First Weekend in Taipei
It's been a couple of days since my last post, during which time I have been extremely busy! Teaching in and of itself is exhausting. Travelling in and of itself can also be exhausting. The combination of the two pretty much means that I will be completely drained until getting on the plane bound for LA on August 19.On Friday night, our group of 6 Texans went out all together, in part to celebrate Dan's birthday, and in part to celebrate making it through the first week. We headed up to Shilin to the area where there is a very popular nightmarket. These suckers are crazy- it's like an outdoor discount mall with food vendors selling things you wouldn't typically even fathom eating (a chicken has claws... why waste them when you can fry them up!) mixed together with a carnival. Seriously, all the senses are at their peak at a nightmarket. Especially when walking past the Stinky Tofu stand (they swear it tastes good, but we all had to literally hold our breath just walking past).
We first had dinner at a place where no one spoke any English. It was interesting, hilarious, and slightly embarrasing. I had my Lonely Planet: Taiwan with me, so we were at least able to show our waiter the food list, where he identified 3 things they served at the restaurant. We then chose from those 3, except for Dan who, in a spirited mood, attempted to ask if they had shrimp in broken Chinese. He got the "Do you have" part right, but then accidentally pointed to "shrine" in his phrase book, to which the waiter's response was a vehement NO (or "Mei o, mei o, mei o!"). After having our iced beers and various foods, we cruised the nightmarket for a while, where I purchased a new, improved umbrella (the one I brought from home got taken, but this new one is FAN-tastic and only cost $100 NTD [about $3 USD]).
Saturday, we trekked up to the National Palace Museum. Upon exiting the MRT, we were a little confused about which bus to get on. This extremely nice lady approached us, aking if we neede help. We told her where we were going, and she said, "Oh, it's very far. You'll need to take the bus. I'll find out which one." She runs over to the bus stop, sees that the bus we need has just closed its doors and taken off, RUNS after the bus, pounding on the doors, tells everyone on board where we are headed, and sends us on our merry way. It was great. When we got near the stop, everyone was like, "Here, here, it's here!" going so far as to come up from the back of the bus to tap Amy on the shoulder, ensuring we arrived at our destination. They were so cute and everyone bid us goodbye as we got off. So great. I love helpful people. Please, wherever you are, help a foreigner today.
After the museum, we spent a lot of time in the beautiful water gardens near the palace. IT was so relaxing and gorgeous. There are lots of pictures posted on my Kodak Gallery page. E-mail me if you didn't receive the link. Afterwards, we visited 2 temples (the Confucius Temple and Bao-An Temple), during which time it began to rain quite substantially. We went to dinner at a great place, where they had Engligh menus, the waitress spoke English, and we got on abundance of delicious food and drink for $15 (total! For 3 of us!).
I know we overextended ourselves Saturday because upon returning, I intended to go do laundry, but instead thought I'd take a brief rest. That rest turned into 9 hours of sleep (on the board bed... the couch cushions have done the trick. That and wearing myself absolutely ragged during the day).
Sunday I spent the day on my own. I probably walked 10 miles, which included visits to the Flower Market, the Jade Market, the port town of Danshui (on the northern coast on the Taiwan Strait), and some shopping on Roosevelt Rd. It was a nice day, and fun to explore on my own, but I was beat by the time I got back in. I had to soak my feet in the tub for quite some time.
posted by mitsi @ 11:25 AM
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