Another Friday night
and Bridget (cousin) and I are sitting in the Cathay Pacific lounge at HK
airport waiting for our flight to Taipei, Taiwan. In normal SADJ style the
flight has been delayed, but hey when you are in the lounge with a glass of
Kiwi chardonnay who cares!!! Its Bridget's first time in an airport lounge so
she's loving it, a quote from her: "We should just be spending our whole
time here".
2 drinks later Bridget
has decided she's not coming to Taipei with me, she'd rather live in the lounge.
We're now on the plane
eating our ice-cream from the lounge and are amazed at how big the plane is and
worse yet how full it is. Clearly half the world is off to Taipei this weekend.
And with all their children. Finally took off after quite a long delay, and
after a short flight landed in Taipei. We were basically at the back of the
plane so after what seemed like hours eventually got off. Cleared customs
without any hassles and we were off into the big wide world of Taipei. Decided
to take a bus to the hotel as its a heck of a lot cheaper than a taxi (and
being that Bridget is between jobs and on the kiwi dollar we needed to be
careful). I don't even know where to begin to explain about the bus - imagine a
double Decker but the lower deck isn't for humans, bags only although given
there is a staircase leading down its a little worrying......... The bus had
rather odd green curtains with frills. Definitely not our cup of tea! We
realised that the driver sits downstairs and after seeing curtains on the top windows
were pleased with this. More later, we're off for the 1 hour or so ride to the
hotel.
Got to the hotel and
was greeted with a huge Christmas tree and Christmas decorations everywhere,
check in was nice and easy.
Saturday morning we
had a sleep in then relaxed in the lobby with a late breakfast. Was asked by
another guest if we were French......a little strange we thought. Its one of
Bridget's first time staying in a hotel so she was in heaven with everything in
the room. One comment I giggled over from her was about the makeup room and
where was it. For those of you who haven't stayed in a hotel every room has a
'makeup room' sign which of course means clean room. Dear Bridget thought there
was a makeup room, i.e. a room to put on your make-up.
When we ventured out
it was a beautiful hot day. Was jealous of my friends, also in Taipei, who were
relaxing by the pool but we had things to see so were off sight seeing.
We had booked an
afternoon tour so wandered nearby the hotel. On our small walk we noticed how
green Taipei is, which we love!, and that there are scooters for Africa. We
went to Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall which honours Dr Sun Yat-sen. There was a
surrounding park and lake which seemed a lovely place to come to escape the
busyness of Taipei.
The taxis are all
yellow which of course reminds me of NYC, I even think some of them drive as
crazy as they do in NY.
Our tour started just
after 1pm and after being in the van for no more than 5 minutes we were told by
our guide "You look American", we were both shocked as she didn't
even give us a chance to speak so she could have heard the accent was clearly
not American. After about 10 guesses someone else finally got it. Its very hard
to describe the guide other than to say we were not sure how we're going to
manage with her for 4 hours and this is after being in the van with her for 10
minutes.
First stop after
collecting all passengers was a bathroom stop, I was amazed at this. Of course
the bathroom happened to be in a large shop which seemed to sell everything but
primarily jewellery. After everyone had visited the bathroom and walked around
a shop a few times we were off to the seaside. It reminded me so much of the
drive between Blenheim and Kaikoura (in NZ). We stopped off and visited the
Nanya rocks, which are fantastic rock formations.
Next and last stop on
the tour was the famous Jioufen Old Street - small shops selling variety of
food and gifts/clothes; small alleyways; traffic was bumper to bumper getting
in and out of the town Finally got back to the hotel at 7pm, so what we'd
thought would be 4 hours with the guide turned out to be 5.5 hours. We were
well and truly really for a drink or 3!
Back to the hotel for
a quick change then headed out for dinner that had been recommended to me from
someone at work. We were told by the hotel they don't take bookings so we just
had to try our luck. After waiting for what seemed like 15 minutes we were in
desperate for a drink, so went across the road where we saw our number come and
go. Oh well we needed the drink after the afternoon with our guide. A man who I
think was the manager of the bar was so kind and went over to see if we would
be able to get a table when we finished our drink, and thankfully we would be
able. When we finally made it to the restaurant there was next to no one
waiting for a table, whereas 30 minutes earlier there was at least 40 people
waiting. The place was huge, and every table was packed. Under each table was
what we'd use as a washing basket, I thought it was to scrape the left over
food into but no it was a little house for our handbags :). Which the people on
the table next door kindly pointed out. The food was fantastic - very much a
dumpling restaurant. The Taiwanese beer went down a treat as well, more will be
drank tomorrow.
From dinner headed off
to Taipei 101 which is currently the tallest building in the world. (Its about
to be taken over by a building in Dubai). On waiting for the lifts to the top
the security guard noticed I was chewing gum and asked me to remove it. He even
provided me with a piece of paper and once I had disposed of my gum took the
paper back. Clearly he thought I was going to re-use the gym. The lifts take 37
seconds to get from the 5th floor to the 89th floor. The view was out of this
world, you could see for miles and miles and miles. One thing we really noticed
is there are no other sky scrapers in Taipei. Given I've been up a fair few
towers, I could have been anywhere in the world although the Chinese writing
sort of limited my location to the China region :)
Next stop of the
evening was the Tunghwa night market. The first thing we noticed was how
orderly it was, you walked up one side of the road and down the other - we have
never seen this kind of behaviour anywhere else. It meant no pushing and shoving
and another major plus so was no hassling ("missey you want to look",
"you like you like", "ladies tailor ladies tailor",
"copy bag, copy watch" hopefully you get the point of what we get in
HK.). We were a little disappointed in the market as it was mainly clothes
(hideous and size negative), shoes and food, we were after more nik naks. If we
hadn't been out for dinner we would have definitely eaten there, there was a
huge interesting variety of food from whole squid on a skewer, to multi coloured
candyfloss, to chicken feet, to lots of different sausages, to a variety of
fruit.
We ended the night
with a much needed cocktail, while listening to live music (piano) at one of
the bars in the hotel. It had been a great day.
Sunday morning was
nice and relaxing. I went swimming while Bridget went to the gym. Was great not
to be rushing off anywhere and do some exercise. We had a late brunch (ok 6
course meal) at the hotel, after a wait of around 20 minutes we decided it was
well worth the wait. Don't think we'll need to eat for a day or 3.
After literally
throwing our things into a bag and checking out we took the MRT (subway/tube)
to the Lungshan Temple. The temple was founded in 1738 and dedicated to the
Buddhist Goddess of Mercy. It was an impressive temple with lots of people
there praying and signing.
From the temple we
took a taxi to the airport and ended our stay in Taipei at the Cathay Pacific
lounge. Definitely no where near as wonderful as the one in HK but hey it was
still nice to be here rather than out with the general public.
We were leaving the
lounge to board the plane and noticed lots of young girls hanging around with
signs, clearly this isn't for us. On walking further everyone seemed to be
stopped and waiting for someone. We asked the gate check in lady if there was
someone famous at the airport, she informed us it was Andy Liu (?spelling) and
he was on our flight. We had no idea who she was talking about but will be
doing some research on him when we get back to HK. Now all we hope is that he
doesn't stop on route to the plane to sign autographs.....we do not wish to be
late leaving thank you very much Andy Liu.
I hope this finds
everyone well and happy. Next trip is to Hanoi on Friday morning with Mum and
Dad.
No comments:
Post a Comment