First stop was Taipei. We weren't originally supposed to go to Taiwan, but it turns out it's very expensive to fly out of Japan, and Taiwan was a cheap jumping off point to the rest of Asia.
I tried very hard to do everything ahead of time, but inevitably I was packing on the morning of the flight. Actually, I had to run to Sannomiya to buy the bag that I was packing everything IN the morning of the flight. It's an awesome backpack with lots of pockets and cool things for traveling. I met James at a coffee shop, and then we were off to the airport bus.
The unfortunate thing about taking a bus to the airport, is that sometimes there is traffic. And sometimes, you get on the bus that already takes an extra 15 minutes or so because it has to make a detour to pick up people on a nearby island. And sometimes, you have just come from a coffee shop and didn't think to "go" before you got on this bus that's about to hit traffic on top of the extra 15 minutes. This was one painful bus ride. About an hour into it, I decided I couldn't take it anymore, and James had to run up to the bus driver and beg him to make a bathroom stop. It's quite embarassing being the only one jumping off at an unplanned bathroom stop, cuz everyone knows it's your fault that it's going to take even longer to get to the airport. But we got there.
So blah, blah, customs, security, airplane, 3 hours, Taipei.
We got to Taipei and headed for the hostel. I think we took another bus. We couldn't understand the airport bus driver as he was yelling out the names of the stops, so we just kind of assumed we'd somehow end up at the correct place. As luck would have it, our stop was the very last stop on the line. We didn't realize the bus had stopped for good, so we sat there like dumb foreigners for a moment until the bus driver yelled at us. We stood at the train station for a minute and decided the easiest thing would be to take a taxi the rest of the way. So we did. We stayed at a hostel called The Meeting Place, which is sort of a misnomer in that it's kind of difficult to find and there's not much going on around it, but the inside was beautiful. They had a huge open area with comfy couches and a large projector screen for movies, also a kitchen area and a bunch of tables for eating or skyping or whatever. I guess people are supposed to meet on the inside, not the outside :) The people who worked there were incredibly nice. We got in kind of late - around 10 or 11 pm - and I didn't even have to ask before the guy gave me directions to the nearest night market to get some food.
This is where we went.
The night market was a fairly short walk from the hostel. There are about a billion night markets in Taiwan, and they basically consist of a bunch of food stalls and little shops selling clothes, toys, souvenirs, and pretty much anything. At first, I was a little paranoid about walking around, as I had been reading entirely too much about southeast Asia and it's pickpockets and whatnot, but it turns out that Taipei is a really safe place. Not quite Japan, but not anywhere near as sketch as other countries can be. After spending some time at the night market, we realized the people of Taipei are REALLY nice. We had had a lot of trouble in China with people being pushy and rude and not leaving you alone when you are shopping, but in the market, I nearly fell over from shock when someone approached me about buying earrings and I said "no thank you" and she just walked away. Amazing.
I ate some candied strawberries and a hotdog on a stick that was covered in potato and then deep fried. You can choose whatever sauce you want with it, and I got it with some kind of honey mustard-ish sauce. There was some other food I kind of wanted, but I was a bit overwhelmed with everything, so couldn't really decide. James got some guava, and it was really good. I also bought an awesome belt, but forgot about the whole bartering thing and, while I got the price down a little, I totally paid too much. But by paid too much, I mean I got it for less than $10, so I wasn't too worried about it.
We finally headed back to the hostel, stopping along the way at a 7-eleven for a bit more food. The guy at the hostel gave me a look for eating 7-eleven noodles instead of the noodles at the night market, but I didn't care, I was tired. We asked him about things to do for the next day, and he recommended going to this famous museum, but it turns out we would have to wake up early to go there, since it was about an hour away by train/bus, and it's a large museum. We decided to sleep in instead (it's vacation, after all), and went to Taipei Main Station to have a look around before we had to head to the airport again. I bought an onion pancake from a street vendor guy, and we had an amazing lunch at a pizza place called Alley Cats. We didn't really do anything particularly exciting, just wandered, and then we found the bus back to the airport. We were coming back to Taipei at the end of our trip for a longer period of time, so we figured we'd do our sightseeing then.
Cool building next to the night market. I think it's a museum/temple thing.
Onward to Thailand!
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