Josh and I spent 2 weeks of May in Taiwan, as I'm sure everyone in the world knows by now. (I was a little excited about the trip...I may have told a few people) It's really hard having a conversation with someone and they say "So tell me about Taiwan." What an awkward thing... There's so much to tell!
Josh and I left on the morning of Thursday, May 6th. We connected in Portland and Tokyo and about 22 hours later, arrived in Taipei at 9:30 pm. Before I summarize our daily adventures, I'll just say that snickers bars in Taiwan are amazing- I think we ate one every day. Street vendors are all the rage there and we ate quite a bit of interesting street food. My favorite, though, were the fruit carts that would take any fruit you asked them to and blended it up into a smoothie right there! And they were only like $1! We took trains everywhere- I hate America's public transit system now. We also did ALOT of shopping, much to Josh's dismay. Drivers in Taiwan are terrifying and I nearly peed myself every time we took a taxi.
Taipei (May 7-11): We met Esther (from Josh's mission) at the Taipei Temple our first day there. Stupid me forgot my recommend so we couldn't do a session, but we ate lunch with her and she let us borrow an old cell phone for the 2 weeks. We ate at this yummy restaurant and I experienced my first and last "thousand year old egg." It was almost as disgusting as it sounds based on texture alone. Black mush... bleh! We spent a few hours at the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial (Taiwan's equivelant to the Lincoln Memorial). I faced another first there- Taiwanese celebrity-dom. Some women wanted to take pictures with me, and I think I may have been the first white American woman they'd ever seen. (There are lots of nerdy white men in Taiwan, but I didn't see another white woman until our last day there). After walking around the grounds, we went to the gardens and fed the fish. So nice!
On day two we went to the Taipei Zoo. COOLEST ZOO EVER! It was like a jungle walking through it, it was humongous and there was greenery everywhere! The animals were exceptionally happy and active, and I saw my very first real live giant panda. After the zoo, we took the Maokong Gondola up the mountain. Talk about terrifying! But I set my fears aside (for the most part) and enjoyed the view. At the top of the mountain, we ate at this little tea house and I think it was the best meal I ate on the entire trip. It was just beef and onions, fried tofu, and steamed cabbage, but the seasonings were as amazing as the view.
Our third day in Taipei was spent at Taipei 101. For those of you who don't know anything about global architecture, Taipei 101 was the world's tallest building until last year when they finished the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. The elevator in Taipei 101, however, is the world's fastest elevator- we went up to the 98th floor in about 30 seconds. Again, AMAZING views of the city! We did alot of shopping in the Taipei 101 Mall, but didn't buy a thing because they were all way overpriced designer shops. Fun though! That night, our last night in Taipei, I experienced my first night market. Imagine a state fair, but remove all the rednecks and replace all the miracle creams and massagers with clothes. That's a night market- cheap clothes and food everywhere! I couldn't enjoy it long, though, because it started pouring rain.
Tainan (May 11-13): Tainan is the oldest city in Taiwan, which was apparent by the quality of our hotel. We had no shower curtain and I think the AC was broken in our room, so it was very uncomfortable, but it was a beautiful and quaint little city! And I swear our hotel was in the center of another night market so we did alot of shopping. Our first day there we visited the Confucius Temple. It was really pretty, but I could hardly stand the heat, so we walked over to the National Museum of Taiwan Literature and looked at language exhibits. Of course everything was in Chinese so I had no idea what was going on, but it was nice and cool! That afternoon we went to a department store (basically a mall) and watched Iron Man 2. If you're curious, their movies are in English with Chinese subtitles, but they're very particular about their assigned seating. There were about 6 people in the theater and we were accidently sitting in the wrong seats. Instead of just sitting in one of the other hundred empty seats, they actually made us move! Very weird...
Our second day in Tainan was spent at another department store and the An Ping Fort. An Ping Fort was actually built by the Dutch way back when so it's ooold, but it was really cool. And the landscaping was gorgeous! Old trees everywhere! After leaving the fort, we went into this amazing little Buddhist temple. Talk about ornamentation! The incense was great though, and we smelled it everywhere we went. Next to the temple Josh found a street food vendor who makes little cakes filled with bean curd, cream, peanuts, or something else funky. The cream had the consistency of vaseline- not my favorite, but the peanut cakes were fantastic! Imagine a pancake filled with crushed peanuts and sugar- SO good!
Kaohsiung (May 13-15): Josh and I have a good friend here in Utah named FuFan, who's mom lives in Kaohsiung. Josh called her mom before we boarded our train from Tainan to let her know we'd like to see her. She immediately said "What time will you be here? Noon? Great, I'll pick you up bye!" and didn't give Josh a chance to protest. She picked us up and took us to lunch at this really cute little European-style cafe with the best custard EVER. Josh and I ate and ate and ate from the dessert bar. I ordered the shrimp pasta, forgetting that they serve their shrimp with eyeballs and all... oops! We then took a nap at our hotel and she picked us up again later that night to take us to another night market. I stepped out of my comfort zone and ate these little gelatin eye ball looking things- I think they were filled with bean paste. Why they think beans make a fantastic dessert is beyond my comprehension but hey, I gave it a shot. On the way back to the hotel, she took us to a Chua Bing shop- BEST DESSERT EVER!!! It's shaved ice made from sugar water, covered in fresh fruit and sweet & condensed milk. We ordered one with mango and another with strawberry. Oh my gosh it was good, I made Josh go back the next night for more.
Our second day in Kaohsiung was spent with FuFan's mom again. She picked us up and took us to her sister's house, where we met up with one of our other friends Eryn (FuFan's cousin)! Eryn went to BYU for a while so we knew her before, and it was nice to sit and speak English with somebody besides Josh. Eryn lived next to a yummy goat meat restaurant, so we ate lots of goat meat and pineapple for lunch. Then FuFan's mom and aunt took us to a little tea house in the mountains. I can't imagine a more relaxing day... we sat for hours munching on the sweetest pumpkin seeds and pistachios, and then we ate a roasted yam. Delicious! After the tea house, we went to the Lotus Pond, a huge pond surrounded by really extravagant temples. It was too late in the evening to go inside of them, but seeing them from the oustide was good enough for me! They were crazy huge and outrageous! And we fed some fish, again, and I liked it. The fish food dispensers were these huge yellow fish, I loooved it!
Kenting (May 15-19): On our way to Kenting, we stopped in Fangliao- a tiny little town by the ocean where Josh served the last 9 months of his mission. I made the mistake of ordering seafood pasta, again, and had to pick out all the squid and shrimp eyeballs and other things I didn't recognize. Sister Shu and Esther (who we also saw in Taipei) met us there for a short while. They found a scooter for us to borrow and took us out for more chua bing. This sugar water ice was made with brown sugar, so it was a little different, but still delicious! Josh and I rode a scooter up to a little aboriginal mountain town called LiLi. Josh baptized a few kids there. We've sent them packages and he talks about them so much, so I was ecstatic to meet them! And they were so cute!!! Josh got pooped on by a bird, we played basketball with them for a couple of hours, they sat and listened to American music on my ipod, and then they wanted to play with my camera and take LOTS of pictures. It was such a great day- quite possibly my favorite day in Taiwan. I spent some time with the kids away from Josh and I was completely out of my element, they didn't speak a word of English and I didn't speak a word of Chinese, but it was so fun! After spending time with the kids, we took a bus to Kenting.
I won't break this part up day-by-day because we basically did the same thing every day. Kenting (pronounced Kun-ding) is the spring break town at the southern-most tip of Taiwan- and it was PACKED with tourists! And it was only one street! That entire street was a night market, however, and it was amazing. Best shopping of the trip! We ate alot of interesting food- including Mexican food that tasted like bland lasagna. Not a fan. We rented a scooter for an entire day for like $9 and rode to an old Dutch lighthouse. It wasn't too exciting, but I enjoyed walking through the forest next to it, even though Josh had to literally fight off a humongous flying beetle with a water bottle. There were little lizards everywhere! We rode the scooter around the southern tip to a gorgeous rocky beach on the east coast. We hunted in tide pools, but all we found were crabs and a little fish washed up in the sand. We spent quite a bit of time at the beach behind our hotel. I guess nobody wanted to go to this beach because the walk back to it is a little ugly, but once you got to the sand it was gorgeous! We swam in the ocean, and I got stung by a jellyfish on my left leg. No we didn't pee on it- it actually didn't burn as bad as one would think. It felt like someone slapped a sunburn on my leg or something, but I had red rashy bumps all over my leg for a good week. In fact, I think some of them are still visible on my leg.
During this leg of the trip, I got sick of Taiwanese food. Really sick of it. So we ate at McDonald's. We only had to pay $4 for two combos! Isn't that insanely cheap!? I'll never eat at McDonald's in the US again... the greedy good for nothings...
Hualien (May 19-21): We took a taxi back to Fangliao (and our driver nearly killed me over with his insane driving), then we took a train to Hualien. We only had one day in Hualien, and I think I would have liked to stay longer. The shopping was great, and the city was GORGEOUS! We went into the Taroko Gorge, which is a huge gorge with a crystal clear blue river running through it. Unfortunately, we were too late to get on with a tour group so we had to take public transit to the top of the gorge. Public transit doesn't stop at all the tourist spots, so I had to pay attention and take pictures from the window. At the top of the gorge, we ate wild boar and beef noodles. It was amazingly delicious, but incredibly fatty. They don't cut any fat off of their meat because they think it holds the flavor- bleh! We tried going into a really cool pagoda on the side of the mountain, but they were closing up shop right when we got there. Some white girls asked us to take a picture of them, and then asked where we were from. We told them we were from Utah, and surprise! They were BYU nursing students studying abroad! We talked to them for a little while, then went our separate ways. That night we went to a jade market and ran into the BYU girls again! We watched some really cool aboriginal dancers, I bought some really pretty jade, and then they asked us if we knew where they could get food. We walked with them back across town to a night market around the corner from our hotel. The restaurant we referred was closed so Josh ordered them food from a street vendor and they were VERY appreciative. Then we ate more chua bing... yummmm! We gave their advisor our phone card since we were going home, and then offered to take the girls to our hotel to call a couple of taxis to take them home. Very interesting night... The next day we were planning to take a plane to Taipei, but after taking an expensive taxi ride to the airport we found out they were all booked. So we took another train, this time from Hualien back to Taipei. The scenery was incredible! Unfortunately I dozed off during what Josh called the prettiest part. Silly me!
Taipei (May 21-22): Our last night in Taiwan. We discovered a really cool underground mall at the train station, so after going to our hotel and getting a free upgrade in rooms because the hotel overbooked, and after going back to Taipei 101 to eat dinner, we went shopping! It was like an airconditioned night market! Then we walked to every Family Mart and 7-eleven in town and bought out their lychee flavored hi-chews (candy) for my primary kids. It was a random night. After shopping until we literally wanted to collapse, we went back to our hotel room and watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall, in the dark, from the jetted party-lit tub in our bathroom. If I had a tv like that next to my tub at home, I'd be the cleanest person in Salt Lake.
Finally we had to go home. We left early on Saturday, May 22nd, and after connecting in Tokyo again, we flew directly to Salt Lake. The flight wasn't quite as long, which was nice, but we were completely jetlagged. That afternoon, we took an unintentional 7 hour nap, woke up at midnight, went out for mexican food at 2 am, and then rented a redbox. Whew!
Take a look at my photos
here.
Next year- Dubai!!!
