Day 5: Even though we were sad to say goodbye to Ee, Terry, Charlyn and the Surf Shack, we were excited to see more of Taiwan. We had to wait at the bus stop for about 45 min to catch a bus to Kaoshing. From there we got on the High Speed Railway and headed up to Taipei.
About thirty minutes before our arrival in Taipei, we stopped at a usual stop to pick up more passengers when the most unusual thing happened. The train jerked about four times as if the track below us was breaking in half. At first I was scared, but no one else around me seemed to even flinch so I thought maybe it was normal? All of a sudden they were making announcements over the loud speaker in Chinese and they were not allowing anyone to enter or exit the train. Christine, Britney, and I looked around the train trying to get some answers. After about 10 minutes we finally asked if anyone could speak English and we were told that there had been an earthquake. Sweet!:) It was not the first one I have been in, but it was the first one I had ever felt. Unfortunately, due to the delay we were going to be late for our previously scheduled late check in time at our new hostel. Thankfully I had the phone number written down. We kindly asked a woman nearby (she did not speak much English, so it was difficult to explain) if she would call our hostel and tell them we would be late. After a lot of acting and hand motions, she kindly called for us! We were very lucky because we ended up getting there 90 minutes late. If we had not called they would not have stayed, and we would have been out on the streets for the night.
While our hostel was in a great location right in the center of the city, it was no Surf Shack. In fact it was far from the luxury service we received in Southern Taiwan. I literally gagged every single time I walked in to the bathroom, and I spread my dirty clothes all over the bed to sleep on. Lets just say my dirtiest clothes were a million times cleaner than the sheets on the bed; I had no choice. Needless to say, we spent very little time in our hostel. As bad as it was, I can't complain a whole lot considering it was only 12 dollars a night in a big city.
Please note the white stains. Trust me it is not just bad lighting. Those actually exist.
After we put our stuff down we got out of the hostel as fast as possible. We headed to one of the large night markets in Taipei. We wandered around the market for at least four hours and only covered a fraction of it. It was enormous; filled with everything under the sun. We experienced some very interesting smells (the nicest way I can describe it) and saw some crazy weird foods. Despite the gross factor associated with a lot of the food I took pictures of, the food we actually ate was some of the most delicious food I have ever had in my life. I wasn't sure if I would like "real" Chinese food. I definitely enjoy sesame chicken back in the U.S.A, but the real deal is better than I ever could have imagined!
We took a chance a tried a meat stick. We looked very careful and tried to pick one we thought was chicken. It ended up being chicken wrapped around grilled green onions. It had a sweet/tangy glaze on the outside. Yumm.
Pig liver. All you have to do is point and the fry it up right in front of you:)
This is where we ended up eating dinner. The man in the picture is cooking my food!
All three of our meals! We just ate right off the grill!
My meal! Soup, rice, sprouts, green onion, and seasoned beef! So good!
Christine's garlic basil chicken!
Animal testicles.
Who knows? I couldn't identify anything on this cart.
Bright pink fruit! I do not remember what it is called, but it was delicious!
A typical Taiwanese carnival game: fish for shrimp! When you win you get an over sized stuffed animal.
Day 6: The next morning we woke up in pools of sweat (sorry for the gross details). We knew we would never survive walking around the city and sightseeing all day, so we decided to get out of the city and head to the water. We went to the information booth at the train station and told them we wanted to go to the coast. In minutes, without any knowledge of where we were actually going, we were on a train going to the coast. Luckily, we were not disappointed. I'll show you the pictures and you can be the judge.
A beautiful temple right on the water!
After we spent the day exploring the northern coast of Taiwan, we headed to the 101 Tower: currently the tallest building the world! After waiting in line for 10 minutes, we took a 40 second elevator ride (the fastest elevator in the world) to the 93 floor! The view was breathtaking. We spent about an hour in the building, and then spent the rest of the evening eating, talking, and enjoying our last night of vacation!
Day 7: The following morning we arrived at the bus station expecting to take a 15 minute bus ride to the airport. We quickly discovered that we were not in the location we thought we were. We were informed that it would actually take us an hour to get to the airport (we probably should have figured that out before the morning of, but we thought we knew where we were in relation to the airport). After an hour of butterflies in our stomachs and some some speed walking/running in the airport, we arrived at our gate just in time! And just like that we were on our way back home. For that week only, H1N1 turned out to be the greatest pandemic ever.
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