From the Top of the Man Made World to the Bottom of it – Taipei

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Wow, I could get used to this. The delegation, along with each student’s respective host, met at a local high school at 8:00 to begin our journey, and a journey it was. A tour bus picked us up from the high school along with a tour guide to lead us around Taipei. On the hour drive to the city, she outlined our schedule and a brief history of the beautiful country. Once we met the city limits, the entire bus was transfixed by not only the “world’s tallest building”, Taipei 101 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taipei_101) But also many other phenomenal structures. I would also like to take this time to point out one thing I love about Taiwan, their architecture. Everything is built amazingly; the department stores here could be a centerpiece of many American cities. The local department store in Hsinchu is Sogo. It is a enormous white and red building in the middle of downtown, American department stores are rarely, if ever, two stories tall, but this one is 13, yes 13 stories filled with nicks and knacks, every floor having it’s specialty from food to clothing, it’s amazing (not to mention that on the bottom floor they have a queue line for the elevators with lovely greeters, ASTOUNDING). But this is just the suburb department stores, and before I get into too much detail, I say just one thing, one of the major Taipei department stores has a full functioning Ferris wheel going inside and out of the top of it, it legitimately took my breathe away.

Anyways, our first stop was to the National Palace Museum, one of the top 10 ranked museums in the world. After the Japanese invaded China in the late nineteenth century, the reigning ruler moved all of the precious artifacts (numbering over 600,000 in total) to Taipei to be safe. Soon after the communist regime took over the mainland, the president of Taiwan created this museum to show the ancient artifacts to the public, jewels once only seen by the royalty now belonged to all classes of Asian and human life. We flew through the museum containing artifacts from the last 8,000 years in less than an hour, which was a good thing because my feet, along with my attention span, was beginning to wane. By far the coolest thing in the museum was a piece of jade sculpted into a vegetable with a spider and a grasshopper on it. It was breathtakingly beautiful.

Following the museum we went to lunch, just another phenomenal and overfilling Asian cuisine to add to my list. What made this one different is during my stay here, it is definitely the first time I’ve had any sort of thing that tastes like orange chicken, it was delicious!

But the true highlight of my day was Taipei 101. Walking up to this monster was intimidating, but I couldn’t help but think the same thought over and over. The building (at least the middle part) looks like a tower of empty Chinese food cartons stacked on top of each other, genius, right?! But no, it was actually based on the shape of bamboo, but too me, it will always be full of empty fried rice cartons! We paid NT400 to go to the observation deck, and it was worth that, and more. To get there we rode the world’s fastest elevators; 84 stories in 37 seconds, you do the math; it was insanity! Getting to the top, I could barely breath…I could see miles! I was so high up that I could almost see over the mountains surrounding the capital. It took my breath away; I was in awe. You could see the core of the city surrounding the building and then how it gently scurried into the hills; by far one of the coolest things my eyes have ever seen. After our decent at over 600 m/s we stopped by the Haagen-Dazs and got some good American ice cream, the first American food I’d had since leaving LAX a week before, it was the best ice cream I’ve ever had.

After Taipei 101 we drove over to Dan-Shuei Fish Warf right alongside the harbor. It was a pretty chill hour, except for the fact that Malcom, John, Vanessa and I each at a 50cm ice cream cone (Normal cone, and the rest ice cream), it was crazy delicious!

To end our day we went to the notorious Night Market in Taipei, a must for any tourist. Looking for cheap goods, we ransacked the shops for bargains. After buying what I needed for my mother (a duty for any teenage boy overseas) I went exploring. Some of my compadres and I went to a photo booth and took some goofy pictures, after which the girls dolled up and now look fairly unrespectable. Then I met up with the majority of the girls in the delegation, all of whom where looking for the really good (almost illegal) fake purses. They got what they wished for in the dark alleyways of inner city Taipei, they instantly regretted their decision, and if you would like to know more, ask one of them, but it was an interesting experience none-the-less.

 

All is well on the streets of Taipei and it is way past my bedtime, goodnight.

 

Song Description (take a guess…): “Take My Breath Away” - Berlin