This was the laziest trip to Taipei ever.
The first night, we were deciding where to go for dinner. Since I had been overloading on foreign food (American food), I thought we should continue the trend. I randomly asked James to google TGIFridays in Taipei, and it turns out there is one. We made our way there, only to find out that they were closed. We asked a waiter where else was open, and he directed us to a restaurant/bar called the Brass Monkey that was currently having a “Free beer with any burger” special, much to the delight of James. They also happened to have buffalo wings with ranch, much to the delight of myself, so I was not so upset about missing TGIFridays. We did plan to go another day, though.
The next day, we met up with James’ friend, Mike and Mike’s wife, Maggie. James and Mike went to school together in Vancouver, and now Mike works a very intense job right outside Taipei. He apparently gets very little time off, but luckily, he and Maggie were able to meet us for dinner. They were incredibly nice and generous, and it seems to be a thing in Taiwan to take care of your guests, and they bought us lunch and dinner. Thank you Maggie and Mike!
We met them in Taipei 101, a very large skyscraper that’s a sort of touristy place to go. The bottom of the building has a big shopping mall, and you can take an elevator all the way to the top and see really beautiful views of Taipei. It was overcast that day, but we could still see some views through the clouds. When we bought tickets to go up, we also got coupons for buy-one-get-one-free beer float. Yep. Beer float. Like a root beer float, only with Taiwanese beer and vanilla bean ice cream. They put the beer on ice, which somehow makes it cold enough for it to taste moderately okay for a few minutes and then it’s just beer and ice cream. Afterwards, we put in our name at a very famous dumpling restaurant in the same building. We had to wait for over an hour, but we agreed to sit at a table that was combined with another couple so we got a table faster. Mike ordered all the food, and we had several different types of dumplings: some with pork, some with shrimp, as well as gyoza, chicken soup, spicy noodles, and some kind of pickled cucumber. It was so much food, but soooooo good. Mike suggested that we go to the Palace Museum the next day. It was the same place that the guy from the hostel we stayed at before had suggested, so we realized it was sort of the thing to do in Taiwan. The museum is basically a museum of Chinese culture- a bunch of stuff that Taiwan sort of borrowed and forgot to bring back. Such is the relationship between Taiwan and China. Mike was incredibly knowledgeable about Taiwanese history, and he told us all kinds of stuff about the history and culture.
We did end up going to the museum. We saw a lot of art, calligraphy, ceramics, and jade carvings. It was all very beautiful, but James was disappointed in the lack of weapons and “manly things,” although he definitely appreciated the intricacy of the jade carvings and the brushwork in the paintings.
After we grew tired of looking at things, we went upstairs to a tea house on the top floor of the museum. It was tea time, so we couldn’t get any food, but that was fine because I just wanted tea. We sat in a table that had a really nice view, and I got whatever tea the waitress said was good, and we both got some pineapple cake, which is a specialty in Taiwan. It comes in little squares, about 2 inches by 2 inches, and about 1 inch high. It’s sort of a layer of dry, firm cake on the outside, with a pineapple filling on the inside. Earlier, we had sampled pineapple cake and bought some to bring back to Japan as omiyage. (Omiyage means souvenir in Japanese, and whenever someone goes on a trip, they are expected to bring back presents – usually food – for friends and coworkers.) It was delicious and very relaxing.
After we were ready to leave, we took the bus heading back towards the station, but got confused and stayed on the bus too long and ended up in some middle of nowhere bus station where all the busses go when they are finished their routes. The bus driver asked us why we hadn’t gotten off at a stop and he kind of laughed when we told him, but he pointed us to a bus stop where we could wait for the next bus to take us back where we needed to go. It came along shortly, and eventually we made it back to civilization.
That may have been the night we went to TGIFridays. Mmmmmm American foooood.
So the time came to catch our flight back to Japan. I was upset knowing the vacation was over and I would have to return to the real world the following day, but it was also nice to be going back to a country where I didn’t have to worry about being ripped off all the time.
It was basically an insane trip. By the end, I had 5 kinds of currency in my wallet, and was constantly trying to pay in the wrong one. During the trip, I would turn to James and say, “Hey, remember that time…” and it would turn out to be something that happened a few days before. Good times. I think my new rule, though, is only to visit “n+1” countries in “n” weeks. Because n+2 countries, where n=3, is a lot.
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