Taiwan Trip Part 7 - Taipei City

I was in Taipei twice during my training in Taiwan. First was after our visit to Academia Sinica and Yang Ming University. My first visit was to this landmark of Taipei: I paid NTD400 in order to get into this-- the world's fastest elevator. It took only 37 seconds to move up 382m to get to the observatory level on 89th floor.

And this is the view on the 91st floor, the outdoor observatory deck. Maybe due to the reason that I've been in Kaoh shiung's tallest building. The view is not as amazing or spectacular as I've imagined. Anyway, I've been to the tallest building at least up to year 2009 (soon will be replaced by Doha's).

My second visit to Taipei was right after our training ended. Initially I was planning to travel alone in Taipei but found out in the training that Narisorn and Gisselle (Thai and Brazilian) had planned like I did, so we decided to travel together. After we had our lunch at Taoyuan airport, we headed separate ways to check in at hotels before we met up again at Ximending in the afternoon. I stayed in Banqiao-Fuzhong which is about 15 mins from Taipei main MRT station. I chose to stay in Banqiao as I could get better and cosier hotel for the same price that I paid for Taipei city hotels, and it is closer to my reverend's place in Tucheng (just in case, as it was my first time traveling alone). It took me about an hour by bus from Taoyuan airport to reach Banqiao county. For the rest of my tour in Taipei city, I traveled via MRT.

This station is about 5 mins walk from the hotel that I stayed in. This is my first ever experience with MRT system. From here I went to Ximen station to meet up with Narisorn and G. Then we headed to our first destination of the day:

The Chiang Kai Sek memorial hall. It's really spectacular and magnificent. Too bad it was raining that I couldn't catch nice photos.

We were just in time to watch the honorary guards exchange. There's some sort of ceremonial march and show which is a must see here. They change shifts every hour.
A navyto an airforce.

I forgot what's this building, just next to the memorial hall. Great architecture.

Could you guess what this white building is? It's actually the entrance of the MRT station. It's a design unique to the MRT station of CKS memorial hall.

Next, we were on MRT again. It's a 40 mins journey to our next stop.

Danshui. There was a cultural performance that day but we did not linger for long as we had a tight schedule. It was close to 6 or 7pm when we reach Danshui.
A stroll on Danshui old streets.

Didn't manage to go to Fisherman's wharf due to time constraint, so just take some photos near the Golden Seashore 黄金海岸.

捏面人

the famous ice-cream of Danshui, but I didn't try.

Sunset in Danshui. The best view is actually 4-5pm. Too bad we missed it.

Next stop is the famous night market of Shilin.

Too many stalls + too many people + too sweaty + we were too hungry, so we simply had this

大肠包小肠. quite oily, I didn't really like it. I also tried 爱玉冰 (grass jelly in lemon lime juice). It's nice, quite soothing.

Narisorn queued up for this, the fried chicken fillet. The queue is really long.
We then bid each other goodbye (as our journey together ended here) before I continued my way back to Banqiao, to the hotel that I stayed in

Although it's not as good as those 5 star hotels that I stayed in previously (for free), there's no complain as it is clean, cosy and good for the amount of money I paid.
I bought that at the 7-11 convenient store just outside the hotel. I also bought fresh milk with apple flavour and a novel to read before I slept to 're-charge' for next day's trip.

Things I like best about Taipei are its MRT system and convenient stores! The MRT system is really fast, comfortable, well-linked, convenient and clean. As for the convenient stores, as the name suggests, they are really convenient. You can get almost anything you need there 24 hours everyday.