Morning
Afternoon
Night life
After a fun night at the karaoke bar yesterday, not everyone’s morning went as smoothly as they had hoped. While some of us slept in to overcome their hangover, there was a big group of Japies today that woke up early to go on a bus tour to visit some places outside Taipei. The tour started at Yehliu Geopark where we got to view the Princess rock and the Queen’s head. Most rocks in the park had some interesting shapes: gorillas, turtles, pineapples or even two kissing dogs. After everyone melted in the sun, it was time to continue the tour to Jiufen Old Street. According to Google, it was so hot outside that it felt like it was 50 degrees!
The street is 500 m of continuous shops of food, tea and souvenirs. At the Geisha House at the end of the street there were some nice views over the mountainside and the sea. After everyone tried very different local dishes, the bustour continued to a train track. The group got to write their wishes on a Chinese lantern and we saw our lanterns disappearing in the sky.
Lastly, the tour continued to the Shifen waterfall. The tour guide mentioned before that this was the Taiwanese version of the Niagara Falls. Even though it was nice to visit, it was not comparable to the Niagara Falls in any way.
Instead of the bus tour, others visited the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial hall; several of the many museums and temples of Taipei; or New Taipei: the large area surrounding Taipei where even more people live. As it is relatively modern, there was far less to see than in Taipei, but we did visit a nice temple and a large park. The Chiang Kai-Shek memorial hall was impressive, with a huge decorated white gate and a large flight of stairs leading up to the memorial hall, where a bronze statue of the former president of Taiwan was waiting. The National Palace Museum is the most popular museum, with many artifacts from the palace and the Chinese dynasties. The highlight were two jade stones carved into the shape of a cabbage and a piece of pork belly. Another museum some Japies visited was the National Taiwan Museum, with several exhibitions about Taiwanese wildlife and one about Czech castles, for some reason.
Several groups of us came together for dinner at a small food market near the riverside, which was a bit less traditional than the usual night markets with more western influence. After dinner most Japies went back to the hostel to relax. A few revisited the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial to see it lit up at night. Now that the square was completely devoid of tourists, we hung out and messed around a bit to recover from an eventful day. We also timed how long it would take to run up the stairs in front of the memorial hall, after arguing for a while whether it would be more or less than 20 seconds. Unfortunately, Niels was right as it took only 13 seconds to reach the top.
Written by: Sanne Litjens en Maurik Engelbert van Bevervoorde
