Taipei (again)

Our last four days in Taipei were spent chasing final experiences of our favourite and most habitual things from East Asia (see the next post for the full wrap-up). Good food, bubble tea, excessively hot hiking, spitting, convenience stores, excellent seafood, and mixed bag public transport.

We hiked up Elephant Mountain in obscene heat to see Taipei 101 at sunset, along with hundreds of others. A couple of Polish friends we met in Korea joined us for dinner, and we finally had Taiwan Beer on tap, which was excellent. We did however struggle to get home as the Taipei buses have taken a leaf out of the British playbook, and sometimes just don’t arrive. Chelsea managed to squeeze in a swim, surrounded by screaming children and old men performing glacial breaststroke. After 30 mins she quickly got out when an elderly gent decided to hawk and spit a yellow globule directly in the pool. We will not miss this habit.

Taipei is full of vibey areas and interesting museums. This time we were here during the week, so we enjoyed drifting through neighbourhoods in the evenings when the heat dissipated somewhat, but did find them to be surprisingly quiet. We also caught the cable car to the tea plantations and had a sunset dinner of 'tea fried rice', again with very few people around. We finished our Taiwanese adventure with a visit to an old colonial fort and Japanese dinner in Tamsui port, after walking around for a while trying to find a restaurant open on a Thursday night. This relaxed pace was a welcome break from the hectic overstimulation of mainland China, but maybe we've become more accustomed to crowds than we realised over the last eight months. We'll have a rude awakening in our next few locations on the barren steppe!

Taipei is great, and there's definitely more we could do here if we ever came back (especially at a cooler time of year). Tainan was our favourite city on the island, but we feel like we mostly 'completed' it there. The culture here is wonderful, the city streets are green, the mountains and national parks are enticing, the costs are low, and the people are friendly. It's been a fitting end to our tour of this part of the world. But now, to the airport for the next chapter...Baca lagi