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, but what I have seen has been thoroughly rewarding.

When I got to the kerb outside the airport to catch a taxi into the city, it was to find a group of airport workers standing around a girl who was signing autographs for them! When she had satisfied their demands, they went off to gather round a guy further along the kerb so that he could also sign for them. I have absolutely no idea who they were (though they seemed to know each other) but was amused to note that it was only the workers who were so keen for their autographs, and none of my fellow passengers.

Weather

Ever since I arrived the weather has been fine — in fact the man driving my taxi saw fit to comment on this fact to me as we were leaving the airport. I’m not quite sure if he was doing it as a way of making polite English conversation or because the city had just come out of a period of bad weather. In fact, the weather has possibly been too fine: not oppressive in any way, but the combination of temperatures generally in the 70-80s °F (20s and low 30s °C), and my mostly winter-oriented clothing selection has left me a little bit sticky. I suppose when I was packing in gloomy Witney winter I wasn’t thinking of warmer climes. Also, in my defence, the guidebook says it gets cold here in winter because of winds wailing across Central Asia. Bah.

At least it’ll be cold in Japan — I’ve occasionally been watching the news items about them shovelling the heaviest snow-fall on record: the snow has apparently been so heavy that it’s been damaging the structure of some buildings’ roofs!

Getting Around

My heartiest compliments to the designers of Taipei’s relatively new underground railway system, the MRT. Where I’m staying is 10-15 minutes’ walk from a station (Taipower Building) and the whole system runs very smoothly. I got a card from a machine which I can charge up with funds when it runs out (which it won’t after my short stay) — you just wave it over a sensor at the barrier and it charges you automatically (I think this is how the Oyster card works on the London Underground, right? But there, if my understanding is correct, you have to sign up, and use it regularly, whereas here I was able easily to get hold of the card and the credit is valid for two years, after which it can still be refunded to me). Plus, you get a discount for using this system over buying tickets every time. I think I’ve seen about three people in total using ordinary tickets; everyone else uses this ‘EasyCard’.

The trains that I’ve used have been frequent and undelayed; they make a noise which reminds me of the CityRail trains in Sydney. They’re air-conditioned inside (as are all the underground stations!), and the announcements are made in (I think) Mandarin, Taiwanese, Hakka and English. There are even lights that flash to show which side of the train the platform is on at the approaching station. The trains are wide — can’t find the gauge — and although the seats are solid plastic, they’re perfectly comfortable. [There’s a good Wikipedia article on the Taipei Rapid Transit System.]

I’ve made one journey by bus — again using the EasyCard to pay — which was more difficult because I didn’t immediately cotton on to the information screen at the front of the bus showing the names of the stops being passed. There were only Chinese announcements (although, thankfully, on that route the written indication was also in English, although it did flash away quickly), but for my stop (the National Palace Museum) there was also an announcement in English because of its status as a tourist attraction.

The National Palace Museum

The first toursit thing I did was to visit “the one thing you must see”, the National Palace Museum. As its name suggests, it’s a museum housed in a palace, and it was well worth the visit. I found particularly interesting the exhibit on the development of Chinese script (although there was very little description available for that one). Most interesting though, to me, were the paintings done by the Italian Jesuit missionary Giuseppe Castaglione who was ordered by the Ch’ien-lung emperor in 1762 to paint four horses he’d been given by an Afghan high-up. He did this — very accurately — and also documented various data about the horses in Manchu, Mongolian, Chinese and Uighur. I’d never seen Manchu or Uighur before, so it was interesting to see their scripts (both very Arabic-looking). For once, that was a postcard that they were selling in the gift shop.

That said, there’re only so many Jade and bronze bowls that you can look at without them all melding into one — even if they did all originate several millenia B.C.. Having traversed the museum, I left to see Longshan Temple in the city. Not much description needed there when you can look at the photographs.

The Xinyi Experience

Xinyi is the most up-and-coming district in Taipei; it is fairly close to the centre of the city. I went there yesterday to visit the Discovery Centre of Taipei and to see the building ‘Taipei 101′. The Discovery Centre of Taipei is located within the city hall, and I was slightly worried that it might prove to be little more than a parade of self-congratulatory pleasantries. In fact — although there was a certain element of ‘we’ve got very good waste management systems in place, so there’ — it proved to be very interesting. The exhibition is over two floors, and you’re meant to start from the top with the displays on Taipei’s (and really, Taiwan’s) history, particularly over the last 150 years, which been the most exciting. The other floor deals more with the city qua city (rather than capital of Taiwan), depicting changing views and developments and yes, ways that Taipeiers deal with their waste. The museum (sorry, Discovery Centre) is quite obviously geared for tourists — there are free audio guides available in English only (a gently-spoken American had done the recording, who spoke of the phonetically more-correct ‘Taibei’) and I was welcomed in by a man who spoke English very well. The whole thing is free; however I seemed to be the only foreigner throughout the place! The other visitors were all Taiwanese (or at least Chinese of some sort): evidently it’s a good place to bring your youngish children on a Saturday.

At 2pm I was invited to come back upstairs because there was about to be a showing in the museum cinema. The cinema was set up with screens all around the perimeter (each one with its own projector) and the floor the audience was on rotated to face each screen in turn. The film was a depiction of a day all around the city of Taipei (no commentary, just clips), and the subject was entirely suited to the rotating gimmick.

Following a suggestion of the guidebook, I walked to the Taipei 101 building to get some lunch. Taipei 101 is currently the tallest building in the world (at least it is on three out of four criteria), and it was built to resemble bamboo shoots tied together. Apparently. I got there, and didn’t feel overly awed by its height, although its 101 storeys (hence the name) stand 1,667 ft in total. I went in, down to the food hall (described as “the best Asian food court we’ve ever seen” in the Lonely Planet guide) and had a fairly tasty, if standard, dish of meat and rice served with soup. Most impressive to me was the amount of space that everyone had inspite of the roaring Saturday trade.

After the late lunch I decided to take a wander around and see how much of the building I could see from the inside. There is no observation deck open to the public, so I couldn’t exercise my vertigo. In fact the public only really has access to the massive shopping centre which occupies the first five floors of the building (the block on which the actual ‘tower’ sits). The whole place was immaculate, and the shops were all very smart, mostly Western, brands. The floors and walls were covered in marble and as I walked through watching everyone else go past I couldn’t help but think that this was the shopping centre to make the QVB cry.

Regrets

There are some things that I’m sorry not to have been able to do in Taipei, including going to some of the night markets, visiting the paper museum (no, really) and visiting the water museum (ditto — they both sound pretty interesting). I hope that I might be able to go to some of the night markets elsewhere in the country during my brief tour, and I wasn’t sorry to miss the Snake Alley night market — apparently there are real life snake charmers, messing around with cobras and the like. I shuddered even as I read it, noting that I’d go to some other market.

That’s all for now, folks. Leave a comment (below) if you like what you’ve read, and don’t forget to go and look at the photos!