First Sunday in Taipei (10/5/2009)

Excitingly, we have arrived in Taipei last night after a long flight. This morning, we had a quick breakfast at Mos Burger. This fast-food brand is very famous in Taiwan. I wonder whether Taiwanese people prefer Mos Burger, KFC, Pizza Hut, 7 Eleven or Mc Donald’s – a famous name worldwide. I see that the food in 7 Eleven is pretty cheap but not as fresh as others. After breakfast, we walked to Chiang Kai-Chek Memorial Hall MRT station to take the train to Taipei 101 – the tallest building in the world.

The train system here is amazing and convenient; you can get to all the places with a very affordable price. We get on the red line train to go to Taipei Main Station and then change to the blue line toward Nangang – the last station. After 6 stops, we arrived at Taipei City Hall station. In Europe, I have tried the Metro system in Paris, in Asia, I have tried the MRT in Thailand, Singapore and this was my first time using the MRT train in Taiwan. They are pretty much similar, from the map – which is very easy to read, the speed – very fast…to the location of each station – easy to access as in downto

wn area. One different thing is that in Taipei, they use sensor plastic like coins which can be reusable compare to other paper tickets. All students enjoyed the train ride a lot. It was crowed at the Main Station because it is the main station that connects to other routes. There were a lot of people on the train, at all ages. All public transportation including train and bus, they have seats for seniors, pregnant women and disable people and we all should yield the seat for these people. That is why most of the time, I always stand on the train and bus, only when there was none of those people needs a seat, then it is my turn.

Due to the late bus schedule at 11:30, we decided to walk to Taipei 101. I have heard of this building as it took over the Shanghai World Financial Center in China(492m), the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpua (452m), Malaysia, Sears Tower (442m), Chicago or the World Trade Center, New York (417m) – which had destroyed by the terrorists in 2001, to be the tallest building recently in Asia and the world. Taipei 101 is 508 meters height and has the fastest elevators at 1,010 meters per minute, which means that it only take 37 seconds from the 5th to the 89th floor. This is super fast comparing to other towers that I have visited. It took around 90 seconds to get to the top of the Petronas Twin Tower and 50 seconds to the top of Eiffel Tower in Paris (325m).

I have read some facts about Taipei 101 which are amazingly interesting. It has the world’s biggest passive wind damper, with a diameter of 5.5 meters, weights 660 metric tons and was made at a cost of NT$132 million. It also has earthquake resistance, wind resistance, fire safety facilities…and emergency power supply. When we got to the 89 floor, each of us was given pre-recorded voice guides in English so we can discover the views from the top ourselves. We had lunch at the food court in Taipei 101 and drank bubble tea – my favorite drink ever! I wish there was bubble tea shop in Flint!

Later in the afternoon, we took the train and bus to National Palace Museum where has China’s treasures over 5,000 years.

In the evening, we visited Shilin night market. Oh my god, hundreds of people walking down the street. I was born and raised in Ho Chi Minh, a quite busy and crowded city in Vietnam, so I am pretty much used to the atmosphere, environment, culture and food. I already tried the stinky tofu in Hong Kong few years ago and I really like it. They have a unique smell which is not appealing to some people but the tofu itself is very yummy to me.

One highlight for today was that Suyash got lost when we were at Taipei 101 because he went through the elevator to go back down without noticing that he could not get back up. The second one was that “we” – Ellina, Fatima, Lauren and Monzer and myself, we got lost on the way back after arriving at our station. We got out at gate number 5 instead of 1. As a small change makes a big difference, it took us nearly an hour to get back to our hotel but the good things was we discovered more about the area where we live and we feel more confident when walking on Taipei street.