Tripping Over Taiwan, Day 1

March 9, 2011: Our PAL flight brought me and 16 senior citizens to Taiwan in under 2 hours. Despite the old fluorescent lighting giving the place a dull ambiance, it was nice to see how considerate the airport was w/ providing free surgical face-masks (for the airborne germophobes) and reading glasses at their arrival card filling stations.

For our trip Tommy is the trilingual tour guide, switching back-to-back-to-back from Taiwanese, Fukienese and English. He oriented us on the bus w/ 2 important tips. One: Even on narrow roads that look like One Way streets, always look both ways before crossing. Two: No need to carry shoulder bags "football" style as purse-snatching is not a problem in Taipei.


We stopped at the DanShui (淡水) for lunch, first checking out the Fisherman's Wharf market, then heading for the Ocean King Palace for some seafood, completely ignoring the Subway restaurant next door. Afterwards we crossed halfway up the Lover's Bridge before leaving for downtown Taipei for a couple more hours of traversing food streets and night market streets, all in the late afternoon. I spotted at least 2 stalls that sold bowler hats (and definitely sturdier than the one I got Lola), but none of them fit, unfortunately.

XiMenDing is similar to Beijing's WangFuJing, in that the streets have an abundance of food stalls and outlet shops, w/ the exception of cars are still being allowed to use said streets, thus making leisurely window-shopping a hazard if you don't see the taxi cab headed towards you.

During all this the temperature was at a cool 16 degrees Celsius, and my group was wondering why I still held off on wearing a jacket. To be honest I didn't feel the air was all that chilly, at least not to a point where I felt I needed one. And being the youngest in my group (but the same age as Tommy) I probably had the stamina to endure the cold, w/c was apparent because as I looked around the promenade I was only one of three people on street not wearing a coat.

We turned in early at the Taipei Howard Plaza, w/c was nice save for the lack of free wifi.