It was a nice hotel, our rooms were clean and comfortable, though a bit on the small side, but perfect for our one night stay. My biggest complaint was that even though we'd had access to several English channels at our hotels in Yuanlin and Sun Moon Lake, our hotel in Taipei had about 3 English channels. Go figure.
This is the busy city street our hotel was located on. After freshening up a bit, David and I walked over to McDonalds to enjoy a nice lunch. (Have I ever mentioned my all-consuming love for potatoes? French fries are like manna from heaven to me.) We hadn't really intended to do much sight-seeing in Taipei, but it was still light enough outside to venture out to see Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, just a short walk from our hotel.
I wasn't expecting the area to be as large and grandiose as it was. But it sure was pretty. Here is the ceremonial gateway leading to the complex.
Inside the large park and memorial is the National Theater and the National Concert Hall.
I don't remember which is which. Oh well.
At the center of it all, is this monument to Taiwan's erstwhile leader Chiang Kai-shek. (Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan from China when Mao and his forces gained control. Chiang then instituted marital law in Taiwan and ruled Taiwan with an iron fist as he plotted to take back China. He died in Taiwan in 1975). Taiwan, obviously, has a bit of a love/hate relationship with the man and they attempted to rename this memorial the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall but it was reversed last year. Taiwan also considers themselves an independent nation, but China has other things to say about that.
Here's the view of the entire complex from the top of the stairs of the memorial. There are guards inside, standing watch over the statue of Chiang Kai-shek and at 5 o'clock, while we were there, they had a changing of the guards ceremony and marched toward the center of the square to lower the flags.Inside the memorial are several floors of exhibition and gallery space which we wandered through aimlessly before heading back to our hotel. We then decided to head to the Shilin Night Market to check out their wares.
Night markets are a big thing in Asian countries and a maze of alleyways and side streets are filled with things to buy and eat. We wandered through many different areas, selling anything from socks, clothes, purses, street foods, and puppies. (Yes, there was a whole section of pet stores.) There were even some arcade games available to play. We walked through the night market for quite some time, but didn't find anything worth purchasing. (I had really wanted to buy a wok in Taiwan, but we didn't pass by any housewares, just lots of clothing and hair accessories.)
We were quite hungry by this time and after wandering through rows and rows of food stalls, David eventually decided on some chicken meal that he liked while I could only turn up my nose. So on our way back to our hotel, I stopped at McDonald's for the second time that day. Even though I've seen Super Size Me, I still wanted more McDonald's again. But I'm here to tell you that it's never a good idea to eat there twice in one day. (But French Fries! They call to me.)
The next day, Saturday, was our last day in Taiwan. We planned to check out of our hotel in the morning and get to the temple to attend the 10 a.m. session. But between packing our bags, eating our breakfast and checking out, we were missed our window of opportunity. The next session wasn't until 1 p.m. so we had a few hours to kill. I suggested that we drive to Taipei 101, formerly the world's tallest building. (Stupid Dubai.) It wasn't very far away and I love big, beautiful architectural masterpieces.
It really is a stunning building. It's designed to look like a stalk of bamboo. There are offices in there, obviously, but there's also a large and fancy mall as well.
By this time, it was just a little after 10 a.m. and the mall hadn't opened yet and so the whole place was deserted. But the observation deck at the top of the building was open already (the ticket booth is in the mall) and after debating whether or not we wanted to pay that much money to ride an elevator 90 stories, we finally decided that we would. (I seem to remember that the tickets were in the neighborhood of $12 each.) I'm so glad that we decided to go up.
The views from the observation deck were extraordinary, like seeing this rainbow over Taiwan.
It really is amazing to be so high up in the sky and to see so much of a city. Luckily, the recent rains had cleared the skies giving us clear views and it was still early enough in the day that the deck was not very crowded. You receive an audio guide for free (in English) which then takes you through the construction and history of the building. We were also able to go up to the open-air observation deck which is only open on certain days. It really was really cool. And money well-spent, in my opinion.After spending about an hour at the top of the building, we took the elevator down to ground level. We still had some time, so we went down to the food court to eat some lunch before heading to the temple. David ate more Chinese food, while I ate Subway. (I eat a lot of Subway these days.) We left with what I thought was plenty of time to get to the temple in time for the 1 o'clock session. After all, the temple was only a mile away from Taipei 101.
It took us 45 minutes. There was a lot of construction on the main road that we were trying to take and we somehow got stuck in a bus lane going the right direction while the rest of the traffic was going in the opposite direction. So there was no way we could exit the bus lane without risking life and limb, which we finally attempted to do, but we still arrived at the temple a few minutes past 1 p.m. We'd have to wait until the 2 p.m. session. I was quite anxious by this time because a) I hate traffic and have no patience for it and b) the 2 p.m. session would mean we'd get out of the temple around 4 p.m. which would make it impossible for us to get to the airport by 4:30 p.m. (when we needed to return our rental car or be charged for an extra day) and put us on a tight schedule for our 6:50 p.m. departure.
But we decided to go ahead and risk it and so we parked and decided to wait outside the tiny temple until the next session started. As fate would have it, as we came out of the big stake center next door, we saw Shuqi and Aaron sitting on a low wall in front of the temple. They had come from Yuanlin (about a 2 hour drive) for the 1 p.m. session but they had arrived too late as well. We waited together until it was time to go in for the 2 o'clock session.I was very lucky to have Shuqi with me because she was able to help me rent my clothes and get everything I needed, which I don't think I could have done without her. Although it stressed me out, it really was a blessing that we didn't make the 1 o'clock. It's always so nice to have friends with you in the temple.
After the session was over, David and I quickly got this photograph of us with Aaron and Shuqi in front of the temple, said our hasty good-byes and high-tailed it to our car. We luckily found a quick way out of the city (the Taipei airport is about 45 minutes away from the city) and were on our way to the airport. We ended up taking surface streets to the airport, instead of the quicker freeway (we got off on the wrong exit) but we still managed to make it to the airport by 5 p.m. (we luckily did not get charged for another day on our rental) and checked in with plenty of time.
While I was quite happy to be heading home to Seoul, David was very sad to be leaving Taiwan, as demonstrated by his very, very sad face. He called all his friends one last time from a pay phone to thank them for hanging out with us (and often, for paying for our food too) and we were finally able to board our flight.While the Korean flight attendants on our Korean Air flight were later serving our dinners, they spoke to David in Korean. And David had to ask them to repeat themselves about 3 times. Apparently, one week was all that it took to make David forget Korean and embrace Chinese completely. (But he's always preferred Chinese.) His Korean has slowly come back but he still misses Taiwan a lot.
I have to say that Taiwan is a beautiful country filled with very friendly people. I think it almost ruined Korea for me. Seoul is a rather uninspiring city. There are very few architectural and historic wonders and the city lacks a lot in aesthetic beauty. After the ravages of the Korean War, Seoul re-built itself very quickly and it just didn't have time to plan a beautiful capital city. It went for quick, utilitarian buildings and a boring sameness to their designs. There are pockets of beauty to be found, but Taipei reminded me what a real capital city should be like: wide avenues, parks, monuments and memorials, theaters and beauty. The thing that Seoul lacks the most is a feeling of history. Too many of their palaces and buildings were destroyed either by the Japanese or during the war and they lost a great deal of their history. Koreans spend all their time looking toward the future and very little time remembering their past. And though they have massive amounts of pride in their country, they always seem to want to be something that they are not (American, for example) and their entire culture is entirely focused on getting ahead and being the best. But the Taiwanese were more relaxed, much more easy-going and infinitely more friendly. But I think once we leave Seoul, we might discover a very different Korea.
