Taiwan Trip (Sept, 2009)

I had a lot of friends from Taiwan in my grad school days, and had always wanted to visit that country but never got to it. So finally I decided to visit Taiwan with Sangita. I was forewarned that Taipei the capital city was not much of a tourist area, but is known for it's high tech offices mostly. We flew in with extra luggage as we were transporting some of our parent's stuff and this created a problem with getting the right size taxi.

We rented a small apartment for the duration of our stay as we wanted to cook some of our delicacies, but it did not work out well as the kitchen facilites were inadequate and we thus ended up eating at a Chinese restaurant of Burmese management. After getting claustrophobic in our tiny apartment we decided to stay a night at the Hyatt nearby with reward points.

As expected there was not much to see in the city, so we went to the night market, it was very crowded and full of teenagers. Taipei neighbourhoods usually host street markets that run late into the night, usually there are lots of food stalls and stuff to buy but we proceeded with caution. I was trying to explain to a local CD store clerk that I wanted Taiwanese dance music but they directed me to all the Western stuff.

We had planned to visit Fulong Beach which was the place to go for Taipei locals. Since we cound not figure out the public transportation, we took a taxi and the ride almost felt like Hightway 1 to Big Sur, again we realized that we were on the other side of the Pacific, and it seemed that the landscape was similar. At the beach we found out that it was off-season and hardly a soul enjoying the waves. The restaurant was serving meals very local to this beach area and it caught us off-gaurd. For our trip back the hotel staff clued us in on the transit system and we took a nice train ride to Taipei.

We left Taipei with neutral thoughts and maybe we need to spend more time researching before we embark on our repeat performance. Some of the airlines from India are now offering travel deals via Taipei, so hopefully we will find our way back here again.