A full lap of Taiwan in March 2017 - Page 1

The Full Lap of Taiwan Montage. Every photo here is featured somewhere in this giant trip report!

It has become somewhat of a tradition for photo number 1 to be off my balcony.
Construction of a view blocking 40 level building is commencing. It will take at least a year to block my view. So I will have to move apartments in the next year or so.
Amusingly, someone drove a truck into the car park and smashed a fire sprinkler off and flooded the whole lobby, so theres giant fans and dehumidifiers trying to save the carpet down there right now.

The winner for the most boring photo of my entire trip is the fast pass for customs and whatever that Singapore Air gave me in Melbourne. Except there was no line anywhere so I didnt need it. Maybe I can ebay it.

As its after 11pm, I had already had dinner, but that doesnt mean I cant have some cake. Its balanced out with fruit and vegetables, all on one plate.
This is runner up for most boring photo of my trip.

5AM and Singapore airport is not at all busy. But things are open. 1AM Melbourne airport and it was very very busy, and every store was shut.

Inside the butterfly house, and this is the incubation pod for the world ending plague spread by insects engineered by ex Monsanto employees and people annoyed at the CRSIPR patent rulings.

I am starting early this season.

Yep, its the Taoyuan airport, which is where the main airport for Taipei is located. I like it a lot, its a huge square that takes over an hour to walk around, I will do that when I fly out because I am a fool.

Yep, its the inside of the new metro, much like the others, but shinier, and goes higher into the sky between buildings.

Yep, its my hotel room, located near the main station, City Inn III, its right near City Inn II and across the road from City Inn I, I previously stayed in City Inn Taichung, which was unnumbered, but also excellent.

One last photo of my hotel room, yep.

This is the long street I walked down. It had footpaths most of the way which is a bonus. I tripped over a lot because every shop maintains their own footpath, all at different levels. So many levels.
The taxi driver is livid that I am taking his picture, theres no way he can chase me so bad luck for him.

This is the Taipei stadium, which was under construction when I was last here. On there this evening is the womens formal ball gown 9-ball Asian championship.
You might think thats a joke, but its on live tv. Its women playing snooker / pool in fashionable formal gowns and being marked on their performance.

Nearby the arena is a Lego cafe. The greatest idea ever. They sell drinks, cakes, and have a huge amount of Lego to use. You can also buy Lego.
I would go to this but if you went in Australia you would be arrested and jailed unless you are Archbishop Pell, in which case the Pope has your back and you can get away with whatever you want.

This polar bear is below the legal age for drinking. I started a trend with this photo, as soon as I took it 4 other people including 90 year old grandmas had to take the same photo.

I stood at this intersection for a while and admired concrete pillars. Theres trains in amongst it, 2 different kinds.

Finally at the start of the night market. It was way too busy to take any photo of how busy it is once inside. So busy that they have stalls in the middle and people policing that you walk all in one direction either side of the stalls.
If you want to go back the other way you have to wait for a designated gap between stalls selling stinky tofu or boiled entire squid. It took me over an hour to go to the end and come back.

Taiwan night markets are famous for their food, this is a giant spring onion pancake. The cook pulls bits off and adds other stuff before cooking in entirely too much oil.

Taiwan version of Japans Pachinko. Its a lot quieter.

The end of the night market street has a temple with suitably garish colors. The other amazing thing about the night markets is they are only at night, all the stalls are gone during the day. They re set up every single night and boil vats of oil in the street.
Each time a night market burns to the ground, which seems to be often, they try and make them nicer and safer, and then no one goes.

Its still new year in Taiwan.

I have no idea why there were so many lights in the dark back streets nearby, there were basically no people enjoying them, so I did.

My dinner, I had to wander far away to get a place with a seat, otherwise I would have to stand and eat beatles off of sticks. I wanted something fairly light, so I had wonton soup and pickled vegetables. It was actually quite delicious.

On the way home I stood and admired the train station ceiling. Which is made from tubes of glass of varying sizes to give the impression of a topographical map. Why? I have no idea, no one else seems to notice it.
Thats all for the 4th update!

My room has windows, but they have an opaque coating, it was also quite dark when I woke up. So when I stepped outside I had no idea that it would be raining hard.
The hotel guard tried to give me an umbrella, I was nearly injured whilst frantically waving to decline it. I am terrified of umbrellas. This is not a joke, I have an actual fear of the things.

Houtong station. Rain increasing. Chances of high quality celebrity cat appearances decreasing.

They have built a special bridge / cat run over the tracks, with lots of food and hiding spots to encourage the cats to cross here rather than on the tracks.
There were lots of them hiding in here, but too hard to photograph. They are all very very well fed, so much so that tourists are forbidden from feeding them in case they get too fat and get stuck in their sleeping boxes.

Over on the non village side of the tracks, where absolutely nothing was open at 9am, its just me and the cats, watching the rain.

I was supposed to go up that peak to the right, not today. Also this is the view from the cat street of cat village. There are lots and lots of cafes being run out of peoples old homes which presumably used to be where coal miners lived.
However they are all shut due to rain and lack of tourists. These people owe their livelihoods to feral cats.

zzz

I think these three girls live / work here. The cats know them well, they have buckets and bags of things to feed them.

Back in town now, and this is the Taipei main station. Big deal, its a train station. But despite having been to Taipei 3 times previously, I somehow have never been in here.
It is not the High speed station, which is under here and down the road, it is the slow speed above ground station. Quite like a Japanese station, lots of restaurants. My train to Hualien on Thursday will depart from here.

I was surprised and frustrated to step outside of the station and be greeted by no rain and mostly dry streets. Its almost as though it rains more in the mountains than it does in the city?

This is a typical Taipei backstreet. Taipei really is the most interesting city I know of to just wander around endlessly. I think its the contrast between ultra modern and old and dirty.
This street is somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, they have some nice paving in the road but the footpath is covered in scooters and boiling oil so you have to walk on the road and dodge small trucks.
Also the shops are food, old women clothes, scooter repairs, speaker wire, random hoses, food, foot massage, hair dresser, dog hair dresser, food.

As I was back early, I had time to wander down to Ximending, the youth culture area of Taipei. Except I am old. Also at midday the place isnt busy at all, its very bright at night and full of bad perms on scooter riding gangsters.

The delivery trucks are a nuisance. They seem to just drive up crowded streets all day and night blasting their horn and nearly killing everyone.
I guess if Taiwan were to bomb Syria it would be very easy for this to end badly.
Except when the car in mall massacre happened in Melbourne recently it was because some guy found out his brother was gay which made him realise he is also gay so he decided to drive up a mall and kill everyone?
Perhaps we will never know what that was really all about.

This is pie face. In Taiwan its called Pie Pie. Pie Face is Australian and has gone super super broke 3 times now. Someone keeps giving them enough money to go broke again.
There is a drama involving the owners of the brand stealing all the money and disappearing to New York to open a high end pie restaurant there, that since closed, and annoyed a billionaire casino owning investor.
I have no idea if Pie Pie is part of the brand officially or someone stole the idea in Taiwan, but I also notice they sell Australian beer, fish and chips and a few other Australian things.

Part one of my lunch is a cream of corn soup with mushrooms and a side salad. This was probably the better part of my lunch.

Part two of my lunch was a vegetarian rice bake. With a raw egg cracked on top. It was not great unfortunately, basically no vegetables, just rice, cheese, raw egg. It was not at all like the picture.

Taiwanese heater. Stick a heating element in a $5 fan. What could possibly go wrong?
Also its about 20C, yet people have winter coats and are sitting in front of fire breathing fans, in the street.

Tonights random intersection, this one features a monorail. I hear those things are awful loud! It glides as softly as a cloud!

Look closely at this ad, its an anorexic woman with a hose coming out of her, with two children emptying fat into a jug of some kind.
Child labour laws in Taiwan are a little more liberal.

One of 3 Sogo department stores within a few hundred metres of each other. I think this one is very new.
It is all linked by underground malls that follow the train lines, full of blind women giving foot massage.

The Sun Yat-sen memorial museum, at night. I have been there in the day before. At night its darker.

I limited myself to just one.

All of these people are lined up to go to the Din Tai Fung in the basement. Quite possibly the worlds busiest restaurant. It is about 6pm on a Monday.

Interesting advertising campaign.

I have been to this foodcourt before, it is very good, I highly recommend. Along with Korean food they have 2 very good looking Ramen places.
Ramen has taken off in a big way in Taipei, I saw upmarket places all over the city. I will probably go to one soon.

And as ever, finally my dinner, Korean of course, cause I am in a tourist area of Taiwan. The photo showed it raw, they served it up cooked, which was strange.
The side dishes were excellent, and the whole thing was about $8, which I thought was good for the location.

The train to the hike transferred at this station, I think I took a photo under it last night in this exact spot, but I cant be sure.
It was a very very grey day all day, my camera made the photos brighter than it really is, so dont complain its dark, cause it was actually darker!

The cable car goes to the zoo, I went there the first time I came to Taipei, it is an excellent zoo. There is also mountains behind it, and I think you can climb along them to where I went today if you have plenty of time and dont get lost. I get lost often.

This is the township of Shiding, or maybe Shihding, Taiwan argues about how to spell stuff. The real spelling is definitely Shiding but signs use the old spelling interchangeably, and Google generally uses older confusing spellings.

The town is very interesting, there are covered shopping streets cut into the cliff. Despite its ramshackle appearance, most of the shops seemed quite fancy.

Since it looked like rain, I headed to a conveniene store and asked for a rain clothing in Chinese, which worked. I have selected this fetching number.
Unfortunately it did not rain so I have no photo of me wearing it to share. I am also highly wary of its one size fits all claim.

The first hour at least, was endless steps, a hard slog indeed! But I was loving it, It made the long sleepless flights worth it, I was also hoping it would rain so I could try my new $3 coat.

I thought this was handy, but the only one I saw all day was 200 metres from the start of the trail. They should put them at the remote bits of the trail. Actually my phone does that so its only useful if you are using a paper map. So they are useless.

The thing sticking up in the middle is Taipei 101. I had good phone coverage all day, probably as I always had line of site to the worlds tallest phone tower.

Then the ladders started. Taiwan has an abundance of stainless steel. The USA has banned the import of Taiwanese steel this week due to trade dumping or whatever that term is for making something cheaper than the local market can make it, it used to be called competition.

There was no actual summit today. I just hiked up and down many ridges, in this shot the trail is bending around to the right.

I was super impressed by the long ladders. The longest was over 100 steps. I could have taken a lot more ladder photos but I had to put my camera away to keep my hands free so I didnt plummet on day 3 of my holiday.

In addition to ladders there was rope / chain ascents and descents with foot holes cut into the rock.

And there were somewhat perilous slippery rock ridges to scramble along. I decided the rope was unlikely to save me.

On the way back down there were many such moss covered ruins.

And then the path came to a road, greeted by flowers, and a sign saying 180 minutes to the main road and town... surely not? Jogging time.

I passed at least 5 such temples, each farmer seems to have their own.

Inside each one was a similar setup of action figures. Thats the Harry Potter head wizard guy on the right.

I was so thrilled when I came across a strangely located rubbish truck depot and waste transfer station. Tax write off joke time.

I got back to the main road. Too bad its 100 metres above me.

Instead I had more temples to visit, sometimes in the form of covered bridges.

Whilst walking along the road in the rain, people slowed down to laugh at me. I laughed at houses built on the side of a cliff. We were all having a great time.

After finding a bus, I decided to get off at another town back closer to Taipei, This one was called Shenkeng.

It had many nice shops for tourists, and a lot of shops selling the local variety of Tofu, which apparently can cure every disease and cause great suffering to your enemies.

Shenkeng has an 'Old Street', which is code for, 'we knocked down everything and built a new street with a few of the old bricks used in it'.
It was a really nice area, even in the rain.

The bus I then caught went through a series of huge tunnels, and emerged very near Taipei 101. This is the other big building under construction nearby which I mentioned last night.
Thats all for now! A great day indeed despite the very grey weather.

Yes, its raining a lot, scooters are floating away.

Time to head underground. And wonder how the underground doesnt fill up with water. Maybe it does.

Heading further underground, to enjoy all the wonders that Coldplay Avenue has to offer.

Still further underground is a truly excellent food court. I pondered pizza for a while. Decided it was too unhealthy.

Just part of the big food court. I counted more than 50 different outlets. There are various smaller restaurants around the outside with their own seating also.

Instead of pizza I chose the most healthy option available, pay by weight vegetarian buffet. Yes seriously.

Total cost under $3. I wish they had this in Australia, its the perfect meal if you then want to go somewhere else and eat dessert.

When trapped indoors I am not above taking photos of my starbucks matcha tea latte. I note it has a smiley face. I always get a smiley face instead of asking my name. I think smiley face is code for foreigner.

Now that I was full of vegetables and green tea powder, it was time to head further underground, and into the lowest pits of Taipei, which is book street.
This entire underground area is all bookshops, with no customers.

A bit further along and they have set up the dancing area for children, with mirrors and murals.
So there I was, a middle aged, unshaven foreigner in black camo pants covered in mud from earlier, with a dodgy looking pony tail and slicked back hair taking photos of children dancing.
The police were very understanding.

Shin Kong Mitsukoshi has stores on either side of the road, much like Sogo last night.

This cat enjoys sitting here watching everyone go by.

And heres some proof that I am a lunatic. I climbed up onto the overpass to take a photo of traffic in the rain. Nice reflections. The people below assumed I was going to jump.