On Thursday we left after school to head to Manila for our flight to Taipei. We arrived around 1am on friday, changed our money, where I left my bag, got in the ridiculously long line for the cab, when I realized I had left my suitcase behind. Then began the search for a security guard who spoke english who could let me back into the arrival area to retrieve my lost bag which was only a mer twenty feet from the door. It took a while, but it happened. And I celebrated in the airport, there were a lot of Taiwanese people looking at me funny, I didn't care I was just excited that they hadn't thought my suitcase was a bomb and disposed of it.
So we were off to a rough start, we got to our hotel room for the first night around 3am. After what seemed like far too short of a sleep we had breakfast, the fanciest shower ever (there was steam and three different shower heads) and then checked out. For the next two nights we would be staying at a hostel just a couple of block away. We dropped off our luggage where we were informed that our original plans for the day were not possible because of Chinese New Year. As it turned out most things would be closed on that day. But luckily all national museums and parks would be open, so onto what was supposed to be day 2 of our itinerary!
First stop the National Palace Museum, we learned about jade carving and the importance of it in ancient Chinese culture. Saw a bunch of jade carvings, paintings and ceramics. I was happy.
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| Before heading into the Museum |
There were no photographs allowed in the museum, but needless to say things were impressive and some of it a little strange. Is it odd that one of their national treasures is a carved cabbage out of jade? Yes. But its really well carved.
Next up was Jiufen a small coastal town about an hour south of Taipei. We waited for the bus, found out we were waiting in the wrong location, went to the new one and then headed out on our way.
We finally got the bus!
About an hour later...
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| The view at Jiufen |
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| Market entrance |
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| Peanut brittal ice cream wraps. They were amazing! |
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| The best way to describe these is a Chinese version of a croissant |
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| Ice cream pancake |
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| I'm not sure what these were, but they looked gross, they're some sort of steamed meat bun, we didn't try them. |
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| Sweet and Sour Soup |
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| Bitter Melon, I tried a bit of it in shake form, it was awful. |
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| We visited a tea house where their basement was a ceramics studio |
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The garbage truck that magically goes through the narrow alleys with maybe only a foot of clearance on each side. People manage to get out of the way and the whole time it plays Beethoven.
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The whole time there were fire crackers and small fireworks being set off. We head back to our hostel, explored the streets around it. It was odd that the streets were practically empty. In Taiwan Chinese New Year is often spent with family and is done with quiet intimate celebrations. We called it a night and were excited to see what the next day would bring.
