August 13-18, 2013
Day 0
My roomie, Mary, was planning to go to Taiwan by herself, but then I said I wanted to go too. She'd bought tickets via a Korean travel agency, and she helped me to reserve the same flights. I booked on Saturday, though, and couldn't pay (via bank transfer) til Monday, and somehow they ended up not actually booking my flights (though I paid). We didn't find this out til the night before, when Mary was able to check in, and all I had was a confirmation number for my payment (no actual airline ticket number). The travel agency didn't open til 9am, and our flight (well, Mary's) was at 10:30am, so after she spent quite a while talking to airline staff and the travel agency, they ended up booking me a seat on the 4pm flight, and switching Mary's flight to match (which was good, because by that point, it was after 10). So we had to kill 5 hours at the airport. The adjoining building has a movie theater, but we were too tired from waking up at 6, so we ended up napping in a cafe with big cushions on their seats, then walking around for a while, and finally sitting at the gate for a couple hours. Sucks we had to arrive in Taipei 5 hours later than planned, but... at least we both made it there. And somehow my hostel reservation was also not actually booked, either. I emailed them myself and received a confirmation email... but, apparently, my luck that day was not very good, heh. Anyway, they had a spare bed, so I had a place to sleep, but the hostel ended up being kind of dirty, so we only booked two nights (of the 4 we'd be in Taiwan), hoping to find a better place in the meantime.
A view from the plane, and the (dirty) $12/night hostel.
We ate noodles (and drank what we guess was plum tea) at a nearby noodle
shop, then had beer and snacks at a 7 Eleven. The green fruit is guava.
We woke up about 9 and had breakfast at McDonalds. (Though, they didn't actually serve breakfast foods.. so it was more like an early lunch.) At about noon, Mary's high school friend and her sister met us at our hostel. They helped us book a different, much nicer hostel a couple subway stops away. They took us to Tamsui (formerly Danshui), a seaside tourist area in the NW corner of New Taipei City (conveniently located at the last stop on the Red subway line). Unfortunately, it was a hazy/rainy day, so the view wasn't that great, but it was still a nice atmosphere. We ate lots of cheap street foods. After that, they invited us back to their house in Taichung with them (Taichung literally means "Central Taiwan"). We rode a bus for about 3 hours, then headed to a night market, where we had more street food, including stinky tofu.
A view of Taipei 101 and a mass of motorbikes from/at our subway stop;
our first hostel's alleyway; the new hostel intersection.
We bought bubble tea before our hourlong subway trip to Tamsui.
Tamsui streets and street food (flavored quail eggs and pastries filled with cream).
A view of the mountain across the water, and a "deep water" sign.
There was a man fishing next to it, but I didn't take a picture.
Pens!!! So many pens at a store in Taichung.
The night market in Taichung, where we ate dough balls filled with
radish, an egg omelet, and stinky tofu. Man, that is an accurate name.
It smelled so bad...and didn't taste all that great either.^^
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