Taipei

It has been almost 20 years since I lived in Taipei, boy how time flies. Well it was good to go back for just a short visit. I didn't think I was going to be able to go anywhere over the holidays Shige and I had planned to go somewhere but were not having any luck finding anything availiable on the dates we were free. Then after giving up hope, I ran across a new add from HIS advertising a trip to Taipei. When I called there were only 4 seats left so we jumped on it. We left on the 29th at 9:30pm which meant that we arrived at 12:30 in Taipei and it was about 2:00am when we got to the hotel. We were booked at the Leofoo Hotel on Changchun Road. Not a bad hotel, but actually the rooms were not much different from the rooms at the YMCA in downtown Taipei. The only thing that the hotel really offered that was beter than the Y was they included breakfast. But even that was not a better deal especially given how good the cheap breakfasts out on the streets are.

Probably the first big change that I noticed is that Taipei is slowly doing its best to clean up its image. The biggest change on the landscape is Taipei 101, the worlds tallest building (pictured above). The building is really a work of art and it is just as beautiful on the inside.


This is not the best picture but maybe you can get a feel for what the building looks like. At the base of the building there are 5 floors of upscale shopping, not the Taiwan that I knew. The first day we walked from our hotel to the Jade and flower markets. It felt so good just walking through the flower market, it was something that I always enjoyed when I was in Taipei. We enjoyed looking for bargains in the Jade market. I love picking up pieces of Jade, this year I got another strap for my cell phone, a pig to replace the horse that I bought 6 years ago on my trip to Taipei.　

After our little shopping spree at the Jade Market we were felling rather hungry so we stopped at a nearby noodle shop. I can still get by in Chinese but ordering in a restaurant is always a challenge because the names for the dishes are usually very colorful and you have no idea really of what you are ordering. We did fairly well, Shige ended up with Wonton noodles, and I had noodles with squid balls. The word that was used in the menu had flower in it, and after the dish arrived I understood that the squid ball sort of looked like a blooming flower, and it was actually very good. Below is a picture of the shop.