The plan for today was to take the Taipei Sightseeing Bus tour and see some of the historical sights of Taipei. I had purchased by ticket the night before so I was all set. I had opted for the 4hr pass instead of the full day because of the price ($270TWD vs $630TWD). I figured that it would be enough time to see what I wanted to see and not feel like I was stuck taking the bus the whole day.
The instructions on where to find the bus were written only in Chinese so I had to match up what little Roman characters I could see on their image with what I could see on Google Maps. I set a pin with where the bus would be and started my journey to the central train station. I had hoped to get on the first bus and avoid walking through the shopping mall that lives underneath the central station. It was that shopping mall where I got hopelessly lost on my arrival into Taipei so I knew better then to go into the labyrinth of shops if it could be helped.
Try as I might, however, it couldn't be helped. I wandered through the twisting and turning corridors, stopping only when I found a post office and sent the final postcard of my trip home to my grandmother. I started sending her postcards instead of buying her gifts when she moved to Connecticut and I found myself unable to see her as often between trips as I used to when she lived in Queens. It is also just generally more practical to write a letter to a woman who has literally everything rather then gift her more clutter. My mother on the other hand lives for the clutter and sent me a few reminders today to buy her lots of gifts. Anyway, with my postcard in the post I turned around and realized that I might be closer to the bus then I thought. A little more wandering, but this time outside, and I managed to get there right as the bus pulled up to the stop.
I hopped on the bus and scanned the QR code that came with my ticket and I was off. Me and two older Korean women were the only ones on the bus. I didn't mind, except for the icy wind that hit my face while at the top of the bus. It was cold enough that I had to give up my seat outside for one inside. The red route of the tour went through the city center and passed all the landmarks. The stops all corresponded to subway stops and I began to wonder why I bothered paying 10x as much to sit on a bus when I could've just ridden the rails to see all these things? The audio tour was nearly as lackluster as the route itself. An hour and a half later I was right back where I started and no more interested in seeing anything then I was before.
Off the bus and on to the next one, the blue route, which actually went somewhere I couldn't easily get to on my own - the National Palace Museum. It was on my list of places to go here in Taipei so I was excited to get the chance to see it. The bus took about an hour to get there and I hopped out and started taking pictures with everyone else. The beautiful old palace looking building was nestled into a forest lined hill. The only thing that took away from the view was the trio of Soviet era looking apartment buildings across the street.
Inside the building it looked like any other museum. I bought a ticket, checked my bag, and entered to see what it was all about. There was room after room of historical artifacts on the first floor including an entire exhibit dedicated to one of the emperors who was known for being very particular about packaging and organizing his dynasty's valuable artworks - they said that it was an artform on it's own but even after looking around at it all I wasn't buying that.
The second floor was more indicative of the rest of the museum. Pottery, calligraphy, and paintings. There was even a multimedia interactive exhibit to show off one of the artists works in particular. It was all so pretty and old. The porcelain pottery was especially fascinating, all the different kinds and how they made them. The best part of the whole museum, however, was definitely the gift shop. They had all sorts of merchandise, miniatures, and replications of the art found throughout the museum. I bought a few things for my mother and my brother before rushing out the door to try and make a bus before my pass expired.
I didn't. The bus arrived about ten minutes after I got to the stop and I walked on, hoping that the driver and hostess wouldn't give me a problem. Nope! The driver asked me to scan my pass and I looked at the clock, I knew I was at least 5 minutes past the 4-hour time limit of my bus pass if not a little more because the bus was late. Sure enough a buzz went off and the driver asked me to stand to the side as he drove off and called the hostess over to deal with me. She informed me that my pass was expired, as the bus was careening down the highway, and asked me what stop I was planning on getting off at - the last one of course! She said no problem but I couldn't ride another bus after we arrived there, and that was fine by me.
Now when I left for this trip it was cold back home, but not all that cold. I knew I was going to be in 80-degree weather for the next three weeks and so I only packed a light sweater for when the nights got cold. I didn't think enough to check if Taiwan would be cold (it is, right now I'm sitting here with a frozen nose at 45-degrees Fahrenheit) and until I arrived in Taiwan I didn't even think twice about what I'd do when I got home. I had hoped that it would warm up a bit but it doesn't look like a thaw is happening anytime soon in New York and the nights here are just a bit too cold for the level of outerwear that I have with me. I did some research while I was riding the bus back to the Central Station and found out that there was a clothing company that sold things that may fit someone with voluptuous curves like myself. It was near the other museum that I had wanted to see so I thought if worse comes to worse I'd just go for some more cultural immersion and grit my teeth and bear the cold between the airport and the cab when I got home.
Orange Bear was the name of the shop. I checked out their website and found some promising and inexpensive sweatshirts that might do the trick. So I took the subway there and got out into the shopping mecca of Taipei. As I turned down the small street where OB was located I was met with trendy clothing shop after trendy clothing shop. It reminded me of Soho, if Soho wasn't crammed with almost entirely popular chain stores that you can find anywhere else. I really enjoyed window shopping and getting a glimpse into the fashion world here. When I finally got to OB I was nervous. There wasn't much on the floor to choose from but after circling everything like a shark a few dozen times I grabbed a sweater and a fluffy, warm looking scarf. I figured between the two one of them should help me not get hypothermia. When I put on the sweater later that day I was pleasantly surprised by how warm it was, and unpleasantly surprised by how short the torso of it was! Once again I was betrayed by chest.
After OB I kept walking through the narrow roads of fashion stores. I stopped once more at Uniqlo and considered getting one of their heat gear undershirts until I saw the price tag was even higher then back home! No thank you, I'll freeze. I was about to head into the subway when a small store of knick knacks caught my eye. Miniso of Japan. It reminded me of Flying Tiger back home and I am a sucker for random cheap goods. I walked in and started looking around, found one of those iPhone camera lens additions and grabbed it ($99 TWD). I looked at the shelf across from it and saw something surprising - a "We Bare Bears" baseball hat. Curious I thought, "I didn't know 'We Bare Bears' was a thing out here much less that they had merchandise, I wonder if it's fake?"
I kept walking through the store and saw more "We Bare Bears" merchandise, and then turned a corner and saw a whole aisle of it! I don't think I've been more excited to discover something like that before. "We Bare Bears" is by far one of, if not my absolute, favorite cartoon on television. Yes, I know it's for children, but it's just so funny. A few minutes later my arms were full of merchandise and odds and ends and the total bill was $1100TWD (about $40 USD). I was so happy!
As the sun was started to set outside I realized that it might not be worth it to go back to my hostel before heading out to my third night market in so many days. I sat on the bench inside the shopping mall underneath the sidewalk on the way to the subway and organized my purchases so they all fit in my backpack. I put on the sweater and that's when I noticed how short it was, but I didn't really care because it was exponentially warmer then the red sweater I was wearing, and the red sweater on top hid the fact that the warmer sweater was ill fitting.
On to the night market! Tonight's night market was Shilin Night Market - the largest and possibly one of the oldest night markets in Taipei. I was due to arrive early by night market standards (7pm) but I didn't mind since I was starving. I got off the train and followed the crowd to the night market. This one was huge. Each night market I have gone to has gotten progressively larger but the Shilin Night Market definitely dwarfed them all. I started walking with everyone else and found myself in a shopping arcade. There were mostly trendy clothing stores and cell phone stores but peppered in between were toy stores and a few more Miniso's.
I kept walking and walking until finally I came upon some food. I started with pork buns, which had a line of people waiting for them and I got to watch the people making them as I waited. Then I got some dumplings and kept walking. Back to shopping, then more shopping, then some arcade games. Finally I got to food again, got more dumplings and a scallion pancake that paled in comparison to the one I had my first night here. In general the food was far more inexpensive then at Raohe Night Market but it also wasn't nearly as good. I was really disappointed but I hadn't finished seeing the rest of the night market.
More walking, arcade games and more cellphone accessory shops, then I finally found it - the shrimp catching game! It was something I had heard about but hadn't come across yet. There was a long shallow pool of live shrimp and people fishing for them with hooks on narrow dowels dangling from what looked like floss. I wasn't sure when I heard about it if the goal was to have the shrimp take the bait or something like that but it turns out the goal is to use the hook to grab the shrimp and drag it up out of the water and into a bucket filled with water sitting in the pool. Like a claw game but for live shrimps. I stood there for a while watching this one girl get shrimp after shrimp. Apparently when you're done catching them the people running the game will grill them up for you to eat. I guess it doesn't get much fresher then that.
I eventually made my way back to the subway only to discover one last street that I hadn't walked down yet. Exhausted, and carrying a sugar donut, I trudged down the street. It was more or less more of the same with two exceptions. There was an arcade game that was the bottle and ring grab - basically you use a metal ring at the end of a long stick and string to pick up a long neck bottle and place it upright on a wooden board. I had only seen the game before at my friend Asher's house in Buffalo, NY where he re-created the game so he could practice between state fairs and clean up when they came back to town. The other thing I saw was a line at least 40 people deep for fake cheese-wiz covered baked potatoes with broccoli - basically what Wendy's sells. I thought it was hysterical that there was such a hysteria over something so simple back home.
Finally I made my way back to the hostel, absolutely pooped from touring and shopping and more touring. Now my bag is mostly packed and I've reached the end of my long journey. I don't want it to end. I want to be getting on a plane to go back to Australia and just do my job from there. At least when I get home I have play time with Bren and my friend Tommy to look forward to.
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