Category: Taiwan

Well, after a couple hours fighting for space on the high speed rail, we arrived back to Taipei, the country’s capital city. Our first mission was to drop off our bags at our new Airbnb. This one was a little less cozy than our other two stays. I’ll spare you the details, but I wouldn’t stay here again!

As much as I would have loved to nap, or even just head to bed for the night, we had to turn around and head out again soon after we arrived to meet our friend Ariel at the Maokong Gondola. While we waited for her, I tried my first tea egg, which is just an egg boiled in tea and soy sauce instead of plain old water. Pretty tasty.

Then up, up, and up, we went! Not much of a view in the dark and the fog, but the lights we could see were very pretty.

Most things were closed by the time we reached the top, but we took a little hike to a tea shop that stays open late. Maokong is famous for their teas and teahouses, and it seemed like we got a fairly authentic experience.

Ariel is from Taipei, so she served as point person and translator. A man with a big smile and no teeth took our order before demonstrating how to properly prepare the tea. We settled on a local tea that is grown right on the mountain, and it was very lovely and floral.

The man explained that first, you have to wash the tea. The tea set included a tiny tea pot, a second little pot shaped like a typical milk/cream pot, a metal filter, four tea cups, and a shallow bowl. To wash the tea, the man poured hot water into the tea pot before immediately pouring this tea-hinted water over all the cups. Then he refilled the tea pot, dumped the tea cups into the bowl, and placed the cups in front of us. These, he filled with the light tea.

He explained that we could use the leaves for about five or six passes of water. If he was making the tea for himself, he could get eight to ten passes, but we were unlikely to achieve this many because we did not have the innate understanding of the timing and the tea that he possessed. Very interesting.

For dinner, we ordered fern, fried rice, fried mushrooms, and a beef dish. It was all unfamiliar and deliciously oily. The fried rice was even cooked in a special local tea oil.

The ferns were cooked with little anchovie-like fish, but we weren’t fans.

We then had the challenge of racing down the mountain before the metro stopped running at midnight, and but we made it just in time. We said goodbye to Ariel (not for long – she lives in Seattle, too!), and then it was time for sleep sleep sleep.

On Friday, our big adventure was to travel east to the picturesque city of Jiufen. There are rumors that this city was the inspiration for one of Miyazaki’s animated film settings, but apparently this really is just a rumor.

Gotta start with breakfast, though. On the menu: black tea and breakfast sandwiches. I couldn’t choose just one, so I got one pork floss/ pork sung, egg, and cheese, and another with chocolate and banana. Ugh. They were so good, I didn’t even want to try the ones the boys ordered.

The train ride was quite scenic, despite the rain.

Oh, yes. The rain. We didn’t really plan for the rain. The weather update that morning had said there was a small chance of some drizzling, but it ended up properly sprinkling and raining all day long up in the mountains. I was wearing Keds and a non-waterproof puffy jacket, so I quickly bought an adorable yellow umbrella for $1.50 and some waterproof shoe covers for $3. I was skeptical about the shoe covers, but they seriously saved my life. My shoes, socks, and feet would have otherwise been soaked through in minutes, and I would not have been a happy camper. I was sad to part with that umbrella, but it just won’t fit in my backpack for the rest of my trip. Haha.

So Jiufen is famous for two things: its views and its long, winding shopping street that spans several staircases, twists, and turns down and up the mountainside. We crushed and surged against hundreds of ponchos and umbrellas to get better looks at women hand-making calligraphy brushes, men hand-painting ceramics, trinket store after trinket store, and foods, foods, foods.

We found a lovely tea house that we decided to make our own personal rest-stop. The public toilets were hard to find, and this place was centrally located, haha.

And we tried as hard as we possibly could to peer through the clouds, to no avail.

For those curious, apparently a view of the water lies beyond, but from up on that mountain, I couldn’t tell if land, sea, or sky lay below us.

We did a lot of exploring in this foggy drizzle.

I loved it.

We eventually made it to the spot that shows up on all the postcards.

Beautiful! For dinner, we had braised pork over rice and a few different soups. Hit the spot after the chilly weather.

On the way out, I managed to snag another few of these delicious almond butter pastries that I tried in the morning. So flaky and buttery and delicious.

And then we had a long bus ride back to Taipei that spat us out right at the feet of the same night market we’d visited a few days before. I was pretty tired at this point, but since it was our last night, the boys were down to party. And by party, I mean walk slowly and eat food, haha. So market round two, we go.

It started with pork buns and a little exploration of some side alleyways that lead to the river and a pretty bridge.

I took a chance on some “guava milk,” which was basically a very light smoothie, and this helped revive me.

I also found a lady handpainting shoes, and Jeremy finally found the little tea set he’d been looking for, similar to the one we used in Maokong.

Aaand here’s a bunch more pictures, including the delicious dumplings I got, even though I was so full I didn’t think I could actually eat any of them. (I ate all of them.)

When we got back to the apartment, the elevator accidentally spat us out on the eleventh floor, instead of the seventh. The boys commented on this before unhesitatingly stepping off. I was confused. “Gonna explore,” explained Nicholas. I sighed and followed.

I’ll admit: the view from the roof was pretty cool, and because we stepped out at exactly ten o’clock, we got to see lights dancing up and down Taipei 101, just like the Empire State Building or the Eiffel Tower. This has always been a wonderful surprise for me, finding out that skyscrapers dance and glow in the night.

I was a little bummed when I finally did a check on the contents of my bag. I knew there was a chance things would get wet, but I had no way to prevent it, so I just hoped for the best and avoided checking all day. My book got it the worst.

After about twenty minutes with a hair dryer, the book was dry, but wrinkly. I suppose it could pass for well-loved, and this is true.

Then a very late night working on the blog (sorry, boys), before a brief sleep.

For our last day in Taipei, we decided to start with lunch at the famous Din Tai Fung housed on the ground floor of Taipei 101. (Din Tai Fung originated in Taiwan, you know.) We arrived only to find that the wait would be about an hour and a half. Not too different from the ones in Seattle, after all!

We decided to kill the time by exploring outside a bit.

This included a visit to the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial, reminiscent of the Lincoln Memorial.

Then back to Din Tai Fung! Learned some fun facts: the dumpling makers train for 2-3 years before they are allowed to make dumplings in front of the glass-walled display room. Each soup dumpling has exactly 5 grams of dough, 16 grams of filling, and 18 folds to form the seal.

One important distinction between this Din Tai Fung and the ones in Seattle is the prices. We feasted on pickled cabbage, minced pork with green beans, pork xiaolongbaos, beef noodle soup, and veggie pork wontons.

Oh, and for dessert, we had eight-flavor sticky rice and chocolate-filled baos.

When I say we feasted, I do not kid. And still, all of this cost under $40 total, for the three of us. So tasty.

Our next stop was the Miniatures Museum. The funny thing is, we didn’t actually see the museum. Our first and final destination was the gift shop!

I was in heaven. And I spent a silly amount of money on silly little things, including an entire tiny watermelon tea set. No regrets.

Then we popped over a couple blocks to see some famous mailboxes bent crooked in a 2015 typhoon.

Apparently these are quite the attraction nowadays, because Nicholas managed to buy a mini Lego set at the miniatures museum of these ‘funny mailboxes.’ Ha!

Then a cute little walk through some shopping areas again…

And some drinks! I got a strawberry mojito-inspired drink. Very tasty, but there were also a lot of lemon and lime rinds, and I kept sucking them up through the giant boba straw, haha.

Our next mission was to find a gas-powered stove that could hook up to a gas hose. This was one of Jeremy’s big purchase goals, because I guess it’s hard to find them in the States. Usually back home, these little stoves are meant to hook up to cartridges or tanks rather than hose lines.

The search was looking bleak, it being six pm on a Sunday, but we finally found an open shop at the very end of the road! Quite the luck. And they had just what he was looking for.

What followed, though, was a half hour conversation which consisted of the shopkeeper being concerned that we did not have the right equipment to hook up the stove and us trying to convince her that we did. This was all complicated by the fact that the woman was speaking Taiwanese almost exclusively, so Nicholas could only vaguely communicate with her. A couple passed by and tried to help out, switching between Taiwanese, Mandarin, and very slow, careful English. It was very sweet of the lady to want to make sure we would actually be able to use the equipment we were purchasing, but the whole time, I was just trying to will Jeremy to give the lady the dang money so we could move on. Instead, he kept it nervously in his hand while Nicholas, the shopkeeper, and the helpful couple exchanged miming gestures and nervous laughter. All very confusing, haha. At one point, the lady even asked if we could come back another time to prove that we had the correct hook-ups. Obviously, the answer to this was ‘no.’

Somehow, finally, miraculously, she let us take the stove. I think it had to do with me explaining to the helpful couple that Jeremy was an engineer, so he had all of the right equipment — this elicited several “ooooohhh!!”s on the part of the couple before translating to the shopkeeper — but who really knows.

The above photo was taken about ten minutes into the fiasco. Nicholas may look like he’s posing, but he was actually in the middle of scratching his chin, trying to figure out how to respond to the concerned shopkeeper. Quite the adventure.

My last street-side drink adventure was some highly advertised brown sugar bubble milk. This was literally just bobas soaked in brown sugar that were then added to a cup of milk. Surprisingly tasty.

Though it kind of feels like we just ate, our last stop in the city was food. I was just planning on getting some braised pork over rice, but we ended up with another mini feast. We managed to finish almost all of it.

Then a bittersweet last MRT ride before catching the train to the airport.

This is where things got a little complicated. Because there are two terminals at the airport, I decided to check which one I needed to go to. I looked on China Airlines’ website, and there was my flight to Vienna, Terminal 1, canceled.

Yup. Canceled. No explanation. No links. Just canceled.

I hadn’t received any emails or notifications, and I was thoroughly confused and worried. I decided to check the airport website, but I got the exact same result: canceled, no explanations.

Nicholas used his Internet detective skills to find that China Airlines announced a pilot strike two days ago and had canceled about twenty flights because of it, including mine.

The boys were in the other terminal, so I was on my own to figure out whether I was going to be able to get to Europe. I began playing scenarios in my head, trying to figure out how I would spend another night in Taipei if necessary, what I would tell my Viennese Airbnb host, etc.

To save a long story, I did eventually get a new flight by talking to the China Airlines information desk. Instead of direct to Vienna, it just had a three hour layover in Frankfurt on the way. The Frankfurt flight left at the exact same time as my original flight (until it was delayed by half an hour), but with the layover, my total travel time would be extended by about 5.5 hours. Woohoo. Could’ve been worse.

I was being such a trooper through all of it, kind of running in survival mode, but when I finally made it to security and they confiscated my nail clippers because of the “knife” attached to them (a two inch long nail file), I cried. Ugh. It’s the little things.

I was able to meet up with the boys one last time at their gate. Not sure what the two separate terminals are for if we can walk between them once we’re past security, but meh. My mood was lifted a bit when I got to see Paul do a little photo shoot with his stuffed shark plushie on the moving sidewalk.

And then I was on my own again! It definitely felt weird to not return to Seattle with the boys. I’ll come home, eventually! It just seems so far away…

My 12.5 hour flight to Frankfurt included two kinds of pasta, free wine, gelato, a weird cookie thing, one movie, and a bunch of very uncomfortable sleep.

My short flight to Vienna included the roomiest seats ever (my row only had two seats, all to myself, and the window seat was about ten inches from the wall – kinda weird), half a movie, and a chocolate swirl bun.

So that’s a wrap on Taiwan and my first trip to Asia! I loved it. Thank you, thank you, thank you to Nicholas, Jeremy, and Paul for letting me crash their trip, acting as tour guides, and putting up with my sleepiness. You guys are the bomb-diggity.

From here on out, I’m allllll alooooone. We’ll see if I can meet up with a couple people here and there, but this marks the end to long friend-accompanied days. Time to remind myself what it’s like to travel solo (and to sleep properly).

一切安好/ yi qie an hao/ best wishes,
-Lizzy-wa

Hey, dears. Welcome back to Taiwan.

Now, remember that I had no hand in planning this chunk of my trip, so it was not much of a surprise to learn that little was actually planned. If I was traveling by myself, I think this would cause me major stress. Luckily, though, I’ve got Nicholas as tour guide, so I have thrown caution to the wind! I’ll go wherever it takes me! Or wherever the Rubland Brothers take me, for that matter. Sometime on our second day, Nicholas decided we would head south to visit his friend Paul in Chiayi for a couple days. The two met in a physics class at UW and studied computer science together. Paul is from Taiwan, though, and home for the holiday, so we were going to visit him in his home town. Very exciting.

We started the third day of the New Year celebrations with breakfast. (The first day is New Year’s Eve. The second is New Year’s Day; on this day, people are supposed to spend time with their father’s family. The third day is the day to spend time with the mother’s family. Susan from Google told us this.)

Breakfast consisted of danbing, a sort of fried egg omelette thing that was soooooo tasty, and some of the best black tea I’ve ever had. There was also a potted banana tree just casually in the corner.

Then we took the high speed rail down south. Nicholas was worried we would have to stand because only non-reserved seats were available. This meant seats were first-come first-serve, and we weren’t looking forward to being seatless for two hours. Luck won out though!

There was also a meal cart that went down the aisles about halfway through, and I felt like I was on the Hogwarts Express.

It was a few hours before we would meet up with Paul, so we paid a visit to the Southern Branch of the National Palace Museum. This one is much newer than the main branch in Taipei, but we all ended up enjoying this branch much more. It was very well thought out for a nice, educational walk through several layers of Taiwanese culture and history, and the architecture was really cool. The whole building was shaped kind of like a flower petal.

Also, these horse things were there:

My favorite exhibits included the history of tea, textiles, and jade.

The floral exhibit included a cool interactive room filled projector screens that detected movement. We tried to play with it, but little kids kept getting in our way, haha.

There was also a neat temporary exhibit featuring a manga artist’s work.

We got lunch outside at a small market. For me, this meant a mulberry popsicle and a giant thing of Pad Thai that only cost about $1.50. Positively ridiculous. And so delicious.

Then we headed out to Chung Cheng University, where Paul’s family lives. His dad is a professor in Mechanical Engineering!

The buses were pretty hard to figure out, and we eventually realized that we had missed the last one. Even so, the bus route was a milk run, so it would have taken us well over two hours to get to Paul. Instead, we bussed to the nearby high speed rail station and grabbed a taxi. The driver was extremely excited that Nicholas could speak some Chinese, and Nicholas made the brave move to ride in the passenger seat. The ride was over half an hour, and the driver took this opportunity to chat it up. It was super interesting to hear the two talking, watching as they tried to fill in the blanks for Nicholas’s Mandarin and the driver’s English. At one point, the driver explained that he had to take English in high school, and then he added in English, for the backseat to understand: “English, BAD.” He took a hand off the wheel to point dramatically at the ground with his thumb while he shook his head in one vigorous sideways motion. “BAD.”

The driver was a very enthusiastic speaker, and he was animated the whole ride. The only other part of the conversation Jeremy and I were able to follow was when he asked who we were. Nicholas gestured to Jeremy to say they were brothers, and then he nodded in my direction.

“WIFE?!” asked the driver. “No no,” said Nicholas as the car erupted in laughter. Some more mumbled Mandarin from Nicholas, then, “Girlfriend?!” from the driver. Some more “no”s and some more “WIFE”s ensued. All around hilarious. I have a recording of it. Bahahahahaha.

Also, that taxi ride only cost around $20, which I think is 100% worth the two extra hours we would have spent on the bus. Sometimes cars are good.

We parted ways with our driver and dropped our bags off at the guest house of the university. The campus was a ghost town because of the holiday: just us, some stray dogs, and a bunch of giant (pomegranate-sized) fruits that we could not identify.

Paul met us with his entire family (mom, dad, and older brother, Calvin) to take us out for dinner. Can I just say that I adore the Yau family? So sweet and welcoming. We all piled into their van, and off we went into the city. On our way, as the family discussed where they were taking us, Paul asked my favorite question of the night: “Is there any kind of bird you don’t eat?”

With that settled, we arrived shortly at our restaurant. Mama Yau ordered for the whole group, and we awaited in our secluded dining spot as dish upon dish arrived for our feasting pleasure. Coconut curries, udon noodles, fried rice, veggies, greens, beef, the list goes on. And it was all delightful. We barely left anything on the table. And then, Mama Yau surprised me by asking politely, “Well, should we move on to the next spot?”

As we all pushed back our chairs and I tried to hide my surprise, Paul announced happily, “The eating train never stops!”

Our next spot was a dessert and tea shop, and I got some kind of mystery egg dessert that ended up being white cake with cream on top. Delicious.

I slept super well that night. It probably had something to do with the fact that it was the first time I had a room to myself in ten days. And in the morning, I was amused to find how much my hair had expanded in the humidity.

Paul picked us up at 9:30, and of course, our first stop was breakfast. Lots of places were closed, once again, for the New Year, but we managed to find a place Paul used to frequent when he was younger. His family knew the owners, of course. So cute. Our meal consisted of some yummy black tea, more danbing, and some kind of super fluffy sweet toast. Apparently the danbing here was prepared in a more traditional style compared to the ones we had on the previous day, and it was served with what Paul described as “kind of like thick soy sauce.” Paul also had a typical Taiwanese breakfast sandwich, but he did not offer to share this, hahaha. (Don’t worry — we tried some later on.)

The teas all had really bad jokes printed on their lids, and Paul and Nicholas took turns translating these for us. They assured us that the jokes were no funnier in Chinese. Examples included: “Why should you hide in the basement during an air raid?” Answer: “It makes it easier for archeologists in the future.” Also: “When does one and two not equal three?” Answer: “When you’re wrong.”

Cue the drums.

Then a scenic drive through fields of rice and pineapples:

And soon, we arrived at Kumquat Disneyland. This is not the official title, but it is fairly accurate. I’d never even been fully sure what a kumquat looked or tasted like before this day, and I certainly could not have guessed that so many things could be done to make this little fruit into so many different snacks and delicacies.

As we walked in, Paul continually expressed his amazement at how busy the place was. “This is not normal. What is going on? This is insane,” he said to no one in particular. Nicholas hypothesized that everyone was home for the New Year, and it seemed as though everyone lived in Chiayi. Paul didn’t seem satisfied with this answer, as he continued to ask his questions on repeat throughout our visit, all with a big smile on his face.

Not twenty steps into the masses, Paul called out to a woman on a scooter, the only person not on foot. She was the owner, and of course, Paul’s family is friends with them, too. Seems Paul is the big man in Chiayi, hahaha. She went away for a minute and returned with kumquat-flavored iron eggs (look it up, dude) and tofu. Crazy stuff. Like I said, apparently you can get pretty creative with kumquats.

The main factory and tourist buildings were surrounded by pretty gardens and ponds. Paul explained that it was pretty common for locals to bring their kids here just to hang out and grab a few snacks, like a community park.

Apparently these things are called breadfruit:

We also explored the tourist building and some areas of the factory that were open for viewing.

And then we explored the gift shop, of course.

Here’s us snacking on kumquat iron eggs, kumquat tofu, kumquat jelly, kumquat flan, and kumquat juice. These people do not mess around with their kumquats.

Then I made the mistake of asking Nicholas to take a picture of me.

*sigh…* It was really hot by this point, over eighty degrees, so we decided to take a minute to cool off at Paul’s house with some Switch games.

Even as we entered the house, both Calvin and Mama Yau asked if we had had lunch yet. The whole time we were playing games, it felt like we were eating into our lunch time. No surprise, then, that lunch was next.

Lunch consisted of pork buns, sticky rice, radish cake, potstickers, and soup. Oh, and more tea, of course.

Here’s a nearby Starbucks that may seem like an ordinary Starbucks but is, in fact, somewhat of a tourist destination due to its flashy triangle roof. As we walked past it, we had to maneuver around several groups of people posing for pictures. #SeattlePride.

Next was Pineapple Hill! This was the actual name of this place, unlike Kumquat Disneyland. We were greeted by crates and crates of fresh pineapples being sliced on the spot into to-go cups, and I remarked that I had never seen a non-perfect pineapple before. Notably, there was one with a big hole missing from the side, and there was a whole crate filled with pineapples shaped like watermelon slices!

Pineapple Hill was a little less novelty-filled than Kumquat Disneyland, but we were still able to try pineapple ice cream, pineapple juice, and pineapple vinegar. We also had a great view of the pineapple fields.

Then back to Paul’s house for some more Mario Kart (and some napping, on my part), before heading out for dinner. Paul had originally wanted to head out a lot earlier, but we were all tired and hot, so we were moving a bit slower than planned. Because of this, and because of the added New Year crowds, our wait for our restaurant ended up being preposterous. We took a number (541) and were astounded to see on the overhead counter that the current table number being seated was 374. It was like we were at the DMV, except we were surrounded by Mandarin and gift shops and food stalls instead of tiled floors and plastic chairs and bureaucrats. Oh, I forgot to mention that our restaurant was conveniently located in a night market, so we had no problem dilly dallying for the next two hours as the table numbers crept up and up and up.

Finally, the numbers reached the 500s, and we awaited our turn eagerly on the sidelines. The restaurant was called Smart Fish (HIGHLY RECOMMEND), and they are famous for their seafood soup.

Dudes. This soup was insane.

Four young men in their twenties stood at the front of the restaurant, facing the open street, as they performed a carefully choreographed dance in front of three of the largest pots I have ever seen. Of course, it seemed that only they could understand their wild dance, because it made absolutely no sense to the rest of us. They used medium-sized sauce pans (the kind you might boil a box of noodles in) as ladles to shuffle the soup from the middle pot to the one on the right. Then one boy would stir the pot on the left and dish up a few giant bowls of soup while another stood at the pot on the right, filling up plastic bags with soup and tying them closed with pieces of balloon ribbon. Next, they would scoop soup from the right pot and move it back to the middle! It made no sense. This crazy dance continued in an endless flurry of motion, moving soup from one pot to another and back again, adding giant bags of raw meat and eyeballed scoops of seasonings willy-nilly.

At one point, a boy dumped so much of a new ingredient into the pot on the right that some sloshed over the edge and onto the street, coating my calves in its salty goodness. I took this as my cue to take an extra step back. Not two seconds later, the boy splashed himself as he attempted to stir the too-full pot. He looked up at me, still stirring, and yelled, “SOOOOOO FISH!”

Great moment. Great moment.

And in case you were wondering, it was worth the wait. I swear, every time I think about that soup now, I start to salivate. I CRAVE THE FISH.

We only got one small bowl of soup to share because you can get endless refills on the broth (seriously, so tasty I cannot describe), and because we each got a bowl of Chaiyi’s famous braised turkey over rice. Also so delicious.

Ugh. I miss that soup like you wouldn’t believe. I miss that soup like I miss my boyfriend.

Okay, it’s a little different, but it aches just the same.

Did I sleep as well the second night? Of course not; I was too busy thinking about the soup! And I also stayed up until four again to work on the blog. The Rubland Brothers just pack these days so tightly that it’s the only time I can get some alone time with the internet.

Our last day in Chiayi began with a tour of the University campus.

Unrelated, but below is a fun bug bite I sustained sometime the night before. It somehow managed to transform the whole shape of my arm.

Then we did some breakfasting, which consisted of soup dumplings, shumai, and pickled veggies. So yummy, and these soup dumplings were about a tenth of the cost of Din Tai Fung in Seattle.

Oh, we also stopped at a KFC drive-thru to pick up some “life-changing” egg tarts. Yes, you heard that right. KFC sells egg tarts in Taiwan. They were delicious.

Also, I wanted to demonstrate something that is mind-bogglingly common here:

Three people on a scooter. One is a baby. Sometimes one is a dog. Sometimes there is a dog and a baby. It is madness. Utter madness.

Then we went into downtown Chiayi and did some shopping/ tea drinking/ exploring. A very cute little area.

Is it just me, or does this stroller look exactly like a kumquat with a face??? Kumquat Disneyland is messing with my brain.

Lots of pretty things to look at here!

And there were these crazy fluff flowers. I took pictures of three life-stages: Closed-Up Grape Mode, Maximum Fluff, and Wilty Dead String Floss.

There was also a Japanese restaurant that required diners to remove their shoes before entering.

And a couple other sights, below. We caught a glimpse of a ripped Taiwanese man doing handstands on a stack of chairs, but I couldn’t get close enough to get a very good picture.

Then it was time for the goodbyes. (Not for long, though. Paul is on the same flight back with the Rubland Brothers.) Paul dropped us off at the train station, and we waited the long wait for a standing-room only train. There wasn’t even room for us to fit on the first one, but we eventually made it on, and I decided to use my backpack as a chair. This put my face at butt-level, as you can see. Life is all about give and take.

Back to Taipei, we go! (And to bed, finally, I go.)

一切安好/ yi qie an hao/ best wishes,
-Lizzy-wa

Surprise! My exotic adventure is Taiwan! My very first trip to Asia, and my first international trip outside of Europe or Canada.

Also, the first part of this blog title is how you say “Happy New Year” in Mandarin, a little different from the gong hei fat choy that I learned in Cantonese, but much more common in Taiwan.

Chinese New Year was on the fifth, so lots of people go home to spend the holidays with their families. My buddy Nicholas decided to join in on the fun, and I decided to tag along, because that’s what unemployed Lizzies do.

(Woah. I’ve never tried to pluralize my name in writing before, but that seems to be the way to do it???)

Nicholas’s original trip was just supposed to be himself and his brother, Jeremy, and they planned to meet up with a couple friends here visiting their families. I am grateful they took me under my wing, because I find it hard to believe I would have made it here on my own. And I didn’t have to plan anything besides the flight, thank goodness.

I left Sara in Copenhagen around five in the morning on Saturday, and the streets were quiet. I practiced the last of my Danish, wished I had more time, and got a last minute stor chokoladeboller from Lakgagehuset. All in Danish! Whoop whoop! Then I had a quick flight to Frankfurt.

The transfer in Frankfurt was a bit stressful. It was about two hour layover, but I had to exit the terminal, switch terminals, check in (no online check in was available for me), and then reenter security. By this time, only middle seats were available. (On a 12.5 hour flight! Ugh.) Then security took positively forever. I couldn’t figure out why it was taking so long, but then, as I finally approached the security point, I found out they were literally patting down every passenger. What the what?! I was not pleased and did not find entertainment in the security woman’s jokes as she rubbed down my chest. Uck.

But anyway. The flight was not horrible. We got a full lunch, a full dinner, several snacks, and a sandwich for breakfast. They also came around several times with trays of juice, and both lunch and dinner came with little plastic tea cups that they filled up partway into the meal. Oh, there was also free wine. Always take the free wine.

The boy sitting by the window was pretty cute, and he made it his personal mission to take care of me during the flight. Each time I left to use the restroom (only four times during the whole flight! I held it a lot because the guy on the aisle kept sleeping), he would pick up all the things from my seat and hold them for me until I sat back down. He also helped me out when I burst into a spontaneous nose bleed. So wonderfully embarrassing. He had been studying abroad in Germany, with original plans to return in March, but his exams finished early and he was going home to surprise his family for the new year. So cute! Nicholas was disappointed I didn’t get his contact info so we could meet his family. Crazy white boy.

The boys touched down around 5am, and I landed an hour later. We had quite the fiasco trying to navigate the airport in search for each other and for foods, but we finally made it out by eight or so. 

As we wandered the colorful streets of Taipei city, I oggled the cheap and yummy looking food. Before spending some time in a park near our Airbnb, we stopped for very cheap bubble tea (less than $1.50!), and I decided to try it warm because my throat was hurting a bit. I was surprised to find that the cup was too hot to hold, but I was even more surprised when Jeremy busted out a bubble tea holder just for this kind of situation. What a crazy world we live in.

I also tried to do a pull-up when we came across a playground. (I did my first pull-up ever, in my entire life, on January 5th tehehehe.) You can imagine my disappointment, then, when I wasn’t quite able to do one. Ugh. I guess that’s what 2.5 weeks without yoga will do to you. Start-up muscles need continued exercise, and I’m afraid I’ve only been exercising my walking muscles and my digestive muscles lately. Ha! I settled for some upside-down hanging time, instead.

I also tried to use the restroom in this park, and I came across two new things. 1) The toilet paper was located outside the stalls, in one single large roll on the wall. Thankfully an elderly woman entered before me and grabbed some before entering the stall, so I did the same. 2) Some toilets don’t have seats.

This is a squatting toilet. It took me back to the day my Chinese grandmother took me to mall when I was around five or six years old. When I had to use the restroom, she went into the stall with me and ‘taught’ me how to stand on the toilet seat and squat over the toilet so my legs wouldn’t have to touch the seat. It was mortifying.

Even more mortifying was exiting the restroom, explaining the toilet to the boys, and learning that there are usually multiple toilet types in the restrooms. The type of toilet (these squatting types, or the sitting ones I’m used to) is depicted in a little picture on the door. So basically, I experienced the squatting toilet for nothing. Haha. Whoops.

We finally made it to our check-in time so that we could get rid of our bags and really start exploring. Our explorations included a stop at a very cheap, pretty yummy, very not-clean street-side “restaurant.”

The first white person I saw besides my travel buddies was a man performing an escape routine. He was untangling himself from a mass of chains while the Star Trek theme song blared around him. His crowd was huge, but what was crazy was that probably 2/3 or more of the audience swarmed to add money to his bag when he finished. Anywhere else, I feel like getting money from 1/4 of the viewers is lucky. I guess that’s what happens when you perform in a place that still runs mostly on cash, where coins range from about 3 cents to $1.50. Makes for easy hand-outs.

We then tried to walk along a bridge by the water, and I tried to pretend the zooming scooters flying past us in the other direction weren’t terrifying.

At one point, we came across a smoothie shop that straight up just stole all of their smoothies from Jamba Juice.

The only smoothie on this board that isn’t a Jamba smoothie is the “Choir Kiwi,” which makes sense because that name really doesn’t make much sense. Also, a Peach Pleasure doesn’t actually have berries in it. I was tempted to try one, but I wasn’t impressed with the price range – I think they stole that from Jamba, too.

Next, we explored The Red House, a market place which was really close to where we were staying. Lots of cute little shops in here.

I took no time dilly-dallying when we stopped back at the Airbnb for a nap. Had to save up some energy to explore our first night market!

Such animal. Many food. Dinner included an oyster omelette (not for me) and wonton soup (yummy!). There was even one of those fishing games, except instead of fishing for little plastic fish whose mouths open and close automatically, you could fish for actual live shrimp and then actually eat them.

I also shopped a bit. Loot included keychains of my last name and shoes that are not flip flops or snow boots. Yay!

Then sleepers. We kicked off Chinese New Year’s Eve with a visit to Taipei 101, the tallest building in the country. It’s normally $40 or so to get a view from the top, but Nicholas got those hook-ups at Google, so a wonderfully nice woman from the Taipei office let us in to give us a tour! Even though Google only goes as high as floor 76, we were still far and away taller than everything else in the city. Pretty cool, dude. Plus, free snacks. 😀

Here’s pictures from the outside and from the public areas of the building:

And here are some photos from the Google office! I’ll start with the interior decorating, all festive for the new year:

Also, it really was amazing that this Google employee gave us a tour. The office (we looked at three whole floors, I believe?) was completely empty for the holiday, and she literally only came to show us around. She said she lived nearby, so she could come whenever. She was always smiling, and she told us all about the food options (wish we could come back for free lunch) and a little bit about the office culture here.

Oh, and here’s the view!

Up in the clouds. Love it.

There was also a Lego diorama set into the floor of the city, built by first generation Taipei Googlers. It was hard to find Taipei 101 because it couldn’t actually be as tall as it is compared to the rest of the city while still fitting under the glass.

Upon exiting, I tried to have Nicholas take a picture of me with the building, and this is what I got:

Also selfies:

Next, we headed to a memorial building, closed unfortunately, for the New Year.

It was still pretty from the outside, though, and I loved the gardens.

We actually spent a fair amount of time just hanging out around on of the ponds on the temple grounds. Wildlife included several types of cranes, colorful fishies, and turtles!

Nicholas doesn’t like to smile for pictures, and that makes Jeremy sad.

Lunch was our first real meal in a full-service restaurant, and it was also the first time we all ordered individual meals for ourselves. Incidentally, it was much more money than we’d spent on food, otherwise, but it was tasty and so worth it! Still less than $10 for a big bowl of eel and beef, a side of garlic greens, and a bowl of miso soup. They also served room-temperature light tea instead of water, and the toilet came fully equipped with a heated seat and a multi-function bidet. I uh… Couldn’t figure out how to turn it off once I turned it on. Haha. That was an awkward ten seconds, let me tell you.

Then we hit up another temple, with a large pavilion filled with Chinese checkers players nearby.

This was followed by something like a four hour nap. It wasn’t meant to last that long, but…. Sleepy. And we followed this with another night market!

These things below are an interesting take on a hot dog. The white sausage is made of rice, and it would be sliced in half to made an open bun for the other sausage. I don’t think I actually tried it, but Nicholas says this one wasn’t that good. *shrug.*

I actually had two sets of dumplings. It cost me $3 for 16 of them. Crazy town.

Oh, and here’s what I meant when I was talking about the toilet type pictures:

Then I stayed up until 4:30 in the morning trying to migrate my entire blog to a different web host, at the recommendation of my tech helpers (ie: The Rubland Brothers). I think it’s working? You tell me. It certainly worked to make me very sleepy the next morning, despite sleeping until ten or so. I even stayed up late enough to do a little video chatting with sister Sara (the Chinese one) and my Taiwanese friend, Tiffany.

We started New Year’s Day with a visit to the National Palace Museum, the most famous museum in Taiwan.

There were Buddha, book, and Dutch-Chinese trade exhibits. We spent a good chunk of time trying to figure out how these books were read because they didn’t have margins on the non-bound side of the pages. Turns out they are essentially made of one really long, accordioned page, but then the whole accordion is bound like a normal book. A lot of the books on display were also part of a set, and these sets came in a box.

Also kind of funny was the fact that the two most famous pieces in the museum were a piece of cabbage carved from jade and a red stone carved into the shape of a piece of meat. The latter was titled “Meat Shaped Stone.” Unfortunately, BOTH were on loan to other museums!!! So silly. Here’s a picture of miniatures they were selling in the gift shop, and pictures on the wall that were meant to replace their absence.

Nicholas was most excited about these three-legged cauldrons, for reasons unknown to me. He actually explained his obsession like three times, but it still hasn’t managed to stick in my mind. Oops.

We stopped in the museum cafe to fill our tummies with tiramisu and burgers where the patties were not patties and the buns were just rice pressed into patty shapes. Quite delightful.

Then we wandered around outside the museum for a while, soaking in the mountainside and the giant tripod cauldrons.

Somehow we managed to spend all day at the museum, so by the time we left, all there was time to do was hit up a night market. Yay! To Tamsui!

The market was just one long street along the water’s edge, and it was the busiest market yet. The vendors here seemed to have several specialties, because we kept seeing repeats of very popular shops. These common foods included grilled squid that was cut open so that it kind of looked like a pineapple and sugar cane juice. Dude. We’d seen the sugar cane juice stands at other markets, but these ones were so popular that the piles of used sugarcane in front of their stands were several feet tall.

There were also bowls of live seafood just hanging out, and a little woman frying quail eggs out of a tiny cart. (We got some – they were yummy!)

Jeremy got some long french fries, and we ate them while watching a little fireworks show across the water.

And then a cute walk back through the city, with several adorable shops and lots of people to wade through. Also egg tarts. I got seven. (:

So far, Taiwan has been lovely, and I’m super glad we have Nicholas to act as tour guide and translator. Our next few days in Taiwan take us farther south, where we’ll meet up with a friend who knows the area even better and is a native Mandarin speaker. Woohoo! Until then…

一切安好/ yi qie an hao/ best wishes,

-Lizzy-wa