First time trip to Taiwan (1 of X)

Taiwan in my mind is a very mysterious and controversial place. Though it is not that big of island, it has many treasures and resources of its own. Thank you to Brian, I finally made my way to Taiwan.

My story about Taiwan starts with the Visa process. Technically I can apply Taiwan visa myself one month ahead of time, and the visa fee is about $30. Well, apparently I think $30 is too cheap to be true, so I waited until 1.5 wk before travel day and realized I still haven’t filed Visa application. Hence, I called an office in Taiwan that takes care of Visa application but is not called embassy, they told me I could still get my Visa if I apply through a travel agent. So did I and I got my expedited visa by paying 10times more than Visa fee.($300), which later becomes a joke that my Friday Bei Li was teasing me I might have become the last Chinese in the earth that paid $300 Visa fee for going to Taipei. (She told me Chinese now can travel Taiwan without applying for Visa, luckily later I was able to verify only Chinese who lives in Beijing, Shanghai & Xiamen can travel to Taiwan without getting visa but not all Chinese, and my residence is Wenzhou, so I won’t be qualified for free entry. : ) )

We took Delta airline flying to Tokyo , and then transited to Taiwan. It took about same amount of time traveling to Taiwan vs to Shanghai (about 13hrs fly time). The whole fly process was painful because of my hip issue which in itself is whole another story. After a good night of rest in a very nice 5 star hotel (Sherwood, benefit of business trip ; ) ), we were excited to start a new day next day to explore Taiwan.(Though brian has been there many times, he never had time to explore this city)

Wayne Chen, who is a tango friend of mine used to live in Portland but now moved back to Taipei to be with his parents. He came to hotel and took us out. He took us to take subway, which thanks to him, otherwise I would never got to experience the famous Taipei subway system. One very interesting thing about Taipei subway: they do not allow drink or food. It certainly keeps the subway very clean. On the other hand local residents complaint. You know, when people need to eat, they need to eat. (I was later told by Wayne, there has been a lot of debate against that policy in Taipei already.)

If I remember correctly, the first place we visited is called “剝皮寮“ old street. Here is a pic of it. Something very interesting to call out here, this street used to have a lot of prostitution services. All these buildings here are all connected for the purpose of when police comes, they can travel between buildings to avoid getting attested , very smart, isn’t it? You can see it even clearer from the 2nd pic down below.

After a quick visit to this old street, both wayne and I were hungry so we decided to get something to eat before our next destination. (I have to insert this inside of my family’s joke that brian never gets hungry when he is on tour. He always surprised how often my families have to eat even though all we doing is eat 3 meals a day at regular time.). Wayne just looked around and picked a noodle place, which was a very tiny and busy store. It didn’t look that appealing to me at first but I trusted wayne’s judgement. I didn’t even bother to look at the menu and wayne took care of the ordering. He ordered a traditional lurou rice and and dry noodle, duck cold dish and a noodle soup. This meal was one of my best meals in Taibei!!! I wolfed down the lvrou rice and had a lot of noodle from both dry and soup noodle, and even had many pieces of duck which I usually don’t like that much…

After taking care of our stomach, we headed to a temple named “Longhua temple”. The temple is kind of “Jing An” temple in Shanghai, which is also located in downtown, small size but with a lot of business (preyers). I did also follow the custom and bought some snacks for buddhas to enjoy. : ) (Wayne said I supposed to take it back with me to eat them for good luck ,but I forgot. It is ok, I think buddha will enjoy it as much as I do). We quickly walk around the temple and preyed to important buddhas(important in the sense of to us) and we left.

(It was a long day, looks like I am too sleepy to finish the first day tour, guess to be continued tomorrow)