334 Hours in Taipei, Taiwan

A couple days ago, The New York Times published an article entitled 36 Hours in Taipei, Taiwan. At first, I was happy to see that they were writing about Taiwan -- I mean, for once, they have an article about a place that I've been to already! But when we finished reading, Chris and I very smugly concluded that our trip was way more amazing and fun than theirs. I tried to be fair, pointing out that the New York Times only had 36 hours to explore, compared to our 15 days. But Chris responded: "Don't you think that every 36-hour period we spent in Taiwan was better than theirs?" Well, he has a good point.

So here goes -- I'll try to summarize all the great things we did, thanks to my super-generous relatives who showed us around tons of charming places that weren't even in our tour book. We took tons of pictures -- feel free to browse!

http://picasaweb.google.com/jenn.c.taylor/TripToTaiwan

(Note: The one unfortunate thing about this blog post is that since I can't read Chinese, I don't know the names of a lot of the restaurants we went to. At the time, we were thinking, "who cares about names when there's so much delicious food to be snarfed?" But I'm hoping I can come back and fill the names eventually.)

Flying to Taiwan

I typically hate flying, so I was apprehensive about this 14-hour flight. But with the help of a tube of Airborne tablets and a new book that Colette recommended (The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri), the flight went surprisingly well. Chris read Obama's Audacity of Hope, which he also said he enjoyed. In the end, the most annoying thing about the flight was pretty mild -- EVA Airlines had this endlessly looping screensaver/cartoon featuring a crazy-looking cross-eyed mouse, who floated around the screen amongst waving strings of firecrackers -- all to the background of some loud Asian drum-bangy music. It later dawned on me (duh) that the mouse symbolized the Year of the Rat, and even later, I learned from my cousin that the music was traditional Chinese New Year's celebration music. Throughout our two-week visit, we would see many many more rat statues, firecrackers, and drums, so I guess it was good for the airline to start indoctrinating us early!

When we finally arrived in Taipei, we found immigration and customs to be fairly easy. There were even friendly "quarantine beagles" on duty. (Note how all the signs have English translations, what a relief!)



Since it was fairly late at night when we landed (11 p.m.), I was really touched to find that all my cousins (three car-fuls of people, I think) came to greet us! I hadn't seen most of my relatives for six years, so it was great to see everyone, and I even surprised myself at how much Chinese I remembered, having also not spoken Chinese for six years. Of course, speaking Chinese still doesn't come easily to me... It's a lot like playing a constant game of Taboo. My vocabulary isn't very good, so I frequently resort to conveying concepts with analogies, stories, and other terribly roundabout phrases. It's definitely an interesting exercise. Luckily, my dad was around to help translate a lot of the time!

I didn't end up teaching Chris much Chinese, since he claims that the tones are really hard to hear. But he did learn a few obligatory phrases like: "ni hao" (hello), "xin nian kuai le!" (happy new year!), "hen hao chi" (mmm, very tasty), and "xie xie" (thank you). All very cute.

Anyways, to continue the story, we were soon driven to our hotel, the Grand Hyatt Taipei. We chose this hotel because it was really close to Taipei 101 (where Google's Taipei office is), and it seemed like a trendy neighborhood, with lots of parks and malls. The cost was comparable to what we'd expect for some average hotel in the center of New York or Boston, but we got some raised eyebrows from my relatives when we told them where we were staying. Later, we found out that most things in Taiwan are pretty cheap compared to the U.S. (more examples later), and our tour book mentioned that the Hyatt was where you stay "when your company is sending you on a trip and the stock is doing very well". Haha, oops. But we did like the hotel a lot. Three things were especially interesting to Chris:

1. Centrally controlled light switches! There was a panel of buttons on my nightstand clearly labeled "desk," "hall," "bedside," etc. where I could control the entire suite's lights! Plus, by the door, there was a "master switch" that you could hit to turn off all the lights at once as you were heading out. Very useful. Seriously why don't we have these here? The closest thing I can think of is "The Clapper" (you know, that lame "clap on clap off" thing).
2. There was a special note on our desk, telling us where to go to watch the Super Bowl the next morning. Chris had been worried sick that he would miss the Super Bowl and his precious Patriots, because American football isn't popular enough in Taiwan to be broadcast on normal TV channels. So finding this note was definitely a "delight the customer moment". (If I were running a hotel, I would never think to send such a note. But then again, I don't really like football.)
   
3. His head touched the ceiling. No tiptoes or anything:

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Well, here ends Day 1 of our Trip to Taiwan. And unfortunately, it's also the end of my blogging for the day, since it's almost midnight. Stay tuned! Many more stories to share!