The trip to Taiwan was perfect. The train had no delay, we had enough time at the airport and the security checks were fast and without any problems. The flight itself had a 30min delay because of high traffic at the runway (yes, even there there’s traffic 🙄) and some minor turbulences but nothing where you had any concerns.
The food on the flight was pretty tasty. Lunch was served pretty quickly after takeoff. I had a chicken curry with rice. The chicken was very tender and the sauce was good. Dinner/Breakfast was served at 12am home-time/6am Taiwan-time, which was a bit odd. I got green beans with an egg omelett and a sausage. Both meals were served with a small bread roll and butter and some fruits. A bit later we got a little sandwich for a snack but I forgot to take a picture. It was a standard ham and cheese sandwich, but the bread was made with seeds and raisins in it. It gave a nice unexpected twist to the taste!
The landing was perfect, no shaking at all! Immigration was fast and also problem free, they take a picture and the fingerprints of both of your index fingers.
After the baggage claim we changed our money. The exchange rate was 33NTD (New-Taiwanese Dollar) for 1€ and 31NTD for 1$ which is acceptable.
We got ourselves some ice cold drinks from a vending machine and bought new SIM cards. They were much more expensive than in Vietnam! There I paid 9$ for a month of unlimited high speed data, here it was about 22$ for 15 days for unlimited data and 100 mins. It’s still affordable off course.
We also bought an Easycard, a prepaid card for public transportation and small supermarkets like 7/11. In Taiwan you’ll get your receipt with a special number on it. With that you automatically participate in a free lottery with prices up to 1 million NTD (~31.980$)!! Even foreigners can claim the prices. The Taiwanese government introduced this lottery to encourage legal tax reporting. When you buy something with your Easycard the numbers will also be saved on it so no difference on how you pay. The drawing is every two months on 25th so sadly we can’t participate in the drawing while we’re here.
At the metro station we met two students from our homeland! Both of them separately got here to study a semester abroad. We chatted a bit while we rode to the Taipei main station and exchanged numbers. But I don’t think that we’ll ever hear from them again^^
The view outside the metro was awesome! So many skyscrapers, log houses but also beautiful forests! We got more excited with every second we looked outside.
When we arrived at our hostel we couldn’t check right in. Online they wrote that you could check-in any time but in reality we had to wait until 3pm. So let’s check out the city then! It was around 9am and we didn’t just wanted to sit around even though we were pretty tired already.
We walked to a park nearby, it’s a memorial Park for the 10.000 – 30.000 people killed from the Chinese government on 02/28/1947. It’s a really beautiful park and the monuments honoring the killed are really overwhelming.
Them we went into the city and the streets were… empty. It was about 10am and still most of the shops were closed and few people walked around. After a bit walking we found some sick graffiti. The street art game in our district is big!
I also found some leaflets of the Hong Kong protests on some walls! I follow the events since their beginning and was excited to see those posters and caricatures in real life! If you don’t know about the Hong Kong protests, stop right here and go on Google and Reddit and look it up, it’s important that as many people as possible know what’s going on there!
We ate breakfast at a small restaurant, soup with some meat dumplings kind of things. They had a interesting texture and I don’t really know what was inside of them but they were soo tasty so I don’t mind 😄😋 I made my soup a little too hot though, I forgot that Asian hot sauce is actually very hot 😅
But it was still the perfect breakfast!
We then drank a bubble-tea and walked around a bit more. Now the first shops were open and we went to an Anime store. Really a Manga-Fans dream. So many mangas and statues and whatnot. And not even that expensive!
After looking around a bit we went back to our hostel and enjoyed the air-conditioned lobby. Luckily our room was ready at 1pm so we only had to wait about an hour there. Our room was small but still enough space for everything. You got a locked which opens with your keycard and it’s big enough to fit a bagpack and some other stuff in it 👍🏽
But the “beds” are way different than you would expect. They are shelf-like beds, always one on top of the other one. It looks small but you still have enough space to sleep comfortably. With this “technique” they managed to fit 8 beds in this small room!
We took a short nap until 4pm, showered and got ready to really discover the city.
Now there was finally life in the streets! Everything was open and so many people were everywhere. It was great to walk through the streets and watch the goings. We saw a few places that we decided to visit the next days but didn’t really do anything because we still were way to exhausted from the flight and everything.
We just went to a nice Temple, the Longshan-temple, a really beautiful Temple with a small waterfall and koi pond. It had so many ornaments on the roof! It’s really really beautiful to look at.
At the evening we ate dinner at a small corner restaurant. We ate soup with some real dumplings in it. They had a meat/herbal filling and oh my God they were sooo tasty!! The herbs gave them such a nice fresh taste that you almost couldn’t stop eating.
At this point I couldn’t think straight anymore because I was so tired. I was so sorry that I didn’t finish my meal but my body didn’t want to do anything. I was so relieved when I found out that our hostel was just around the corner! After chilling a bit I was fit enough to grab one beer with my friend and so we went to the 7/11 bought a beer and walked and talked a bit.
At 9pm we were back at our hostel and I immediately fell asleep as my body touched the sheets.
Let’s see what tomorrow brings!
