Continued: First time Trip to Taipei (2 of X)

This is a continued blog from previous blog: First time trip to Taipei (1 of X).

The two places(Bopiliao old street & Longshan Temple) we visited in downtown Taipei were really top on the lists of things to see but more of just getting those things off the list. Later we took subway to a small town that is not far from Taipei named “Dan shui”. Let’s start with a bit introduction of this Danshui old town: Zhongzheng street is one of the most famous and crowded old street in Taipei/Danshui. The street is consist of local cuisine and snacks, and old street architects from Late Qing dynasty or late 90’s. And when I say it is crowded, I wasn’t just saying, it was very crowded even people like me who very much used to crowd in Shanghai/China still felt it right away. There were so many different little food stands/shops that sells all kinds of interesting snacks or drinks that are considered specials of this town that I have never heard of. Without waiting, I rolled my sleeve and started to “dig” myself into this food paradise!!  First, let us see a pic of this Zhongzheng street: in the pic, it is Wayne Chen, the tango friend I mentioned in my previous post. I really liked this painting art wall in the street that contains all kinds of interesting paintings with different techniques. I spent some time there looking through those paintings in each square. Undoubtedly, this also makes it a very awesome picture taking background as you can see from below pic.

Hmm, now time to mention what I tried there in terms of food.(How can we writing blogs about Taipei but not mentioning food, right? : ) ) I think I tried fresh milk mochi(highly recommended, here is address of that store: 台北縣淡水鎮中正路133號. 麻吉奶奶鮮奶麻糬), some cakes(糕点）from a cake store that is letting people try all of their cakes (I bought a bag of some rice cakes mixed with plum in it home). I think I also tried some flavored plums, olive..etc, which I ended up buying a big package of flavored cheery for my parents. Can’t remember what else we had, you know after seeing all those local cuisine and snacks, it is really hard to remember what you had on a specific day. All you need know is make sure go through a diet program before you go to Taipei to have some room for weight growing. ; ). The third pic below is one type of mochi from that store that I mentioned. (It is not the fresh mile one though). 

After ate and shopped at the Zhongzheng road, we headed towards the river. It is to be said that Sunset at this danshui coast is extremely beautiful. Well, we didn’t specifically stopped for sunsetting but we were pretty much walking around near there around sunset time.  First, let me show you a pic of the coast: (I guess it is not really a coast pic but more of a port pic and it is not even that interesting. But at least I was the one who took the pic. We were actually sitting on the back deck of a coffee shop ordering cold coffee , and this is the view we had from where we sit. You can still see the water bottle in front of me)

The walk continued and it then took us to an old British embassy office which is a bit up on the hill and has beautiful view of the coast line. I guess it was very important strategic spot to have embassy there to know what is going on along the coast line at the time. Here is a pic of this embassy building:

After seeing the embassy buliding(which was free admission when we were there, they said they would start charge soon!). Later the walk took us to an University there, which has very british style of building. The campus is well design has big wall of fountains, pound for turtles and fishes, lawn for students to lie down and read or relax, small overpasses, with a lot of trees and flowers. We certainly enjoyed our walk inside this campus.

This was when we left campus and found this little path heading towards a church, seems a very scenic spot for picture taking as you probably can tell from below pic:

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)