27 March 2014
Homeless person
I stupidly woke up at 5:30AM.
My flight is at 19:35. So now I have to check out, leave my bags, and effectively live the life of a homeless person for the day, endlessly wandering without a purpose.
I walked the entire width of the city, slowly, which was great fun, even went past the occupied parliament and saw no protestors.
Had a great vegetarian lunch, had a bunch of Americans tell me they were witnesses to Jehova (who pays for them to come and do this shit?), tried my best to stay out of the roaring sun, and celebrated my good fortune to spend 3 weeks abroad with only 1 single day of any rain at all, and perfect health throughout.
I was early getting to the airport, and the Cathay pacific lady has put me on an earlier flight, so I will have some time in Hong Kong airport. Time for shower and first class lounge dinner, hooray!
This is the Taiwan main station for normal non high speed trains. Its old and I think unused.
I went to the peace park, hung out with confuscious.
Ascended a pagoda, much to the confusion of the locals who took more notice of the fence.
Then I ended up in a little museum, remembering the 228 (28 feb) incident.
Heres how that goes, in the late 1940's, immediately following the return of Taiwan to China following the defeat of the Japanese, yet before Mao took the mainland from general Chiang, Taiwan was ruled by a local government answerable to the mainland.
However they were largely autonomous following ww2, prior to that, the island was forcibly made to be Japanese, and much of the population only knew of Japanese rule.
Anyway, the locals got restless of corruption, and on the 28th of Feb 1947 (I think), a woman was selling illegal cigarettes near my hotel.
A police officer punished her, and she gave him some lip, so he bitch slapped her with his revolver.
Chaos ensued.
The police started shooting randomly and a couple of people were killed.
This lead to unrest throughout the country, following one woman who was breaking the law and wouldnt shut up.
As a result, General Chiang sent troops to sort shit out, and imposed 40 years of martial law before taking over himself!
Martial law was only ended in the 1980's.
I dont know how, but fonzy had something to do with all this.
Outside this museum, you can get a free massage, by rolling on the pebbles.
Then I spotted the police barricades 3 blocks back from the parliament. I couldnt see any protestors though. I think they are still inside.
Here is the parliament, its been a couple of weeks, how are they getting food?
Nearby is the General Chiang memorial thing. Nice gate. I have been here before....
But this time its been invaded by 1600 paper mache pandas, and 170 Taiwanese black bears. One for every one left in the wild.
Originally it was just pandas, due to pandamonium at the local zoo where a real panda has been born, but a local pop starlet complained that the Taiwan black bear is even more endagered, so the world wild life fund had to pay the dude who made the pandas to do some black bears too.
Salute the general, he kept martial law going for longer than anyone else in modern history. Putin wishes he was this good.
I dont know if its old or new old, but it looks cool.
Next up, lunch. Vegetarian buffet, and it was awesome!
They charge you by weight. My meal came to about $2, including the rice I didnt want but got.
Anyway, time to board the bus and head to the airport. Heres the high speed rail line below me. I took the bus cause I was early and wanted to look at the view some more.
This isnt even a city, its just some random suburb between Taipei and Taoyuan where the airport is.
The airport itself is located in some rice farming areas, in case a plane skids off the runway the fire will be put out by the flooded fields.
Any more photos that appear here will be of airports and planes and stuff, so you can probably stop reading now.