Well, the weather didn’t clear up so I didn't get the opportunity to go to Beitou today (see my last post). As it was, I had a fairly good time sorting myself out—including the opportunity to buy a light waterproof—before heading off to Japan tomorrow. I've now sorted out accommodation for my first five nights (two in Tokyo before going to Nagoya and then on to Takayama—I'll be returning to Tokyo for a week before going on to Korea).

Anyway, by not going to Beitou, I was able to take the time to go to the observation deck in Taipei 101—thus proving false my suggestion that such a thing didn't exist. Even if I had had my camera with me, the photos wouldn't have shown much since the building was shrouded in cloud, which was moving pretty quickly and thus allowed …

Train Journey to Taichung

I’d bought my train ticket from Taipei to Taichung (Taizhong) on the Saturday before I was due to travel on the Monday. Taipei Main Station was packed, and there were long queues at all of the ticket counters—twelve or so—both for travel that day and for advance-purchase tickets. You can buy tickets online, but I couldn’t because the English version of the reservations site always failed with an incomprehensible error. Eventually I got my ticket, to travel on a train at 12.22 on Monday and went on my merry way rejoicing.

I turned up on Monday in very good time for the train—hours before it was due to leave because I wanted to get a handle on what was going on at the station, what information was available, etc. I went through the …

I thought that I should write something to get this Travel Log off the ground, and also because I’ll be leaving the city tomorrow on the 12.22 express train to Taichung, Taiwan’s third-largest city, in the West of this fairly diminutive island (it covers 36,000 km²—England is more than 3.6 times its size at 130,395 km²). I've been here now for four days, having arrived on Thursday. Unfortunately my stay here has been marred by jet-lag: I thought I’d honed my skills at largely conquering the lag, but I had one sleepless night in Bangkok (I flew from London to Bangkok, and then on to Taipei) which set me back rather. I’ve also been recovering from my ailments at Christmas-time and so I haven’t been able to see as much of this city as perhaps I would have liked, …