Taiwan: Day 5

Hillary left early for the airport on my last day in Taiwan, but my flight didn't leave til late afternoon. I decided to head to the National Palace Museum on the last day to check out the 10:00 am English guided tour.

The National Palace Museum is the national museum of the Republic of China, and has a permanent collection of over 677,687 pieces of ancient Chinese artifacts and artworks, making it one of the largest in the world. The collection encompasses over 8,000 years of Chinese history from the Neolithic age to the late Qing Dynasty. Most of the collection are high quality pieces collected by China's ancient emperors.
The National Palace Museum and Palace Museum, located inside the Forbidden City in China, share the same original roots, which was split in two as a result of the Chinese Civil War.

 

We weren't allowed to take a pictures inside the museum, but I am very happy that I decided to take the tour. The museum was extremely crowded and I never would have had a clue what I was looking at without the guide's help. Ming Dynasty pottery is cool, but when she tells me that "that little blue dish is worth more than the entire museum's collection", now I'm listening. And that tea cup? Yeah, one just like it sold at auction for 1.8 million US dollars. Say what?

A few of the famous artifacts that I saw:

• The "Jadeite Cabbage": A piece of jadeite carved into the shape of a cabbage head, and with a large and a small grasshopper camouflaged in the leaves. The ruffled semi-translucent leaves attached is due to the masterful combination of various natural colour of the jade to recreate the color variations of a real cabbage.
• The "Meat-shaped Stone": A piece of jasper, a form of agate, the strata of which are cleverly used to create a likeness of a piece of pork cooked in soy sauce. The dyed and textured surface makes the layers of skin, lean meat, and fat materialized incredibly lifelike.
• The "Carved Olive-stone Boat":^[18] A tiny boat carved from an olive stone. The incredibly fully-equipped skilled piece is carved with a covered deck and moveable windows. The interior has chairs, dishes on a table and eight figures representing the characters of Su Shih's "Latter Ode on the Red Cliff." The bottom is carved in minute character the entire 300+ character text with the date and the artist's name.

I headed back to the hotel, grabbed some lunch and then headed to the airport! A fun week! I would definitely head back to Taiwan to explore the southern part of the country. There is some famous diving in that region.

Baby Cage

 

In case you can't tell, the yellow spot at the end of the table, that's a pack n' play. A baby crib. In the middle of the night market. At 11 pm. Buy a book; buy a baby. No wait, that's illegal. Babies are just for sightseeing.

Taiwan: Day 4

Our last day in Taiwan together started with an empty cab? Well, we decided to go hiking, but had  very little plans as far as where we would start or our actual destination. We took a train to the starting point that Lonely Planet recommend and then hopped in a taxi. We were confused. He was confused. The cabby drove for a bit and then decided to stop at the Taipei American School and find someone who could translate. Good thinking, buddy.

After driving for it bit, we found the National Park and a hiking trail. This will do!

The trails and waterfall were beautiful and all within the sights of the city skyline.

We got lost for awhile, wandered through a neighborhood and found the trail again. This works. It was an adventure through and through, but that's what traveling is about right?

Hillary was an excellent traveling companion because she was very relaxed and went with the flow. Except for when I told a stranger he could finish his drink with us at the New Sanno hotel. He was creepy and weird and Hil put the kibosh on that rather quickly! (Thanks, Hil).

After a short siesta at the hotel, we headed out once the temperature got a little cooler. We were going to a dim sum restaurant for dinner but took the long way through the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall. It is formerly the Chaing Kai-Shek Memorial Hall but it has since been renamed to not support the former president of the Republic of China. The nearby train stop though is still name CKS Memorial Hall.

The memorial was built 5 years after the president died and reminded me very much of the Lincoln Memorial, but a little more egotistical. There were even 89 steps to represent his age the year he died.

Hil and I were there just before sunset so we watched the lowering of the flag and all the pomp and circumstance.

We walked a little further down the road and found the famous dim sum shop that was our destination. Thank goodness I made reservations because it was PACKED. We had to write our order on the paper before we were even seated. We chose a few things from each part of the menu and when we handed it to the hostess she said, "For two people? Maybe too much."

"Challenge accepted! Does she know we're Americans?"

Challenge DEFEATED!

They brought out the food at lightning speed and thus we ate at record speeds as well. The food was amazing though! I can't recall the name right now, but it is in lonely planet and also on Trip Advisor. They have locations around the world as well.

Our marathon day continued to the Raohe Street Market and clothing market near by. We were bombarded by stinky tofu smells and made a quick loop and then headed back to the hotel. We were exhausted!

Phew!

Taiwan: Day 3

We started day 3 at the world's second tallest building (Asia's tallest): Taipei 101. It is named because it has 101 stories, but also 5 underground. We had a tour starting back at our hotel at 1 pm so we had to cruise through pretty quickly, but being the (former) engineer that I am, I found it pretty interesting!

Taipei 101 is even a LEED Gold certified existing building. Meaning, it was not originally a "green" building but underwent a massive renovation a short while ago to make it "green". When I was living in Virginia, I became LEED certified so after 2 months of studying for the exam (and passing with a 95%!) I have/had an idea of what goes in to this and I can't even imagine what it takes for a building this tall!

The entrance fee includes an audio guide that explained the skyline and what we were seeing.

Again, being the nerd that I am, I found this part rather interesting. Below is the damper which keeps the super tall structure stable during high winds and more importantly, earthquakes. The damper was complete with "Damper Baby", Taipei 101's very own mascot. It is the only super structure with a damper visible to the general public. Nerdy neat!

You can't really tell how big it is, but I'd say it was at least 8-10 meters in diameter.

After our speedy tour of the observatory, lunch in the basement food court, we zoomed back to the hotel with enough time to eat our sandwiches, relax for 15 minutes before our driver picked us up to head to the northern coast of Taiwan: Chifun (Jifun).

The northern coast had beautiful rock formations and sea shore:

Hillary was wearing a short skirt and it was semi-windy, so most of the pictures are of me, solo. :)

There she is!

Our second to last stop was the Bay of Two Colors. So named because half of it was green and half was blue. It's multi-colored because of the pollution from the former mine that was upstream. You can see a bit from the rusty waterfall near by.

Our last stop was a shopping street where we tried out a taro-ball with red beans over shaved ice. Interesting to say the least.

Our tour group shared our "snack". At least the view was worth it!

Once we returned home we stopped for a bubble tea drink. I made the mistake of asking for something different than the regular tapioca. Instead, I got spaghetti shaped tapioca which reminded me more of worms. Not the most appetizing drink, but it tasted good. Apparently "cream" means ice cream!

Continuing our marathon day, our last dinner was at Modern Toilet restaurant. I know. Sick, but so catchy and themey. After seeing it on the Travel Channel AND it being only 6 blocks from our hotel- we HAD to go. Wouldn't you?

The Thai curry dishes came in toilet shaped dishes complete with poopy rice lids. The beverages came in urinals. Isn't this a win all around? We were loving it. We even ate at bathtub tables and sat on toilets. It was awesome.

We could leave messages in the bathtubs and after a few beverages, Hil and I couldn't help but leave a few G Phi B cards.

It looks gross, but it was pretty awesome. You've got to go if you're ever in town!

Taiwan: Day 2

Day 2 in Taiwan started early with a 5:50 am pick up time by our tour guide. We stopped at a few other hotels to pick people up and our first stop was the airport! We arrived at 6:40 am and hopped on to a 7:00 am flight to Hualian airport. It was only about a 30 minute flight and our destination for the day was Toroko National Park.

It was a crazy hot day, but the park was beautiful. We made many stops along the drive to take pictures of the scenic backdrops, do a little hiking or see the swallow caves, temples or beautiful bridges.

There were a couple places where we had to wear helmets because of falling rocks. One area of the walk was actually closed recently because a woman had been killed by a falling rock. I think they had to the pictures, really!

It's hard to see in the pictures how beautiful the gorge was. All of the stone is marble! So as you can guess, one of this regions biggest exports is marble.

Here is one of my favorite pictures of the day!

Our tour guide was very entertaining and told us at the beginning of the tour that "marble is marbelous!" We were excited from the start. She took us to this bridge as opposed to the one that you have to pay to cross. Since she was a local from the area, she had some interesting info. We even stopped at her mom's house on the way home so that she could pick up something for dinner!

For lunch, we stopped at a restaurant in the National park. We had bamboo rice which is famous in the area. The piece of bamboo below was filled with rice.

One of our last stops in the gorge was the Eternal Springs Shrine. There were several hundred men who were killed while building the highway through the gorge and this shrine was in remembrance of them.

Of course, with any tour, they try to sell you something. Our last few stops were for Taiwan souvenirs and a marble factory. I do love Buddha statues and all, but I think I'd rather have a house than a US$200,000 marble statue!

Our last stop before hitting up the train station was the beach. We took a group photo before we all parted ways.

The train ride home was about 2 1/2 hours. The first 2 hours and 15 minutes were in a train where the air conditioning was broken. Not cool.

With only 15 minutes left in our trip, they pulled another train up to the stop and the whole train disembarked and got on a new train. Much better!

After we got back to our hotel, we headed to the Shinlin night market. We found some yummy foods to snack on and we wandered the streets and alleys enjoying the sights and trying to avoid the Stinky Tofu smell! We also worked on perfecting the two-person self-portrait.

Success.