Rainbows All Over Your Blues

Greetings. Still in Taiwan, and have had an action packed few days.

The first day here, we took things easy. I was in no urgent mood to do anything, as I was still recovering from the jet lag (I know, only two hours, but still). Sarah had to work a majority of the day, and fearing that I would get lost in my new surroundings, I didn't venture out of it, save to pick her up. That night we stayed in and watched Arsenal crush Derby County (I need help).

I've shared some of my first impressions of Taiwan, but I'll focus first on Sijhih. It's a suburb east of Taipei, and while it seems small, there is a large urban feel to it. The apartment complexes are quite large, each with at least 20 floors of apartments . The biggest change is the lack of sidewalks. In Sydney, sidewalks are everywhere. You really can't go anywhere without one. Here it is much different. Sarah holds my hand walking down the street, and remains calm and collected while I imagine getting run over, whether by bus, scooter, or car. The drivers have no intention of hurting you and I really shouldn't be scared of anything, but I am anyway. Moving on, the neat part about the country is the mountains. They seem to surround Sijhih on the side facing away from the city. Hopefully we'll get a chance to explore those. Only time will tell. I'll share more impressions as I catch up on our latest activities.

Adventure called on Sunday. We decided to head to Maokong Gondola. Or Sarah decided to take me there, as I had made no plans and trusted her with my itinerary. The gondola is 4 km long and takes you out from Taipei into the mountains. Getting there, however, takes quite an effort, seeing as though we had no means of transportation aside from train or bus. Regardless of that, we made our way to the bus station, and I had the most uncomfortable bus ride of my life. That isn't saying much, as my experiences on buses is limited. However, it was interesting. Instead of paying before riding, you paid while leaving, and with either a hi-tech card system or a low tech coin bucket (not really a bucket, but exaggerating is fun). I didn't get a seat on the bus and had to grip onto the handles hanging from the ceiling. We made it to the train station and Sarah bought me my ticket, seeing as no ATM in the whole country wants to give me any money from my Wachovia account. Doesn't help that I refuse to call them and let them know I'm in Taiwan. A bit stubborn of me, but oh well. The train system was very clean; there are fines and charges levied to those who eat or drink on the bus. The other neat thing was the single fare method. Instead of a paper ticket, you received a plastic coin with some kind of sensor that would trigger the gates. I thought it would be wasteful, but at the end of a trip you insert the coin into the gate to exit the MRT system. Pretty neat. Back to our trip. We had to switch trains to make it to Maokong, so it was a pretty long trip. It took us near to the Taipei Zoo, which is apparently well known for its Koala exhibit. Having both seen Koalas in Australia, neither of us was to keen on stopping at the zoo.

As we approached the gate to the gondola, a large crowd greeted us. And it wasn't a protest; it was a massive queue. We made our way to the end, and heard it was a two hour wait (yikes). However, nothing else seemed to be like an attractive option, so we waited it out. And it was quite worth it, even though it ended up being only an hour tops. The ride took up and over the mountains. Taipei 101 was easy to spot from our gondola. On top of that, the rain started again (no surprise), but we spotted two or three rainbows on the way up. The coolest part was we saw the spot where the rainbow began. Alas, there was no pot of gold, although we would get even closer to another rainbow later on. The ride was beautiful, and took us up to Maokong.

We disembarked at the top and got out. The line to get back down seemed to be as long as the line to get up was, as it snaked all the way around and out of the complex. There were several signs greeting us, directing us in both Mandarin and English pointing to different tea houses. We went to the left. No idea what else we would do, so we just walked along the road. It was a nice mountain town. Calm serene, with little tea houses littering the street. While walking along, we saw the bottom of not one, but TWO rainbows. It was sweet, but alas, no little Irish men with pots of gold. I looked. But more rain came and forced us into a tea house. There we were greeted with the waitress. She handed us the menus, all written in Chinese, and ask "can you understand?" We shook our heads, and she walked over to another table and tried to roust up a translator. The next five minutes we became a sideshow for another table of Chinese people, who stared at us as a guy translated the menu for us. We managed to order green tea and fried rice. The lady came by and served us our tea. We got to brew it ourselves. They gave us a tea kettle with boiling water, a small tea kettle with leaves in it, a smaller filter device to pour the tea, and then the two cups for us to drink out of. It was some of the best tea that I have ever had, and when we got our food. We had ordered beef and pork fried rice and it was delicious. I used chopsticks to eat it, and it was a treat. After our meal we paid and explored Maokong a little longer.

The town was nice. We had a splendid view of Taipei 101 lit up at night. We spent a little more time walking around and exploring the night streets. There wasn't a whole lot going on, but it was a fun experience. It felt great at night, but we were ready to head back into the city. We called it a night and had another glorious ride down the gondola, now lit up by the city lights.

Our next day, we decided to head to one of Taiwan's beaches. Our destination was Fulong. Sarah wasn't exactly sure how to get there, but we walked to the train station in Sijhih to try and find out. Unfortunately, things were a little hectic and we missed the train at 12:38 that would have taken us out there. Instead, we would have to figure something out or wait for four hours. Since waiting was out of the question, we went to the ticket window to try and figure something out. The lady there tried explaining to us in broken English to take the train to Badu and go from there. So we were handed new tickets, another lady took us upstairs to another train official, and we had to wait for the next train. This next one took us up a few stations, and then we were told by the ticket officer to get off at Cidu. We knew this was wrong, but before we could blink, we were stuck there. So we went to another official, who pointed somewhere across the way and said "Platform 2!" That was easy enough, but there was platform 2A, 2B, 2C. Which one went to Badu? We eventually made it to a three-car train, where we would then wait for the next train that would finally take us to Fulong. At least we hoped.

After a half hour wait at Badu, we were finally on the right train to Fulong. It was an uneventful ride, save for the crowded cars that made us ride on the floor for half the trip. We eventually found seats, but were thrown out because apparently some seats were reserved (couldn't read anything that told me that). After walking back along the cars even further, we found two more seats and were able to enjoy the ride from the comfort of a seat.

We finally arrived at Fulong Beach after that wonderful ride. Even then we made a wrong turn, and it took us a good 15 minutes to actually find the beach. It cost 90 NTDs each for us to go. But at last, we were at the beach! It was an interesting sight. There was a bridge that crossed a river that took you onto the actual beach, and we were there. It wasn't a particularly nice day, and the water was cold, so we just sat near a washed up log and enjoyed the surroundings. To the right of the beach was a seemingly tall mountain that had a few temples littering the sides. It was a nice sight, but unfortunately not much else was there. It was a fun time, and cool to see a beach in such a foreign place. But nothing unusual happened. After a few hours, we meandered back to the train station and hopped on the next train to Sijhih.

On Tuesday Sarah decided we were going to head into Taipei. There is heaps to do there, so we made the decision to play it by ear and figure out what to do when we got there. As we exited Sarah's apartment, it was a nice day, complete with blue sky and no sign of rain. So we decided to go to Taipei 101. For those of you who don't know, Taipei 101 happens to be the world's tallest building, complete with the world's fastest elevators. We took the bus to the train station, and were at Taipei 101 by 1:00. It is built over a mall, so we went through the food court and into the mall. We didn't care to explore the mall much (after all malls are all over America). I tried my ATM card at 5 different banks with no success once again. Bummer. Sarah bought the tickets and we hopped into the elevator which took us up 90 stories in 38 seconds. The lift reached speeds of 1010 meters per minute. Pretty fast.

The view from the top was breathtaking; there is a significant amount of pollution in Taipei so it is limited. But it was fun and interesting nonetheless. It was cool being at the top of the tallest building in the world. Afterwards, we explored Taipei some more, going to a park called the Peace Park which had a cool looking building with a fountain. A neat place. All in all, the last three days have been full of fun and new things that I would never experience in other places. I'll be back with another update soon, although not with today. All I did was sit in her apartment and read. No fun, but it's too hot and I don't want to get lost.