Taipei: General Impressions

First of all, the week I was there was the beginning of Chinese New Year. This meant that there were fireworks everywhere. While landing at night in Taipei I saw quite a few fireworks. It was pretty neat seeing them explode at eyelevel all across the city. During the week we heard sporadic fireworks. I am not sure if Taipei had any organized fireworks show, but the locals set off plenty on their own. They would set them off at night and during the day and it didn't matter where they were. Back home I am sure setting off fireworks in the middle of the city with lots of people around would land you in jail pretty quickly. There were even kids running around shooting them off. No one seemed to mind. Things would be exploding the street and bystanders would keep on walking as if nothing was happening.

Secondly, there are no westerners. I didn't expect to see many, but I figured there would be at least some since the west does a lot of business with Taiwan. Out side of the hostel, I don't think we saw any. The locals took notice. They weren't as obvious as the Mainland Chinese in Shenzhen but we were paying enough attention to notice. While on the train ride back to Taipei, there was a Taiwanese who took a picture of me. She tried to do it discreetly but we saw my picture on her camera screen as she was proudly displaying it to her travel companions (I think family). Chase complained a lot that the locals gave me a lot more attention then him. Pierre didn't seem to care at all, but it was probably because I was the only one with curly hair and facial hair.

The food in Taiwan was also very good. Before I left, everyone who had been there before said the food was great, but I the food surpassed all of my expectations. Everywhere we went, from Taipei to the costal villages, the food was unique and cheap. They even had milk as a common drink. A bottle of Dr. Milker brand milk costs about US$0.75.

Another thing that stood out to me was the police presences. Having been in Mainland China only a few days before, the difference stood out even more. There were few cops and security guards. I only say one group of them bigger then two and they were directing traffic. We approached them to ask for directions and they were very friendly and helpful. They seemed to make it their mission to help us out. Westerners are rare in both Shenzhen and Taipei, but in Taipei the cops where much more accepting of foreigners whereas the Shenzhen cops seemed paranoid of us.

One odd thing I noticed was the placement of some buildings. Along paths there were a decent amount of abandoned (or looked abandoned) buildings. While walking up a mountain to a park in Keelung, the path went through a restaurant. As far as I could tell the restaurant had not name (there was nothing posted in English or Chinese) and the building looked like it may have been abandoned at one point. There was quite a bit of activity with a woman singing and a couple of chefs cooking things for the handful of patrons. You had to walk through this place to get to the top which was kind of odd. Then when we went on our hike we pasted many private homes (some more of shacks). We were no where near a named road, just people living out in the forest along a national park path (or what ever the Taiwanese equivalent is). I was interesting to see a society that was so backwards they didn't even have a mailing address.

The weather for the most part was somewhat depressing. I think we had one clear day. The forecast called for rain everyday that we were there, but fortunately it was only a real issue once. It typically rained at night or while we were on the bus.

And finally, I must note the sanitation. It was pretty bad. There was trash everywhere. Garbage bags were not put in a central location, they would just put it where ever on the street when ever they needed to. Sometimes they would just leave the bags in the elevator. The beach in Daili was just plain disgusting. All kinds of stuff washed up on the rocks and no one ever cleaned it. Some places look more like a landfill because the beach was not rocks or sand, it was just garbage. However, the drainage was pretty good. Despite all the rain, there were hardly any puddles and on the streets caught a whiff of sewage about as often as any major American city.

Overall, it was a very good trip. We saw a lot and experienced a lot that westerns don't. Taiwan is quite a unique place.