Taipei (Day 1 & 2)

Ni Hao.

SY and I took the Labour's Day hols to go on a short vacation and our choice of destination was Taipei, Taiwan. So on the beautiful Thursday morning, we made our way to the gym for a BC class. We needed the workout in anticipation of the calories we were gonna pile on during the trip.

After a good workout, we made our way to the airport and approximately four hours later, we were standing on the arrival hall of the Taipei International Airport. By the time we arrived at our hotel, the clock is ticking 25 minutes past 9pm. We checked in and dump our luggages in the room before making our way out to scavenge for dinner / supper. A 10 minute walk away and we found a 24 hour Hong Kong restaurant. Being seated by the floor to ceiling window overlooking the city, we were soon stuffing ourselves with steaming dim sums and a couple of chinese cuisine dishes. Not sure if we were too hungry or not but the food tasted heavenly. :)

Back at the hotel, we planned for our activity the next day.

Day two saw us waking up much later than originally planned. Hahaha ... I guess we were simply exhausted from all the travelling the day before. Anyways, we hailed a cab and our first stop was Taipei 101 ... the current tallest building in the world. Just like Suria KLCC, it has an upmarket shopping mall attached to it and we had our breakkie at their food court. Walking around on marble pavements, we soon reached the fifth floor where the entrance to the top of the tower is. If I'm not mistaken, a fee of 350 Taiwan Dollars is charged per entry per person. The fastest elevator in the world (built by Toshiba Elevators and took us 37 seconds to reach the top) transported us to the indoor Observetory on the 89th floor. From up there, one could literally see the whole of Taipei and the multilingual audio device provided helped guided us through what we saw. We also marvelled at the building's mechanical dampers which helped the entire structure stay in place especially during high wind speeds and as we all know, Taiwan is frequently being subjected to harsh weather conditions i.e. typhoons and thunderstorms. After that, we hiked up to the 91st floor to the outdoor Observetory. Here, with the cooling breeze in your face, it does really make you feel as if you were standing at the top of the world.

From 101, we took the subway to Danshui and I shall continue this on the following entry. Stay tuned k. :)