Taipei, Taiwan

This past weekend I went to Taipei, Taiwan with a couple of guys from work. I have been meaning to get to Taiwan for a while now, so when I heard that they were making a trip, I invited myself along. While studying abroad in Beijing, I was able to take a few months to travel throughout the Chinese mainland. I made a point of going to every province. This trip to Taiwan was along those same lines. The whole question of whether or not Taiwan is part of China is still debated (heatedly by some), but I don’t care too much for the politics of the situation. For me, it was more along the lines of getting an introduction to all places Chinese.

Taipei was very similar to any big city in China (in the year 2000, China had over 200 cities with a population of 6 million or more. The number is probably higher by now, so when I say ‘big city,’ what I really mean to say is “big city that people outside of China have heard of.”). The people dressed the same way, ate the same things, and had the same sort of buildings (bathroom tile as an exterior) and sidewalks (broken, uneven, and with the lines and bumps built in for the blind in some parts).

The trip was decent, but not all that it could have been. The reason for that is because I have been very busy with work lately. I worked about 70 hours the week before the trip and I didn’t have time to prepare for it or even to look up things to do. I think that a big part of the problem was the lack of a guidebook. There is nothing wrong with avoiding tourist traps and seeking your own adventure, but we went into Taipei without any plans at all. On the one hand, I don’t like having too many plans when I travel. I like to do the planning on the train, plan, or bus ride to the destination, arrive, and take things as they come with only a skeleton of a plan. On the other hand, not even knowing the layout of a city before you grab a free map at the airport doesn’t translate to exciting and adventurous as much as confusing and frustrating.

The lack of a plan was apparent from the very beginning. Unfortunately, at midnight, after walking around for 4 hours looking for a place to sleep and not having any success, it’s easy to begin getting annoyed. At that point, it would be nice to be able to crack open the Lonely Planet and say, “we turn left out of Shilin subway station, walk two blocks, and a street of budget hotels will be on our right.” Nope. Instead we resorted to walking one way for a while, seeing that it wasn’t yielding any results, turning at a ninety degree angle and walking that way for a while.

We did find a strange hostel at around 11:00pm, but the lady running it was less than friendly. I think it was more of a long-term place. All of the guests were dressed for bed (think sweatpants and face creams) crowded around the TV in a dingy, poorly lit room. They looked at us with a sort of disbelief. The furniture was old and the walls yellow and stained. The scene was all together depressing and eerie. The only thing I could think was, “$9 a night? Sweet.”

The lady running the place was not friendly and claimed that she had no room, even though there was a board on the wall with three empty beds listed. She wouldn’t even let us make a local call to another place to see if they had any beds, despite my offer of cash. She made one of the guests give us his calling card, which I couldn’t get to work. The younger Chinese woman working at the place asked her, in Chinese, “why not just let them use the phone?” Her answer was, “because I don’t want to.”

Despite our best efforts and polite requests for help, we were no closer to finding a place to sleep than before we arrived at the run-down hostel. As we left, I said in English, “thanks for all of your help,” then in Chinese, “don’t worry about the phone call, we’ll just keep walking.” Granted, it wasn’t at all clever, but at least she understood that I understood Chinese and what she said about not wanting to let us use the phone. In Chinese that’s called diu lian: losing face.

Eventually, after midnight, we found a place.

On Saturday we started off with a dim sum breakfast. It wasn’t exactly what dim sum should be. There were no steaming carts with bamboo baskets, no pointing, no yelling, or crazy crowds. It was ordering off the menu and a half-full restaurant. The food was decent, but what’s dim sum without the ambiance?

We went to a couple of parks and a museum early in the day. The highlight was a bed of rocks that stimulated your body through pressure points on the feet. After the walking we did the night before (in sandals for me), it was a hurts-so-good barefoot walk up the stone path. None of us made it all the way to the bell (were we supposed to ring it in celebration if we made it?), but we all agreed that our feet felt very pleasant afterwards. Whether that was because they were rejuvenated or if they were just numb is beside the point.

After that it was off to the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall (closed), a former “world’s tallest building” Taipei 101, and a night market (no men’s clothes). The day ended around midnight.

Day three started with some street food for breakfast and a trip north of the city to Dian Shui. While there we walked along the boardwalk, ate some squid on a stick and took part in some carney games. In the afternoon we headed to Taipei proper once more to visit some temples. The Long Dong (Dragon East) Temple was very crowed, but nicely maintained.

After that I struck out on my own. One of the guys wanted to go to a market before heading to a baseball game. I didn’t much feel like going anywhere in particular, so I decided to just start walking and see what I could find. I saw a lot of people burning spirit money and making offerings, but the fires were soon extinguished by a torrential downpour.

I waited under an overhang for about an hour, just watching people and the water. While waiting, I saw something that I had never seen before. People with umbrellas were escorting people without them from one overhang to another. People lined up at the edge of the overhang and waited for someone with an umbrella to walk by. The person with the umbrella would give a nod, and the two people would quickly cross the street, both partially protected from the rain. After that, they each went their separate ways after a short ‘thank you’ and good-bye.

The last day was spent at the National Palace Museum. It was not what I was expecting. For some reason, I thought there would be much more. Supposedly they have 600,000 pieces on display. I didn’t keep count, but it seemed that there was a lot less than that. There were a few sections with old government documents. Yes, that is as exciting as it sounds, which is not-at-all. Other than that, it was a lot of ink dishes, plates, and bronze pots.

After the museum, we made our way to the airport and back to Japan. Our plane didn’t explode, which is always a plus. The one that did explode a few weeks ago is still on display, though. It was a friendly reminder to read the emergency exit procedures carefully.

All in all, the trip was ok, but not the best I have ever taken. It’s hard to get to know a place in a weekend. Taiwan, at least the little I saw of it, was like an expensive version of China. What I learned: a guidebook is a must if you aren’t willing to pay for cabs and expensive hotels. If you have flat feet, don’t wear sandals and shoes without support. And, perhaps most importantly, you only enjoy things as much as you tell yourself you enjoy them. I went into this trip with the wrong mindset.