to see Andrew. Andrew is a childhood friend of mine. He would come every summer to New Jersey. We initially met at camp, and continued to see each other in and out of camp, and even switching to a same different camp in the same year. Without the internet back then, I never quite knew if I would see him again. But each summer, there he would be, knocking on my door, and we'd resume right where we left off. He lived in both Taiwan and then Beijing, but had family in NJ.
I had not seen him since I was a teenager and hadn't contacted him online since my college years. I reactivated Facebook in order to contact him, once I had decided on visiting Taiwan. I promptly deleted Facebook again afterwards, and we've been talking over email and chat apps. I was a bit nervous to see him after all these years. Was he the same as I remembered? Would he still like me? Would we still get along? Stephanie had asked me questions about his personality and I mostly told her stories of what I had remembered as a way to describe him. He apparently lived in the same part of town as the hotel, and he came right over. As we walked, I must have made a facial expression and he pointed out that he recognized that expression from his memories. His laugh, probably what stuck out the most in my memories of him, was similarly instantly recognizable to me and brought back all those old feelings.
We walked through the area with all the lights, that I described above. Andrew wanted to have us try "stinky tofu." As we walked toward the vendors, 4 people were running, pushing carts past us. Andrew explained that they really weren't supposed to be there, so perhaps that is why they were fleeing. He showed us around the area and eventually we came back to their spot, and they were back. The stinky tofu did indeed smell, but I didn't realize just how much it smelled until today, a day later. Back to yesterday, Stephanie tried the tofu. I declined. We then passed a vendor that sold a type of pancake. This was much more up my alley and I tried it. Stephanie told me later that it was supposed to be a salty pancake. To me it was just pancake, which is good.
After four hours of walking around and talking, catching up, sharing old memories, and me talking about how great Battlestar Galactica is and how Andrew should try it, we parted ways. I did not end up taking a single picture. There will be time for that later.
The next morning I did our laundry and we headed out to our next destination, a small town on the side of a small mountain, about a 30 minute train ride north and then a 10 minute taxi drive away, Jiufen. This is pronounced "jofen." Since we would be going back to the hotel in Taipei at the end of the week, they offered to hold some of our luggage, which we were happy to take advantage of.
I picked a bed and breakfast that was located right on the "old street" that runs through town. This narrow passageway is filled with shops of all sorts and has a truly unique feel. We climbed up four flights of steps, to our room, which has a balcony overlooking the town, all the way to the ocean. We took the day to relax, venturing out a few times to look at the shops and eat.
We picked up some supplies at a 7/11 just outside the old street. Apparently, there are 10,000 convenient stores on this small island, and we have already seen three 7/11s. We initially had some trouble finding food, as almost all of the menus are completely in Chinese symbols. The first shop did not have anything vegetarian, and didn't speak English. The second shop had pictures and some English, which allowed us to order. It was excellent, and was the first time with chopsticks that I had any modicum of success with.
At sunset, I took my first pictures of Taiwan from our balcony. Then I ventured solo, along the full length of the old street. It was shockingly long, bending and twisting, with new surprises. I climbed upwards a little bit, once past the path, heading back towards the hotel and found a huge Buddhist temple. As it was near 7:00, I was able to take some pictures without a single tourist looking. The architecture was absolutely beautiful, marred only by a sign hanging from the ceiling at the front of the temple, with neon colored Chinese symbols flashing across. I timed my pictures for when the display blanked out, before starting up again. Way to totally ruin the aesthetic of your temples Taiwan! I took some shots of the landscape and the shops with less tourists during the day, and found some of the lanterns that the town is known for.
I will post the pictures in the next blog. Tomorrow, we plan to explore town a bit.
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