Once Taihoku, Now Taipei

For those who are crazy about Japan but can't afford to travel there, there is an alternative - Taiwan.

I went to the capital of Taiwan, Taipei, last week with Irene and Dr Ray. I am really grateful to both of them. Irene has planned the itinerary and Dr Ray flew from HK to join us. We have planned for this trip months before I returned to Malaysia. We chose Taipei because of what it has to offer - food, scenery, friendly people and value. It was also highly recommended by friends and relatives.

Chiang Kai Shek's memorial

National Palace Museum

One of the main characters of Taiwan (or at least for Taipei) that was never mentioned to me was that Taiwan has a close resemblance to Japan. At first I thought it was just my observation based on what I experienced in Japan. Then I Google-ed for affirmation and found that this observation was discussed some three years back (I believe it was much longer than that even before there was such a thing as the internet). The forum was interesting and you can read it here. The Chinese characters of Taipei (台北) when translated in Japanese is Taihoku. Therefore when the Japanese ruled Taipei, they renamed the capital to Taihoku.

One of the high streets in Taipei.
Doesn't this crossing look like the one in Shinjuku?

A busy Taipei Main Station

From the building architecture, road design, sundry and departmental store arrangements to the way Taiwanese present themselves, they are every bit Japanese. Their train stations have as many Yamazaki bread stalls and sushi take-aways as they are in Japan. The only missing fixtures are the Tokyo Banana and Goma Tamago omiyage (souvenir) stalls. They even call their High Speed Rail "shinkansen", which is the Japanese term for bullet train.

All of these further convinced me that Taiwan is like a copy of Japan

Throughout my stay in Taipei, I kept seeing things with strong association to Japan. Dr Ray was rather annoyed by this. Oh well, I do miss Japan if u ask me.

However it's difficult to blame the Taiwanese for having an identity crisis. After all they were once colonised by the Japanese for half a century. Like the British in Malaya then, we can easily draw parallels to what they have experienced - our roads and judicial systems are as much similar to the British, as the Taiwanese are to the Japanese.

But if you take these resemblance off Taiwan, there are still plenty the country has to offer. Food and scenery to name a few. They command an epic proportion of all things Taiwanese. The night markets alone are typically Taiwanese. One can easily name a few of their food off the cuff - sausages, bubble teas, beef noodles, fried chicken and pineapple cake. On the scenery side, they are known to have one of the best sunrise views in the world.

Night market in Shilin

Some of those food we tried

Magnificent views from Jiufen

In terms of weather, Taiwan doesn't get any colder than London's summer - mid 20s. However, Taiwanese fashion follows a virtual four season religiously. At the time when we were in Taipei, it was October and the temperature was hovering mid to late 20s but the people on the streets were in fleece and scarfs! I couldn't even take enough layers off to prevent a wet forehead! Once we were looking for swimwear to go for a hot spring in Beitou. However, we were told that the swimwear collection has been taken off the shelves as it was autumn (which our trip coincided with). What autumn I was asking!

Four days in Taipei were certainly too short a stay but we have done plenty within this short period of time. We explored out of Taipei - Danshui, Keelung, Yehliu and Jiufen. Packed to the brim, we managed to cover the historical monuments of Taipei towards the last day before we flew off. Yes, I am still very much a last minute person. One of the attractions we found was the changing of guards in the Sun Yat Sen memorial. We also managed to catch another in the Chiang Kai Shek's memorial. Guess it was our lucky day as we didn't plan for this.

Changing of guards at the Sun Yat Sen Memorial

Lover's bridge at Danshui

One of the benefits of traveling in a group is we get to eat and see more. Traveling in a group is also cheaper and faster. Our travel time to Yehliu and Jiufen (some 35km away from Taipei and 15km from each other) was cut half and the cost for three of us to take the taxi worked out to be only a slight difference from taking the public buses.

Trip to Keelung

Stunning rock formations in Yehliu

Eating in a group helped us eat many different types of food. We did not have to have one dish for one person but a different dish shared among us. So we get to try lots of different things in the end. While this means we have to share the delicious ones, this arrangement has also saved us from having to finish the lousy ones all by ourselves! We once had a bad experience with a vegetarian dish (from the sewer) which looked as bad as it tasted! So we were glad we did not have one for each of us.

We guessed this was from the sewer

On the last night of our stay, we celebrated Dr Ray's birthday in Ximending, one of the hippiest parts of Taipei. We had a wonderful catch up with the latest happenings between our last meet up for a good few hours.

The last night was also one of my most memorable experiences as we went up to Taipei 101, the world's tallest building. One would expect that the tallest building would be located amongst other tall buildings like the Petronas Twin Towers adjacent to Menara Maxis and the multitudes of high-rise condominiums. Taipei 101 is different. It is located amongst midgets. It wouldn't even have the chance to dwarf other high-rise buildings, because there aren't any near it!

Night views of and from the Taipei 101

View at dusk

Damper to prevent Taipei 101 from swaying violently

We took the lift up to the observatory at the 89th floor. The lift experience was much better than I expected. We were on the fastest lift in the world! The speed of the lift was recorded at 1010m/minute; that's 60kph!

I couldn't feel it was moving at all even though the digital display showed how fast it was moving! The floor numbers on the display changed like the count of a stopwatch! If I were blindfolded, I wouldn't have known I was being shot up to the top of the world except for the change of pressure in the eardrum. The ride was over in 37 seconds (45 seconds to go down). At the time when I was in the lift I did pray that there wouldn't be an earthquake! We were fortunate there was no earthquake and the outdoor observatory on the 91st floor was opened to visitors at the time of our visit. The outdoor observatory is only opened when the weather is good. So we actually went up two floors higher than we paid for!

A video of the digital display in the Taipei 101 lift

All in all we had a wonderful trip to Taipei. The company was great and the weather wasn't too bad in the days we were there. Thank God the two typhoons that were forecast to hit Taiwan missed the island entirely. They went for Japan instead.