Birthday in Taipei

I’ll be honest, I didn’t know much about Taipei, Taiwan before we got here. Sure, I am aware of the conflict China has with Taiwan (mostly from watching stories on 60 Minutes), but I didn’t know much about the history of this island nation.

With its vibrant economy, Taipei is a wonderful place to visit. Of all the places we have been on this trip, Taipei is easily the cleanest city we’ve encountered. The people are very friendly, the food is delicious, and transportation in the city (subway and Uber) are easy to figure out and inexpensive.

We arrived in Taipei on Thursday afternoon after taking a two hour flight from Da Nang. After checking into the Courtyard Downtown, we took a late afternoon walking tour of ancient Taiwan and Lungshan Temple. During the tour, we stopped for a sample of Chinese medicinal herbal tea. Since I have a cold, I was hoping it would be the cure I needed (it helped for about an hour). At Lungshan Temple, our guide Roro described how the temple represents Buddhist and Taoist faiths and the different Gods.

After the walking tour, we took the subway to the busy Shilin Night Market where we walked around and had dinner.

On Friday, we celebrated my birthday by taking a 2 1/2 hour walking tour on the history of Taipei. The tour was led by an excellent guide, Manu, who is originally from Portugal but came here to learn Mandarin, married a Taiwanese woman and now lives here.

During our walking tour, we learned about the history of Taiwan including which countries originally controlled it (early on was Dutch and Portuguese). Japan controlled Taiwan from 1895 – 1945 and the design of Taipei reflects this with its wide boulevards and architecture. We heard about the 228 Incident while we walked through 228 Peace Park. The 228 Incident took place in 1947 and was started after the arrest of an unlicensed cigarette vendor and escalated to large-scale protests by native Taiwanese against the repressive Chinese Nationalists government of Chiang Kai-shek. They took control of Taiwan after Japan’s defeats in World War II and the China Civil War in 1949 against the Chinese Communist government on the mainland.

The tour ended in the Ximen neighborhood, which is a bustling area with some shops and restaurants and many LGBTQ bars.

With the walking tour over, we did some additional walking in the Ximen area and then to Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. We got lucky with our timing since there is a changing of the guard ceremony at the top of the hour and we arrived minutes before the ceremony started.

We enjoyed our afternoon walk back to the hotel. As stated earlier, the streets here are wide and beautifully manicured with palm trees and shrubs; it gives a feel of being in Los Angeles or Miami.

Back at the hotel, I watched the Dodgers vs Cardinals game from a day earlier. I took a quick nap and then it was time for dinner. Jane booked a birthday dinner at Mountain and Sea House Restaurant, a Michelin Star restaurant. We had a lovely nine course traditional Taiwanese meal.

Saturday, we took the MTR to Taipei Main Station, then a train to Ruifang Station followed by a taxi to Jiufen. We had read that Jiufen was a must see destination with an old narrow winding street that has tea houses and shops. We took a break and stopped in one of the tea houses for tea, but other than that neither of us were that enchanted with the place; it is a tourist trap with emphasis on trap.

We took the one hour train back into Taipei and than transferred on the MTR to Taipei 101, which consists of a huge high-end shopping mall and a 101 floor skyscraper.

Our next stop was to the Ningxia Night Market where Jane got steamed pork dumplings (the best she has had on this trip) and after waiting in line close to an hour, I got crispy squid. We ended the evening at a local dive bar where we both got large bottles of Taiwan Beer.

Ten days ago, we called an audible and switched our travel plans. Originally we were scheduled to fly back home today. Seeing that our upgrade to business class wasn’t going to happen, I looked at alternatives. We decided to extend this adventure and now we are at the airport checking in for our flight to Beijing (a beautiful airport). We are taking advantage of China’s 72 hour visa-free travel program.

Jane has been to Shanghai multiple times for business but never to Beijing and I have never been to mainland China. We are going to spend three days in Beijing and booked a private tour guide for two days. Plus, our upgrade back to SFO cleared immediately upon booking the new flights.

Taipei was a happy discovery and a city I recommend visiting. We look forward to what awaits us in Beijing.