Taipei, Taiwan

I just finished up 3 days in Taipei.  Although it rained a lot and my foot (plantar fasciitis) limited what I could do, it was a lot of fun.  We stayed in the Grand Hotel which I highly recommend.

This hotel is not close to any transit station, but they have great shuttle service to the Yuanshan station.  The entire hotel was like a big museum on the inside and it was all set up for the holidays.  I plan to stay here next time I come.

It had a great view of the Taipei 101 Tower I (plan to go there on the next trip when it is sunny) and a special front entrance.

The first day we took a tour to Shifen and Juifen.  Shifen is an old mining town, that in the early 1990's after the mines closed, decided to become a tourist town.  Its big draw is releasing sky lanterns.  The sky lanterns started in the mid 1800's.  There were a lot of bandits in the area so when local villagers would come into town for supplies they would release lanterns to inform others that it was safe.  As the lanterns go so high, they started writing wishes to the gods on them.  There are only three places in Taiwan where sky lanterns are released.

The lanterns are very large and have kerosene soaked paper on the inside that is lit to provide the hot air for lift.  The only problem is that most of them do not burn up so they litter the countryside :(.

After sending our wishes to the gods we visited the Shifen waterfall, aka the Niagara Falls of Taiwan.  It is like a miniature Niagara Falls.

After Shifen, we went to Juifen, another mining town that because a tourist destination.  This one is on the side of a steep hill with a view of the water and is full of shops and places to eat.  According the bus guide, we were lucky it only rained in the late evening.

Salmon floss used as seasoning

The next day we went to the National Palace Museum.  I really liked this museum because of the jade artifacts and descriptions on how they work jade along with many of the manuscripts. The ball in the middle has 27 layers which is amazing because jade is so hard that you cannot cut it with any tools.  Instead artisans use strings, sticks, or grinders and different kinds of grit to shape it.  It is amazing what they are able to create with such simple tools.

The manuscripts were very old (from the 1000's).  I have no idea how the paper lasted that long.  In addition for several of the ones with pictures, they has screens that animated them.  Just a very well done exhibit.

The last day of our trip we visited the Huashan Creative Park and the Chiang Kai-shek memorial.  The park is full of shops and artists and has this wall with trees growing out of it.

The memorial reminded me a lot of the Lincoln memorial in the US.  We even saw the guard routine outside it that they do every hour.

Taipei is an interesting place.  On one hand it has a vibrant night markets with many shops and eateries along with a great public transit system while on the other hand many of the buildings look to be in pretty bad shape.

There is also a lot of Japanese influence throughout the city.  I am looking forward to going back to explore more of the hiking around Taipei and Taiwan that I was not able to do this time.