Christmas in Taiwan Part 1 (of 3)

DECEMBER 25, 2007
We were to leave for the Centennial airport at 11:00 sharp and before that, we attended Christmas mass which personally wasn't as compelling as the last. However, indigestion struck me and I had to lie down in bed for a few hours. I was worried na magiging KJ ako at ako ang magiging rason ng aming hindi pag-alis (I was worried that I would be the cause of the "stoppage" of our departure) but luckily, I got better fast. After eating a light lunch, because we assumed that there will be plane food, we went for the airport after loading our lumpy luggage into the car...
VROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM...

Hehe, wala lang. Anyway, we did whatever security measures were required- Body check, water check, x-ray check, metal check, whatever. We waited... and waited... and waited... and played a bit of Nintendo DS because we don't have a Game Boy Advance that we could lose or forget, and no, the DS is not a Game Boy.

The gate number was changed and we sat near it to wait for even more time. We met my mother's former college classmate and his son who were on the same flight and sort of chatted with him a bit. The announcer then said that our plane was open for boarding. Finally! (It was already about 3pm)



We went inside the plane, I took a few pictures after taxi and we had Transformers as in-flight movie, complete with Chinese subtitles. After one hour and I think, 35 minutes, which was 15 minutes shy from the expected arrival time, we went over to Immigration, presented our passports and claimed our luggage. No lost and found, no lost luggage, just a local sim to get cheaper international calls to the Philippines.

Our tour guide has been waiting for us at the airport since, I don't know, 3? But she showed no signs of impatience and discouragement as she introduced us to the country and what we should look forward to in the hour long bus ride to our hotel named The Howard Hotel. There indeed was traffic, but not traffic ala EDSA.

It was a three-star hotel that gives you an impression of an excessively packed lobby. But hey, more means more, right? Oh wait, that didn't get out right.

The day doesn't end with the hotel yet however because my father's colleagues were waiting for us already as they had invited us for a buffet dinner in some resto near McDonald's and most probably 7-Eleven (because every street corner has a 7-Eleven. Talk about convenience.)

Photos inside the resto:


DECEMBER 26, 2007
Unlike Fleur, we didn't have as much spare time to go sunbathing in the indoor pool, as we had to get ready before 8:30am. We ate what would be the first of a series of different buffets from different hotels and packed food in our bags to go to lots of places in Taipei: a certain museum of sculptures, history and art, a little shack with spicy noodles in tofu as their specialty, some sort of busy street full of vendors, the Chiang Kai-Shek museum, the Taipei 101 and the Night Market.

OK so first stop, the museum. Pictures weren't allowed inside, save for pictures of the building itself, which was actually quite imperial-looking.


Inside were various paintings, sculptures, and art that was so intricately detailed, you thought that they were real food. Oh didn't I mention that there was a very realistically made jade pechay? And an adobo uhh..., sculpture?

We kinda took long in the souvenir shop because my father always buys something to remember in one place. And because there was no sign of the 12 Zodiac animals (my father's a collector of those... at least hindi siya ganun ka-protective dahil hindi sila fragile tulad ng baso! Ahem! Ahem!), he just bought a mopit (which sucked).

We were now to embark for a little noodle house by a slope- a steep one if I may add- and boy was my grandmother hard to push (she decided to sit on a wheelchair for more mileage) and we all needed to push her up, save for my brothers who were doing the usual (fighting and pretending to be their favorite female fighting characters from PS2 games).

After finally reaching the restaurant, we waited for the meal to be served. Spicy ones in the red bowl and mild ones in the green bowl. Of course, I took the red bowl, but I forgot that my nose was kinda irritated then, so when I bit, well, it felt bad. But if I didn't had that damn irritation thingy, I would've enjoyed the otherwise delicious exploding tofu with noodles inside! But before that thing was even served, they gave us a sort of appetizer which had dimsum on soup.
Afterwards, we walked the meal off by going to this whole long street full of vendors. Well, the view adjacent to the super long soft ice cream stand was quite stunning, but it didn't fit the whole camera. But here's the center of it: And here's the ice cream:
If you think I edited the thing, I'm telling you that I am soooo not an expert in Adobe!

Some of the stuff they sold in that street aside from the ice cream were these eggs that looked like ultra-round chestnuts.

There were some games that also even featured stuffed, oversized Yakult and Ice Cream.
Well, we got out of the street and near the train station (which we were not gonna go to). However, we wanted to relieve ourselves first as nature called, so...

After heeding nature, my dad bought a cake and we went for Chiang Kai Shek museum.

We saw, well, Chiang Kai Shek, and a bit of Sun Yat Sen. Heck, that's almost all you see in Taiwan in terms of money! But anyway, the museum is of course, dedicated to all things Chiang Kai. There were different writings, paintings, props and wax figures as well as his bulletproof Cadillac even!


And maybe for a little activity for you to do, how about comparing and contrasting the bathrooms of Chiang Kai Shek College and the Chiang Kai Shek museum?

Cross out the differences:
[x] Automatic toilets
[x] Automatic sinks
[x] Cubicle for the disabled
[x] The smell
[x] Cleanliness
[x] Spaciousness
[x] The... air conditioning?!

Whoops, I couldn't resist filling out the form for you! (rolls eyes) But hey, I'm just doing this for... fun.

Did we explore all of this? You bet we didn't!

I guess it's about time we head out to our next destination.











Ah... the splendor of the tallest building in the world (as of now)! Well, if you didn't know, it's called the Taipei 101. Actually, once inside, you see a whole bunch of shops, mostly clothing.
But of course, we had to get to what would be "the real agenda" so to speak of going here, and that is to visit the floor near but not exactly in its peak. If you think the number doesn't clue you in to how many floors the establishment has, maybe you better go to rehab or something. But if you subtract 12 floors from the peak floor, that's the only floor currently available to tourists and Taiwanese alike to view a huge, rather cinematic, err..., view and to get souvenirs of course. And exactly how did we get to the top floor? An elevator. You would probably think that it would be rather slow, but it isn't, because it's the fastest one in existence as you can get there (top floor minus 12) in...

To accommodate the waiting people, the ceiling even had this celestial "presentation"...
After reaching there, I captured Taipei in every corner of the compass available, though I'm not gonna post all of them here mind you.

And how does it survive earthquakes? Well, they have this so-called "Wind Damper which is a rather heavy steel err... ball that resists the seismographic disaster and its impact. Heck, to make it more enticing for people to take pictures, they decorated the place and painted the ball with a festive golden tint... with ribbons!

OK, after going shopping and all, we got down the same elevator we went up to. Needless to say, the time it took was slower at...
...but I guess it's the resistance. Because if you get down to fast, then we'll be making a new basement for our dead bodies.

But we wouldn't be leaving yet, remember that I said there was a mall? Well, there's also a foodcourt as well. And we ate merienda there: KFC and a Bread Talk-esque bakery.

Seeing that it was still the Christmas season, there were reindeers and a sleigh lit with err..., lights outside.

Of course, that's not the only decoration being lit up...


Moving on, we went to the Night Market which was quite near the hotel. But hell, it wasn't the stinky, grimy and noisy market I was expecting. It was quite clean, lively and has noise that isn't really deafening. We didn't buy anything, but we did eat a sizzling teppanyaki there.


And you thought night markets would get digital marquees in 2010...
And as I said, it's lively, but not noisy.

After circling around that street, we finally head back to the hotel. Sorry, still no dip in the pool.

(To be continued)