VanAussie Daily

Taipei, Taiwan

Sunday, January 16th, 2011

So this is another of our previous trips, except I realised after I wrote the last one that I didn’t quite go back to the start of our adventures – I forgot the stopover that we had in Taiwan on the way over here.

Like most Aussies heading to Canada, we were on a budget for our flights. And by budget I mean “cheapest possible”. And little did we know that doing it on the cheap would actually net us a little adventure before we even started our lives in Canada! Checking out the flights before we booked, the cheapest flights were mostly through Los Angeles, however the cheapest of them all was actually flying China Air and went through Taipei. So we picked that, then found out that it had a stopover. For close to 30 hours. Wait, what? It was okay though, as the airline laid on a hotel so really it was like a free trip to Taiwan.

Our knowledge of Taiwan pretty much extended to the “made in” tags that you find on a lot of toys and electronics, and the firm knowledge that it was a stinky smoggy city, right? Oh well, worth the explore.

We flew in late at night after a close to 10 hour flight from Melbourne or Sydney, can’t remember which. Not knowing our way around we grabbed a cab and told him where we were going – “The Liz”. Sounded pretty upmarket! So we drove for ages, to the point where we thought we were going round in circles as the island wasn’t that big, was it? But I’d looked into it a tiny bit before we left and found that it was a little way from the airport to where our hotel was, so we trusted the dude and carried on. Even after he filled up with gas/petrol. Even when he started radio’ing in to hq to see if anyone knew where “The Liz” was. We had an address, but that didn’t seem to help. Eventually after fighting our way up and down a couple of alleys he found the hotel and dropped us off. We checked in and were shown to our room in the basement. It was reasonable enough, slight smell of mould, but it sure was an adventure We crashed to sleep after the long flight.

Next morning we got up and went upstairs to help ourselves to the complimentary buffet breakfast. Holy crap, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so “westernized” as when I was trying to work out what to have for breakfast. Nothing was really recognisable apart from what was maybe eggs, but we dug in anyway and found it was reasonably good. We were sitting opposite some Taiwanese who lived in the US but regularly came back and they gave us some pointers for the day. After breakfast we grabbed a tourist map from the front desk and went out to experience the city. Here’s a quick pictorial guide to some of the stuff we got up to that day:

On reflection, it was an amazing opportunity to get a free stay in Taiwan, but it actually showed how unprepared we were for the stay. We didn’t really know what to do or see, and just grabbed a map and walked. We were lucky enough that we stumbled on The Palace Museum and Danshui township, but next time I’d like to be a little more prepared and know a thing or two. I guess it’s a little reflection on the difference between my mindset three years ago versus one that is now used to traveling to various places for short periods of time… I’ve got my ex-work to thank for that.

In short, if you’ve got the time and you get a free stop over, take advantage of it!

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