After breakfast, Jane and I headed straight for Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world (for now). Aibek would meet us later as he was in the panel for the SRB at his LC.. (see he's still so involved in AIESEC) Well Taipei101 is located near their City Hall MRT Station.. passed by a few large shopping centres.. the kind that sells branded stuff like in Orchard Road.. there’s a mall at Taipei 101 also but that one is just 5 floors... we paid 350 yuan for a ticket and took the world's fastest elevator up to the observatory on the 87th floor of the world's tallest building.. then you get this funky gadget with a earpiece and it explains to you the views and stuff.. we spent quite some time up there cos the weather was great and the view was fantastic.. I took the most photos up there in all my 5 days in Taipei.. yeah I have this thing for big open spaces.. guess you can't blame me as we don't have much of that in Singapore.. hehe
After Taipei101, we headed for Sun Yat Sen memorial hall.. just in time to see the guards changing shift.. what an elaborate routine for something as simple as changing shifts.. the guards had to march slowly, fiddle around with their rifles, salute a few times and fiddle with their rifles somemore.. after the guards on the old shift finally walked off, the new ones stood there for a while letting visitors take photos with them before marching slowly to their stands.. Mr Sun Yat Sen's Statue had probably seen that routine countless times =)
After looking around in the Sun Yat Sen museum inside the memorial hall, we set off again, this time for Dan Shui, which is further north of Taipei City.. It's as up north you can go on the island via MRT and if you travel further up you can see where the river flows into the Pacific Ocean =) The MRT ride took almost an hour I think but the time spend was definitely worth it cos the place is beautiful.. once you get out of the MRT station, you are greeted with a view of the river and Bali Island on the opposite bank (cool huh? Taiwan has its own Bali Island also) The breeze is a bit strong but the sun was out so it wasn't too cold… stalls and shops line the walkway as we walk along the river... a lot of amusement park style stalls like throwing balls into hoops, darts onto balloons etc.. a lot of stalls selling food as well.. a lot of fried stuff and grilled stuff.. oh and I got the chance to try the fried ice cream =) and they had these ice cream cones where the cream went up to at least 30 cm high.. Taiwan food is fun man.. hahah
Anyway, Jane and I walked along, enjoying the view and talking and laughing about a lot of stuff.. we then took a bus to Fishermen's Wharf where we could see the Pacific Ocean.. OCEAN leh!!!! Hahahha.. lots of people were around cos there was a performance thingy going on there and it was the weekend.. quite a number of them were with their dogs also.. they do love their dogs; they bring them everywhere man… anyway we hung around, enjoyed the scenary and the ocean breeze.. then we took a boat back to Danshui.. so that's another form of transportation I had taken =) by this time it was early evening so we got a preview of the pre-sunset sky.. nice..
Aibek should have finished by now so we headed off to Jian Tan MRT station to visit Shilin Night Market! The largest in Taipei I heard.. we had dinner at the nearby food center, and I was somewhat amazed to see that even the stalls there sell pretty much similar stuff.. I tried the oyster ommelete and the beef noodles.. a bit different from in Singapore but still very tasty.. after dinner we went to the Night Market and man it was sooo crowded and bright.. lots of food, clothes, shoes, accessories, souvenirs on sale.. the most interesting thing I saw was the battery-operated vibrating condom.. hahahhaah..
Well we had already been out for a while so everyone was kind of tired so we went back home again.. we were going to watch Moulin Rouge DVD but after watching TV, I went into the room to find my 2 hosts fast asleep already =) So I watched TV on my own and then off to sleep.. tomorrow would be an even longer day as we were going outside of Taipei City..
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