Part 18: Taiwan (#1)

The view from about halfway up Xiangshan Mountain, Taipei.

Taipei:

By the time we got to Taipei, street food and a convenience store within steps of our hotel made for a great dinner of pork dumplings, green onion pancakes and Taiwan Gold Medal beer in our room - a fine start to a new city. Ready to run around the next morning, instead we woke up to Taipei Rain (á là Prince, thank you) - apparently the north is the wettest part of the island. This was not your typical Seattle sprinkle, or long protracted mist. We dashed to the Huashan 1914 creative park, housed in an abandoned saké factory, to browse the quirky stores in a dry-ish setting.

Of course, it's always dry in the massive subway infrastructure, so we decided to traverse some of the city by walking underground. The Elsite bookstore provided us with some much needed English reading material, followed by a dim sum feast at Din Tai Fun, in its home city. And yes, it did taste better at the source, even if it made us homesick for our Christmas tradition with Cousin Steve and Taylor back in Seattle. After the food coma wore off, we finished the night at Soshow, a cocktail bar near our hotel with unique and excellent drinks. The menu featured inventive libations based on various locations across Taiwan, using regional ingredients. The owner/bartender was happy to speak English with us, and spent a lot of time sharing his extensive knowledge. We meant to get back there, but sadly never made it.

Early the next morning was a train and bus ride to the old street in Jiufen, an early 1900's Japanese mining town. Supposedly this was the inspiration for Miyazaki's animated masterpiece, "Spirited Away," although he claims otherwise. (It's an absolute favorite movie - watch it if you haven't!) It's easy to see the supposed connection between the movie and this tiny town, clinging high up on a mountainside. It's an Escher-like maze of narrow, steep, and winding streets, connected by countless stairs. The streets are lined with old shopfronts - the intervening sliver of sky overhead usually covered by awnings. Huge, old wooden tea shops dangling hundreds of lanterns are built into the steeply terraced rock. We wished so much that we could see it in the evening - it must be magical.

We stopped on arrival for cliffside beer and snacks with another incredible view, then checked out a beautiful temple, the old-timey movie theater, and a super goofy ghost museum. Ducking into a random tunnel carved into the cliff, we wound around the back of a tea house to find ourselves at the entrance on the far side. We stopped for a full tea ceremony, complete with an elaborate demonstration (and printed instructions), overlooking the valley down to the sea below. Eventually the crowds and the heat made us throw in the towel - sadly we wouldn't make it to the old mines (which turned out to be further away.) We headed back to the bus, for a true "Hell on Wheels" ride home (our driver must have gotten his pedigree in Vietnam, haha!)

I guess we were making up for our previous rainy day, because somehow we decided to keep going. Back in Taipei we went to Red House - a cultural center/museum in a former market, and "American Street," full of fantastic murals. Dinner brought us to "Modern Toilet" (gotta keep it classy), where customers sit on toilets to eat poop-and-pee themed meals from smaller toilets, drinking from urology containers. Charming ambiance, but the food was crap (haha)! Then it was on to the rest of the neon-lit Xiemen district, to see the quasi night market and nightlife in action. It wasn't long before we had to stagger home, but of course couldn't pass up historic Tianhou temple on the way.

Apparently one marathon day wasn't enough, because we followed it up with an even longer one. An early start took us to the overwhelming Chiang Kai-Shek memorial hall, forming one side of a massive square bordered by the National Theater, National Concert hall, and a giant entrance gate. Crowds of tourists, tai chi groups, and troupes of school kids running laps to the beat of a drum did nothing to fill the voluminous space. We were conflicted about the monument and museum to the former leader of China, but were happy to discover the large exhibit there to Taiwan's long struggle for free speech and autonomy. There was also an incredibly intricate and beautiful burled wood-carving exhibit that we almost missed.

We followed this up with a bakery stop and a walk through Da’an park (modeled after NYC's Central Park) for exotic waterfowl viewing at the Ecological Pond. The centre island is home to hundreds of birds, including black-crowned night herons, grey herons, egrets, and ibises. From there, we hopped the subway for an hour-long wait to get to the top of Taipei 101. We usually wouldn't wait so long, but we only saw half of the line before we bought the tickets, haha. I don't know how my already crushed feet managed to survive, but the views from the top were worth it. The wind damper suspended in the middle of the observation floors was (literally) a huge bonus - a giant hanging golden orb, supported by hydraulics from below, looking like something out of an old science fiction movie.

From there, it wasn't "too far" of a walk to Elephant (Xiangshan) Mountain, so we pushed on. This was pretty much one long set of stairs through the woods, with increasingly impressive views of the city and the tower we had just left. Of course, once we had made the effort to get to the top, it would have been silly not to keep exploring. We were rewarded with nearly empty, fairy-tale trails winding through a green canopy of steep cliffs and huge, moss covered boulders, with peekaboo views of the city below. Finally we limped our way back to the subway home. What a way to spend our last day in Taipei!

Early the next morning, we stumbled our way through getting an awesome breakfast of fan tuan from a popular street vendor. Pickled luóbo radish, egg and meat (or meat floss) are wrapped up in purple sticky rice. YUM! So worth the effort of finding it, deciphering the all-Mandarin menu, and waiting in line. Then it was off to the bullet train and on to Taichung.

Taichung:

We checked in to the Red Dot hotel, which quickly became a favorite. With its silver curly slide from the 2nd floor down to the reception desk, we knew we were in the right place. From there, we jumped straight into a graphics day. We explored the beautifully landscaped river walk on the way to Animation Lane: an alley painted with murals of all kinds of cartoon characters. Next was the National Taiwan Museum of Comics: a former Japanese prison complex turned art space. The exhibits were fantastic, and being in a place where art triumphed over incarceration made it that much better. It didn't matter that most everything was in Mandarin, because art! There was a massive banyan tree seeming to defy gravity, having grown over the roof of a building that had since disintegrated. For dinner we stumbled on a ridiculously affordable and excellent omakase sushi spot close to "home." The only other diners were a couple of astronomers (Japanese and Australian) on vacation from Taipei, who were also staying at our hotel. We never would have dreamed we'd be eating awesome sushi in Taiwan with a pair of astronomers - it sounds like the set-up to a silly joke. They were so nice and interesting, and helped us by translating our various dishes. Finally we crawled off to bed.

After a surprisingly great hotel breakfast, we were off to a leisurely start in Taichung Park - the oldest in the city. I'm not sure of the significance of the giant ram sculpture made from coiled silver metal, but it was pretty cool. Beyond the beautiful landscaping, other highlights were watching a boater ineffectively attempting to row his boat backwards past the fountains and the Emperor's pavilion, while posing for a floating photoshoot; and the group of old men learning fighting techniques from an even older master. We walked to the bus station to make sure we understood how to navigate our trek to Sun Moon Lake the next day, then made our way to the beautiful, old-timey Miyahara confectionary shop for the most ridiculous ice cream sundae ever. We finished at the very popular Fu Din Wang restaurant for a pork knuckle dinner. While waiting on the sidewalk for our number to be called, we were entertained by watching the polished, high-speed choreography of busy staff assembling and dispatching countless meals at a fever pitch. On the way home, we stopped by a local temple, dedicated to a unicorn and a moorish saint. So cool! Back at the hotel, we finally hit the giant slide to the lobby a few times before bed.

Our short stop here was well worth it, but we were super excited to get to our next destination. Next stop, Sun Moon Lake...