Taipei

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Purple Rice & Dry Pork parcel for breakfast

More breakfast options

City Centre Taipei

Bag lady in Taipei reading the paper

Taipei Central Train station

I am days behind in writing this blog but I guess better late than never. After leaving Sydney we spent a day in Taipei. We were greeted at the airport by Eva who is a friend of the family and she took us to the city first as the airport is an hour from anything. Our bus was not an express - it stopped at every stop all the way. The country is a first world country but still there are a lot of rundown buildings amongst the new ones. The transport system is fantastic - Christina Kinnearly could learn some tricks from them and improve our hopeless ticketing in Sydney.
After arriving in the city we asked Eva to show us what the locals buy for breakfast. They eat a variety of things including rice parcels filled with either dry shredded pork & beans or other beans and weird shredded Yams. I bought the Purple Rice parcel with dry pork. I like this kind of food so I was happy to try something new. Eva also chose for us fried Yams, omelet and fresh deep fried batter in a bread roll. We liked it all except the fried batter as it was too greasy and we didn't eat it. Our drinks were all milky drinks made from either yellow beans or some other plant- all good but very strong in flavour and we couldn't drink lots of it.
So we then bought train cards and loaded them each with $20 Taipei dollars = AUS$8 each (we would not have known to do this without Eva's help). As it turned out we had a bit left over so we rode the trains, buses, metro & Gondola all day for about $4 each.

Downtown Taipei 

All set with our train cards and full bellies we headed off for the Gondola (Cable  Car) to the top of the mountain surrounding the city. It was a foggy day so our view was not clear but still good enough. We had a glass bottom car.  Arriving at the top we noticed a street vendor selling parcels of green  paste in sandwich bags which she was patting out into balls. These are a local snack and they only cost about 50 cents. We couldn't help ourselves and wanted to try one. It was sticky rice filled with meat and more of that shredded Yam. I was a bit worried about the hygiene factor buying from a street vendor but Eva assured me it would be fine. Well I'm still alive 4 days later so she was right. I love sticky rice, once again I liked it. I think I was an Asian in a past life - I love Asian food even the weird stuff. A bit further up the street of the village at the top we came to a very large corrugated roofed but open on all sides, food street market. There were about 10 vendors all side by side selling fried rice, noodles, sausages, drinks, Dagwood Dogs on a stick, fried meat, soup and last but not least STINKING Tofu. Now I love tofu but the sauce this was cooked in was not to my liking. Eva loves it so I tried it. I couldn't eat it but Gerald did.

Gondola Ride

 

 

 

Market gardens viewed from gondola

 

 

Street vendor we bought sticky rice green stuff off.

     
We walked further up the street and had a local beer or two. Now were getting very relaxed and having a great time with Eva. Further up we saw more of the village and how people live up there in old shacks nothing fancy but they seem a happy people. Hard to tell. On the way up we saw lots of market gardens all neat and flourishing. Up here were more of the same. They didn't waste and inch of land and had lettuce, rhubarb, cabbage etc. growing everywhere.

Food stalls under iron roof

Lindy & Eva

Locals using every inch of ground 

                

Heading back down

     After spending an hour or so we went back down the cable car and into the city to check out the National Imperial Palace Musuem. By this time my feet were killing me (damned orthotics were not helping at all!) and I didn't want to go but my brother Tim had told me not to miss it. So I soldiered on and boy was I glad I did. This museum was so beautiful, so big, so ornate, so well organised and impressive! Our tour guide spoke fluent English and her knowledge of chinese history was extensive. The museum houses treasures dating back 6,000 years (don't quote me on that - ask Gerald) from all the Ming, Ting and Zing Dynasties that ever exisited.
We had a mini lesson in reading chinese characters- I could have spent a day just doing this. Each character symbolises something from our lives - a man, an old man, a girl (no boobs), a woman who has had children (big boobs with large nipples for breast feeding), a woman who has not had a child (small boobs with small nipples which had not been used for breast feeding) etc. so trying to guess what was what was a lot of fun and interesting.
The Ivory carving section was amasing - man were they talented! The Gem Stone Section bloody amasing - the collection of  Tourmaline, Jade etc. and what they did with these stones is worth googling to find out.
Copper & Bronze statues, Wooden carvings, water colours and on and on...the museum rotates the items on exhibition every 3 months and it would take you 4 visits to see the entire collection.  It consists of thosands of pieces. If I was a local I would come back every month and spend hours strolling through the various collections.

    The tour went for an hour and by now it was 4pm. Our flight to Vancouver was at 11:30pm so we had time to go into town for dinner. Before we left though we sat outside the Museum and G took some happy snaps while I asked a guy sitting next to me where he was from. He was in our tour group and asked our guide a lot of questions and I thought I had detected a Dutch accent. He was from Amsterdam and was invited to Taipei by a film company. He had recently filmed a documentary called The Erection Man  or Vaigra Man. No need to explain what it was about. The film had been received very well world wide and sold to 10 countries, Taiwan being one of them. His name was Michael and if you google the title you can read all about him. Yes, well, the Dutch are known for these kind of films and I'm sure it will be bought by SBS and aired in the near future.
So into town we went to a Noodle House for some more local delicacies. We had Pig intestine filled with meat - not dissimilar from a sausage which is some form of animal product filled with meat, dim sim (our favourite), soup, green vege with soy sauce - all good.
Eva then put us on the bus back to the airport and we caught our flight to Vancouver. That was our fantastic stopover in Taipei and we get to do it again on the way back when I want to see the Flora Exhibition which runs for 4 months and G wants to visit the computer stores.
BTW - it is winter in Taiwan and everyone has coats on - we were not cold at all. They are not used to the cold so were rugged up.
Bye Taipei - till the 9th January 2011. Thank you Eva for your hospitality and taking the time to show us around your beautiful city.