Taipei- A great experience

The drive from the airport to the hotel to meet my cousin and her friend was quiet since my driver did not speak much English. I was taking it all in that I was physically in an Asian country but it definitely did not look like it. Taipei is a very developed and modern city but none of the blogs that I read revealed that. They have nice architecture, nicely built highways, bridges with clear signs in Mandarin and some English. They have toll booths that accepted cash and EZ pass (Not sure what they call it). I saw clearly labeled speed limit signs that it appeared drivers were actually following. I saw several police officers that had pulled people over (No corruption there). They had tall buildings with plenty of lights and a lot of stores. We saw at least 10 gas stations before arriving at the hotel with very very cheap GAS prices. It looked like a cleaner version of New York. Forty minutes later, we had arrived at the hotel which was located on a corner street right across from a 7-11 store.

The hotel is called “Dandy hotel”. It had very quaint, modern designs; all white everything with Asian accents type of style. The people at the front desk greeted me and immediately called down my cousin without asking me who I was there for. Since my cousin and her friend were the only black guests in the hotel they knew I was with them. As I was waiting for my cousin downstairs, I chatted with the hotel attendants even though their English was limited. They were very nice and taught me how to say “Hi” and “Thank you” in mandarin. I said “xiexie” (Thank you) to my driver as he collected his money and departed the hotel. When my cousin finally got downstairs, we hugged each other and jumped around a bit for joy and for the mere fact that we were in Taiwan! (Out of all Asian countries). She took me upstairs to the room that we would be staying in. The hotel had 2 floors, one small elevator and about 20 rooms total. Our room was very well put together with again modern designs and some Asian flair. It had two full beds pushed together to make a queen bed. The room had a huge bay window with a view of the 7-11 store and a bakery shop. (Just what I was hoping for-Not!)The bathroom had a huge tub and a see through stand in shower. The toilet was the best part of the bathroom. The toilet had plenty of buttons, for several things, and labeled in mandarin and since the only mandarin I knew (then) was Nihao and xiexie, the inquisitive side of me began pushing buttons on the toilet and that is how I figured out that the buttons were bidets (bedays) for different parts of the gentiles. It also had seat warming. I had never seen any toilet come with so many buttons like a TV remote before, it was very innovative. The airport, the hotel and the room—I was very impressed and wanted to see more. With only two nights to spend in Taiwan before heading to Hong Kong, I was turnt up and ready to see the city.

My cousin (Chloe) and her friend (Lindy) thought I would be too tired to go out that night due to what I went through before getting there but I did not fly almost 24 hours to another continent to sleep, #turndownforwhat!. We got dressed and headed downstairs to the attendants to ask for directions to one of the largest & famous night markets in Taipei (Shilin night market). We were given two options to get there, taxi or train. Wanting to explore the culture and act like locals we opted to take the train to the night market. Lindy is the most adventurous one out of the three of us and has this concept that “she can never get lost” even in a foreign country so we followed her as she led us to the train station with the directions and map given to us by the hotel. The train station is as modern and advanced just like the ones we are used to in the USA with automated machines for tickets and signs everywhere. Lindy immediately went to one of the automated ticket machines to purchase a ticket, with almost everything in mandarin and unable to navigate the automated system, she finally asked someone for help.

Luckily for us, this person spoke some English and was able to help us purchase three tickets to shilin night market; tickets were about 50 cents for all three of us. With tickets in hand, now it is time to head to the platform, right? Hmm which directions do we go? Our helper came around again and pointed us in the right direction but once we got there, there were four options head downstairs to the right or left or head upstairs to the right or left. We headed downstairs to the right. The train arrived within 2 minutes. We hopped on and OMG STARES! All we got were stares. People were staring soo hard, I wanted to tell them to take a picture, and I mean do they have to be that obvious? It seemed like the closest thing to seeing a black person for them was seeing Chris Tucker in Rush Hour. They wanted to ensure that we were "real". They stared us up, down and sideways. It appeared as if they were told stories about us from books when growing up but never had a chance see one in person. Kind of like how we feel about "Big foot". It was a very strange feeling for us. We were fascinated and intimated at the same time. I sat next to this Caucasian man who turned out to be American (finally a familiar language). We started chatting and told him where we were headed. Since he had been living in Taipei for 7 years, he told us we were headed in the wrong direction and told us to get off and go to the right side of the platform for the right train so we did. After several stops, Lindy looked on the map and realized we were again headed in the wrong direction. At some point we were so humored about the whole experience we made a joke about three Ga girls getting lost in Asia (who would have thought?). A couple more times on the wrong train, we finally made it to Jiantan rail station, a few minutes walk to Shilin market.

It was around 10 pm but it felt earlier since the night market was live and packed with people. There were plenty of food stalls and clothing/souvenir stores. So many different types of local foods were being sold. Since the three of us are all foodies, we started sampling from the first stall we saw. We ate sticky rice with black pig blood on a stick (an acquired taste), steamed chicken feet, scallion pancakes etc as we walked through the market. Keep in mind that these food sellers did not speak a word of English and communicating a purchase with them involved a lot of signing and pointing (very exhausting and frustrating). We ended up in an underground food court that had all the local delicacy including stinky tofu, coffin bread, sausages, stuffed cheesy crabs etc. Almost all the sellers swamped us immediately pulling us to purchase from their stall. Since we are foodies, it did not take a lot of convincing. We sampled almost everything in the food court. Our favorite was the coffin bread but we could not stomach the stinky tofu, it really does stink. After the food court, we headed towards what appeared to be the end of the market and discovered more food stalls on the other side of where we started. We could not help but sample some more food. Being the tourist that we are, we took pictures of every food that we ate and every food stall that we ate at. We saw some nice temples on our walk and took pictures. Our tour of Shilin market had come to an end and it was time to head back to the hotel. We took a taxi back to our hotel because we were too tired to go through another one of our adventures of taking the train. It was a great first night in Taipei for me. Time for a good night sleep because tomorrow is the Taiwanese wedding that we had all traveled thousands of miles for. More to come on my Taiwanese experience, it gets juicier. Stay tuned!

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#Taiwan #Taipei #Asia