Taiwan

Taipei, Taiwan
Day 2, 30 March 2008

We walked around quite a lot on the 2nd day in Taipei. Starting by walking around Zhongxiao road, going with the bus just to pass the Taipei Arena. Then he brought me to the streets near Taipei Railway Station since there are many food sellers there. There we tried Stinky Tofu (chou doufu), Oyster Vermicelli and also went to a restaurant to eat Cabbage Sushi and Sashimi plate.

Taipei 101

After that we went to the Taipei 101, the highest building in Taipei. Several levels of the Taipei 101 are used as luxurious shopping mall. The admission ticket for the observatory hall costs NT$400, which is not really cheap. The entrance is located in 5th floor, from there you will go to the 89th floor within 37 seconds using the fastest elevator in the world. In the observatory hall, basically you can see the view of Taipei from every corner. Beside that, you can see the "Baby Damper", the 650 tons huge balancing ball and there is also outdoor viewing platform, which is open only if the weather is fine.

Taipei, Taiwan
Day 1, 29 March 2008

Arrival, Taoyuan International Airport

I arrived in Taoyuan using China Airlines from Frankfurt very early in the morning. Since I just do a transit, I don't want to bring all my luggage out of the immigration. For this there is a so called "bonded baggage" service, which will keep your luggage inside the airport and only can be taken when you fly away from Taoyuan again.

Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall

After leaving my small suitcase at Billy's house, having breakfast and took a short rest, we went directly to the city. Our first destination is the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. We didn't really spend lot of time there, just saw the memorial hall and took some pictures.

Longshan Temple and Hwahsi Night Market

Next destination is the Longshan Temple. Probably there was a kind of ceremony in the temple on that day, because it was crowded and the people were chanting prayers all the time therefore I didn't dare to take pictures inside.

From there we then walked to the Hwahsi Night Market. There are so many food sellers there. You can see many fresh sea food but also few exotic food such as snake and even small crocodile.