Asian Invasion

Although it's been a long journey here already from Calgary to LA and LA to Taipai, we thoroughly enjoyed our 1st day to get a small glimpse of the capital city in Taiwan. We flew with Eva Air to Taipai which was actually a nice airline (we were worried as we hadn't even heard of them but they are part of Star Alliance).

We were fortunate to have Dan, a local Taiwanese, to take us around. Dan is a friend of Sarah's from Digicopy. It was very convenient to have him around as we likely wouldn't have seen what we saw or tried what we did (some good and some bad 😄). In a few months the MTR will go to the airport but wasn't completed yet so we had to take a bus into the city that takes you to Taipai main station. 

The trendiest and most expensive area in Taipai is around Taipai 101, which up until recently was the tallest building in Asia. At the bottom of it is a bunch of High end stores in the multiples. It reminded me a lot of Tokyo Sky tree. We saw at least 3-4 LV stores within 5 min of each other in that area. Must be a lot of wealthy Taiwanese or tonnes of Chinese and Japanese tourists. 

We had Dim sum at Din Tai Fung which is a chain that originated in Taiwan but now has more than 100 locations in the world including in the US. We didn't go to the Tapai 101 location which was wise since it had a 60 min wait when we got to the mall. Although we were limited in what we could order since we don't eat pork, it was tasty and I'd definitely recommend giving it a try! 

Dan took us to a few street food vendors to try some local food as well including a few soups, fried fish etc. We tried a dessert soup that has boiled red bean, green beans, sugar, ice and almond jelly (the Philipinos have something similar called Halo-halo), a dessert soup made of boiled peanuts and a bunch of jellies such as Taro, etc. We also tried a Chinese medicine tea. Of all the things we tried, I'd only repeat the Dim sum, bubble tea and the savoury soups 😄.  In our street food journeys, we went to a couple of Buddist temples and went to a riverfront area but it's wasn't a super nice day. A lot of people bike and use motorbikes here like in Vietnam. 

Taipai has an area called Beitou, which has natural hot springs and geysers within the city and nice spas around it. We didn't get a chance to go here. Tam Shui, the harbour front area is also supposed to be nice as well. 

By the end of the day, we had walked over 20,000 steps and 18 flights of stairs (mostly MTR stations) according to Adam's Fitbit - my brother who we nicknamed "shin splints" on our South America trip would have died lol.