On Top of Taipei

July 22

Day three of our journey brought us to the capital of the country, Taipei. It is a bustling, overcrowded city that offers plenty to do. On the trip from Yi-Lan to Taipei, we went through one of the longest tunnels in the world. I forget the name of it, but the Taiwanese claim that it was the most difficult tunnel construction project in the world. Judging from the inside of the tunnel, the results were inconclusive.

Our first stop of the day was at the Taipei 101. Unfortunately, the building didn’t open up to commercial traffic until 11:00, which meant that we had two hours before we could go inside. I followed Jake (England), Craig (England), and Beck (Taiwan) around until the building opened. We first headed over to McDonalds for some food, but I opted out of getting any. I am too close to leaving the country to be eating American fast food. I decided that I would wait until the 101 opened up and get food in the food court.

After that, we decided to go over to the City Hall, which was a few blocks away from the 101. They turned out to have a pretty interesting museum inside. It gave details of how Taipei came to be created and organized. I also learned that Tainan was the capital of Taiwan for a long time before Taipei became the capital in 1887 (I had to look up the year). The audio guides that we had were very informative.

After that, we were on our way back to the Taipei 101. Jake, Craig, and I decided to spend the NT400 to go up to the top. We found out that spectator area was only on the 88th floor and were a little disappointed by that. Overall, the experience at the top was good, not great. I thought that the view of Kaohsiung from the Kaohsiung 85 was better than Taipei from the Taipei 101 (original names, huh?). Even so, it was still pretty cool to go up the tallest completed building in the world. The best part about the top was the ability to see the wind damper. The wind damper is a 660 metric ton hunk of metal that acts as a counterbalance to stabilize the building. It is the only one in the world that is open to the public to view. I enjoyed listening to how it worked.
Our afternoon trip took us to the National Palace Museum. First, a little background on the place. When Chiang Kai-shek was forced to Taiwan by Mao, he took a bunch of stuff from the mainland with him. Among the things that he took were many different artistic pieces. So many, in fact, that the National Palace Museum regularly changes exhibits, but has yet to show all of the pieces in their possession.

The tour turned out to be pretty much of a disappointment. Everybody had an earpiece, which was tuned to the leader’s microphone. However, the leader was Scott, the guy who had just turned 18 a couple of days ago. He was far from an expert in the artwork that we viewed. Instead, he gave us valuable information like, “This is written in Chinese,” “How many stamps do you see on this paper?” and “This is old.” Most importantly, he used the opportunity to recite the dirty words that the British guys had taught him over the previous weeks.


The big draw at the museum was a piece of jade carved into the shape of a cabbage. Call me crazy, but I just couldn’t get very excited over the most expensive thing shaped like a vegetable that I’d ever seen in my life. It turned out that the pieces I liked the most were the contemporary artwork that I went to look at by myself. I liked a few of them a lot.

After that, we traveled to the hotel about an hour or two south of Taipei. It was in a remote area. It would have taken a 20 minute cab ride to get to the nearest town. Dinner was provided in a restaurant in the middle of the area. I knew it would be a rough time for me when we were told that it would be a vegetarian meal.

One thing that I had learned from my time here is that my body likes meat. If it doesn’t have some, my body gets mad at me. I had not had any meat all day up to that point and now found out that I wouldn’t for the rest of the evening as well. It turned out that I spent about the same amount of time in the bathroom as I did at the table for the meal. In hindsight, I should have sprung for the McDonald’s in the morning.

The rest of the evening was spent walking around the area. It turned out that the place wasn’t like a hotel; it was like a little village with small huts as the rooms. We spent most of the evening sitting down by the pond and talking with one another. It was a good place to relax, save for the biggest moth that I’d ever seen in my life that kept flying around the light by us.

Thanks to Grace and Wikipedia for some of the images.