….. On a personal note I woke up somewhere about 7 hours into our 12 hour flight and could not for the life of me remember boarding the plane, storing my luggage, or anything. Needless to say we both missed the chicken and rice dinner we were told. Breakfast was served shortly after we woke up and the rest of the flight went well.
We landed in Taipei at 06:00 A.M. local time and proceeded to our hotel via bus. During our rides the MC of the trip Bill always provides us with interesting facts about the country that we are currently occupying. The two facts that stood out the most to me was the fact that Taiwan was the first democratic government of Asia and the birth rate is amongst the lowest in the world.
We checked into our hotel (The Regent) and were out and about within three hours. We went to the Taipei Main Station which contains both the metro and the high speed train. It was not very hard to figue out the train schedules and the locals are eager to help. For some reason, we stand out and look lost. A local gentleman we met explained a few things to us and was great help. Just to show us how small the world really is, we found out he was from Sugarland, TX. How cool is that?? So we ended up buying tickets for the high speed train and boarded a train to Kaoshing to see the Tiger and Dragon Pagoda. It was really cool seeing the country side via train and Natasha read that at one point we were traveling at 266 kmh. Pretty fast!! I can’t think of any trains state side that go that fast. The Pagoda were very vibrant and colorful.
We took the train back to Taipei and then traveled the city by metro. We then went to see a local movie. To be clear, American movies were available (Titanic 3D, The Lorax), but our scavenge was to see a local movie. We purchased two tickets, popcorn, and some not so normal Sprite. The movie title was Z108. When we purchased the tickets, we simply asked for the next available screening of a local movie so we had no idea what we were in for. The movie was basically an attempt to take every concept from an American or Western movie and incorporate it all into one. It had everything from zombies and martial arts, to cops and drug lords, to strippers and sex scenes, to serial killers and family relationships, plus there was even one black guy and a black joke. The dialogue was horrible and we laughed through most of it because it was so over the top.
After the movie, we went to Tapei 101 which is a building/mall with 101 floors. We took an elevator to the highest floor you can reach (89) and it only took 37 seconds. We called it a night after that.
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