Longshan temple and Taipei Botanical Gardens
I have been looking at my schedule. There are 3 types of days on my trips, hiking days, travel days and rest days. Today might be the only rest day? My plans are densely packed for the next 2 cities. I guess travel days are basically rest days as the travel part is short.
Today I decided to go to the oldest most revered temple in all of Taiwan, the Longshan temple. I took a photo that explains it all, but the USA managed to bomb it, by 'accident', so it is not as old as is proclaimed, although miraculously, by divine intervention, the Buddha was not even damaged.
After inappropriately chanting 'Kali ma shakti de!' I got strange looks from everyone and decided I had better move on. BTW, that is the 2nd Indiana Jones reference I made, guess what I watched on the plane?
Next up was a new old street, with a couple of interesting tidbits (fun fact: my spell checker wants to change tidbits to titbits, I guess you could carry a few titbits in your fanny pack?) in an otherwise abandoned freshly minted old street, I will explain better in the pics.
For my final stop on a very hot morning, I headed to the botanical gardens, which are small, and a bit underwhelming, but full of people with huge enormous cameras taking photos of tree stumps.
Not many photos today.
This is the presidential palace. They do not call it that, but I think it is the administrative building for the office of the President. When I was here once before it was occupied by a student uprising and all the streets around it were blocked off. That all resulted in, nothing much.
I was on my way to the oldest most important temple in Taiwan. This is not it.
This is it! It is quite a small compound.
The surrounding gardens are full of golden dragons. Just as Buddha would want.
There is also a series of fake waterfall's with giant goldfish acting coy.
BINGO! The incense burner appears.
Filming seems to be fine inside Taiwanese temples, even during the actual prayer lead by satanic looking monks in black robes and pope hats who are inside that main part of the temple.
A starving cat appeared in the rafters. Quite the useless cat, there were food offerings everywhere!
Here is the sign that explains the bombing, and also explains that they don't burn incense anymore? I call bullshit, cause I could see it burning.
The next stop is the new old street. There are signs all over it declaring administrative neutrality.
It is a nice enough looking setup, owned by the city, some of the interiors have little museum style setups about not much, but most of them are currently empty, apart from the ubiquitous bubble tea shops.
The largest exhibition is the COVID museum. At first I thought it was a testing location and got ready to flee, but no, it is a couple of plastic suits and some newspaper printouts.
My journey to the botanical gardens took me past a giant French Taiwanese supermarket. I did a lap to enjoy the air conditioning. The top floor had a pretty good food court, food for future thought.
Now to observe people observing a tree trunk. I am guessing they are waiting for a bird to appear.
The lotus pond has only one flower. A guy was taking a photo of it with a lense about 3 metres long. I stood in front of him.
There is a zen garden. Small and understated. Nice drain in the foreground.
Overall, the gardens are small and compared to a few nearby parks that are not the official botanical gardens, rather disappointing. Now I will have a 2nd coffee and a pineapple cake.
The big buildings of Xinyi
THE building is in Xinyi. So are a few other buildings as you shall see, including some under construction and a few that have been finished since I was last here. This area of Taipei is the newest cleanest fanciest part of the city, and probably the country.
I have been up Taipei 101 before, but despite the $20 fee, I feel as though tonight was a missed opportunity and I should have paid for a repeat visit, as the sunset was great. Oh well, my tightartedness strikes again.
Most of the shops around here are clearly not for me, the ironic part though was when I was looking at the Porsche dealership in the shopping mall (a strange concept), the salesman came over and asked me to leave. I guess I won't be getting another one of those any time soon then, they are clearly not for me.
A good thing about Taipei 101 is the food court. I love a food court, everyone knows that, it's cheap, you do not get turned away for being a party of one, and you get to wander around for ages making your choice. Tonight I was early so seating was not an issue. Also as I mentioned on a previous night, the whole buy a card, charge a card with more money than you need on the card, buy a meal with the card, refund the remaining funds on the card system is dead and buried, all the individual shops take credit card now. Actually I think this particular food court had an even sillier system previously where you had to pay at a central cashier, and tell them what you wanted from a stall 150 metres away who's plastic display meals you looked at. They had books or cards of all the stalls to remind you, but the pictures on the cards looked nothing like what was actually on offer.
I have no idea if they actually take cash. That was all a bit long and overly complex for buying a cheap meal in a food court.
The main show. If you go to the top you get to see the counterweight wobbling.
Just part of the extensive food court discussed extensively above.
Taipei 101 itself also has a high end mall. The type of place with shops and no customers, but rope sashes for forming a queue.
I descended to street level, here are some food vans. Nice trees.
This part of the walk to city hall was here previously. It is mainly cinemas. The 4 building Shin Kong Mitsukoshi is all new since I was last here, so I did not photograph it properly.
I got asked to leave.
Almost looks rendered. These are apartment buildings that often get proposed but never built. Here is one that got built.
Nice sunset!
OK, one more of the iconic phallic monument.
Another building under construction. Great sunset.
When you think of stock photo that they use on news stories about finance, you think of this. So I took one. Although it would need men in suits carrying briefcases (which no longer actually exist as a concept) for it to be used as a news story stock photo.
Tonight's dinner, a Taiwanese style meal of braised fatty pork on rice. Delicious.
And for my final shot this evening, proof that I stayed out until it got dark, just. Today I was up early, had lunch early, had dinner early, and I guess I will go to bed early. Tomorrow is a hiking day, in the heat. Additional research on the bus to take to the remote starting point is still required, so I will do that now.