Taipei is not a place with a lot of English signs or English speaking people. Which makes sense, considering I only saw maybe three or four other non-asian tourists while I was there. Even seemingly really important stuff, like showing which airlines are in which airport terminals was only abbreviated in English with a two letter code in some places. The same goes for announcing bus stops, on a bus coming from the airport, where people who don’t know the city very well might be expected to be on the bus, but since I basically get lost almost every time coming from the airport I will just skip that story this time, although this time did have an added sense of urgency due to a nice bit of rain.

It was already late afternoon by the time I got settled in, so I researched a little about stuff to do at night, and the Shilin Night Market sounded like a good option, it was supposed to be the biggest one in Taipei and it was also the closest to me. So I headed over, and it seemed a bit small, only one main street that didn’t go very far and one side street. I was a little disappointed compared to what I had seen in Thailand and Hong Kong. It would turn out that I wasn’t exactly in the right place, and what I thought was the main street was only a relatively small street on the edge compared to the main market area. But I didn’t find that out until a few nights later..

I decided to head downtown since it was still early in the night, and it was so easy with my aptly named ‘EasyPass’ for the metro, a contactless card that I could just leave in my wallet and press against the scanner. I spent the rest of the night walking around some of the downtown area looking for a good place to stop and maybe meet some locals. I didn’t find anything but disappointment. Apparently there are good places to go, I just couldn’t find any. Oh well, time for sleep, its New Year’s Eve tomorrow.

The next day I decided to do a little sight seeing in the city and walk around a bit more in the daylight hours. But it was raining again, harder this time, so after ten countries and 47 days I finally decided I was sick of getting wet, and bought a $6 umbrella from a 7-11. After I got my rain gear, I went to see two Buddhist temples that were right next to each other, Confucius and Bohan. They were both very colorful, and bright; it made them seem less old, but no less cool. As I was waiting to cross the street a couple of kids, who must have just gotten out of the elementary school next to the temples, looked up at me and said “America!” “Heh, yep, thats me,” and waved back to them. It was pretty rare that I had someone on the street talk to me randomly, but I guess those kids see even less white tourists than I did.

Nearby was a buffet style restaurant where I had lunch, and it was actually quite good. I wasn’t sure of the price but I saw a lot of locals there so I figured it was probably a safe choice, and I only had to watch a few people before getting the hang of how it worked.

Afterward, I walked around the city a bit more, saw one of the old city wall gates, had a coffee break at an internet cafe, and wandered around a big shopping district with lots of department stores selling lots of clothes and other stuff that I had no room in my bags for. But that was OK, I had no money to buy anything with either.

I had tried to contact one of Paul’s friends who lives in Taipei to get a little local advice and maybe go to the fireworks show with but I hadn’t heard back from her and it was getting dark. So it was time to go off to see the fireworks show, and the subway was so crowded, hah. I should have expected it, but it was so bad they made an announcement at the stop before the main station where the show was and everyone got off the train, I assume they had to close the next station and this train was going to skip that stop.

There was a decent concert, party, thing before the fireworks, but I’m sure as you can imagine, space was quite limited, I felt a bit like a sardine. The countdown (in Chinese of course), cool fireworks, everyone having a good time, you know how this goes. Trying to get back to the hotel was pretty crazy, it was so crowded and after what happened on the way here I could only assume the worst for the subway. I went to the nearest stop and there was a line about two blocks long extending out of each of the exits, all of them not moving. So I decided to walk down a stop or two in the opposite direction that I wanted to go to catch the line going towards the station. Even that stop had guards outside the metro entrance regulating people trying to get in, and it took a little while to get on the train, but it would have taken for-ev-er if I had stayed at that first station because the train was already so packed from people like me getting on at the previous station, that less than five or so people were able to cram themselves into each car at the main stop.

When I finally woke up on New Years, I decided that I wanted to get out of the city a little bit, and I’d read that hiking the nearby mountains is a popular thing to do, so I went for a hike. It was pretty nice, and I made it to the peak, but there was a cloud hanging over it, and it was very cold and windy so I only stayed long enough to have someone take my picture next to the sign.

After I got back from the hike, I started to realize that I probably wasn’t in the right place when I had gone to that market the other night, so I decided to give it another go. This time I found the right place, but it was craazzzyyy crowded, not totally unlike the last night’s subway shuffle. I could hardly move, surrounded by lots and lots of people with black hair all at least six inches shorter than me. I was getting lots of strange looks and I couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, especially considering how almost every shop was selling either shoes, clothes, jewelery, watches or fake DVDs. But I did manage to find a small electronics store, where I was still able to find a couple of useful things at decent prices, including some earbud cover replacements since my current ones were falling apart. Also got a tiny USB bluetooth adapter for a few bucks. But I couldn’t find a shot glass the entire time I was in Taipei so I had to get a porcelain tea cup at the airport instead.

And speaking of the airport, the visit wouldn’t be complete without a little bit of airport stress, so here is another story of ‘barely making it on time’ followed by 50/50 chances of guessing wrong and missing my flight. I was doing OK on time, but I needed to catch the bus which only runs once every 30 minutes in order to stay that way. The only problem is I don’t have enough cash to pay for the bus ticket. So as I am checking out of the hotel I asked the staff if they can charge me for something from the minibar that I didn’t take and just give me the cash instead, since I was only a small amount short. “No, if you want to get cash there is a 20% fee.” I only need about $3, and I want to save the time of trying to find an ATM and having to take out way more cash than I need, so I just pay the extra 60 cents. As I am walking to the bus stop I can see the bus coming towards me, it has already left the stop, and I’m thinking, “Uh oh…” Amazingly the driver takes a left turn and pulls up to the corner where I am walking and stops to open the doors, so I jump inside, “Ahh thank you very much!” .. And remember that bit about the signs for which airlines are in which terminals not being listed in English? Yep, thats right, I don’t know what terminal stop I need to get off at, but wait, someone who speaks English guesses that I’m not sure which terminal I need and asks me “Do you know which terminal you need?,” “Nope,” “Which airline?,” “United,” “Terminal 1,” “Great, thank you.” The only problem is that the sign on the bus which this person checked says “UA” is terminal 2. I didn’t see another two letter code that looked like it could possibly be United, and I couldn’t think of another airline that could be “UA” other than United, so I decided to ignore that person and wait for the terminal 2 stop, and I am so very glad I did.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 15th, 2009 at 9:16 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.