Ni Hao, Taipei!

So after three (really?) days in Sinjuhang, which is more correctly pronounced Hsin Chuang just to confuse residents and tourists alike, I finally ventured into Taipei today! The first was purposefully accidental and the second was purpose-filled.

To start the day off just right, jetlag reminded me that it has not left me, oh no, and decided to shake me wide awake at five o'clock this morning. The lack of windows in my room doesn't help my body adjustments in the least. I decided to watch the sunrise on the balcony of the hostel, which was nice. I came outside to a deep pink sky, shimmers of brighter light, and 80 degree, humid air. Despite the heat and humidity, I managed to take some pictures of the first rays of sunlight hitting the buildings on the Taipei skyline, finish my tea and read some Thich Nhat Hanh before escaping the torturous air.

Late morning I went on an adventure with a girl from my group. She told me her preferred method of traveling in an unknown place: take a random bus, get off somewhere interesting, walk, repeat until heat and/or humidity is too much and get a taxi (or train) home. I agreed to go along with her plan.

Keep in mind: remembering bus numbers was not involved and we didn't have a map so it didn't really matter. Also, street signs are useless because the majority of them are in Mandarin. We first got off at an alley-way style market and walked up and down it. We bought some lycee and I peeled one for the first time. I also discovered what the mysteriously large seed had been in my rice dish the day prior. We then hopped on another bus that took us around the Northwestern edge of the city, very close to the mountains. After a few days of city-life, it was nice to see more green that just the park around the stadium near the hotel. The bus took us around some relatively unpopulated areas so we waited until we were in Taipei (didn't know it right away) and got off right near the subway, a pleasant but unexpected surprise. We made our way home in about 45 minutes, ate lunch and showered. At this point, the temperature had risen 17 degrees and the humidity was at it's worst.

We met up with the larger group later that night and rode the Taipei ferris wheel, situated atop a 6-story mall. I was told the set-up was reminiscent of Pier Park in Chicago.

We then took the subway to a night market closer to downtown, which turned out to be a tourist-y street lined with food, food, food, and more food. Which was a slight disappointment, considering we thought market meant things other than food, some more things other than food, and maybe a dabbling of food here and there to tempt the tastebuds. So we headed back to downtown Taipei to catch our bus.

Finding the bus station became quite the ordeal, but a nice Taiwanese man offered to show us the bus. Little did we know that our bus was the most sought after bus in all of Taipei, maybe even Taiwan! We couldn't manage to squeeze on two consecutive buses, so opted out of that chaos and took a taxi home that was about a 20 minute ride and came out to 250 NT$ (~$7.50) each. Not too shabby.

Overall, life is cheap. I can reliably live off $6 a day for all three meals.