Traveller's Update 6/15/09

Woke up pretty early actually, I wasn’t about to miss the Lakers win the Championship! (After all, it may be 8pm EST, but we are in fact in Taiwan means I get to watch it at 8 in the morning!) So after I saw Kobe get his number four, I went down out of the hotel and searched for breakfast. First thing that hits you is the humidity, I felt like I was drenched in sweat and sticky within 5 minutes of walking outside. Luckily, Taiwan has tons of little booths of people selling various breakfast items; I end up buying a 6 meat buns and 2 fried crullers, as well as two cups of soymilk, to share with my sister. The food is amazing, as well as cheap…can’t complain there.

After finishing up breakfast, the family got together and went to explore Taiwan. First thing we do, is ride a taxi to the nearest subway station. The subways are extremely organized, and perfect for managing the heavy levels of pedestrian traffic when it comes to the school and work rush. We jump on, and ride a few single-ride tokens, and scan them to get into the platforms, and after riding the subway, threw in the token to exit.

First stop, Taipei 101, the world’s tallest observatory. The weather wasn’t exactly cooperative, being rainy and somewhat foggy, but the view was still amazing nonetheless. The building itself broke like 15 different world records, a few of them being: world’s tallest completed building, world’s tallest occupied floor, world’s fastest elevator, and world’s biggest wind damper, impressive indeed. In addition, the first 5 floors of the building were all huge shops for everything imaginable. I later found out that the other floors were used mainly for offices, or structural integrity. They have little commemorative dolls that were based off the big wind damper that helps keep the building stable: they were called Damper Babies. There were a total of four of them, each of them having representative trait that goes with them. Lucky for me, I forgot what the black one stood for already, but the other three were: Rich Gold, Lucky Red, and Smart Silver. Fancy that, huh? After going through the entire tower and eating a VERY big, and delicious lunch (man, I’m loving the food) consisting of a lot of those little soup buns that are steamed in those little wicker baskets, we head off to the next destination!

Next stop, the National Palace Museum! This place has a lot of huge historical archives of different ancient Chinese relics. The story behind the place itself, is that when Jiang Jieshi moved the Nationalist party from China to Taiwan, they had taken a large amount of various treasures from the Forbidden City in Beijing before taking off. There were paintings, scriptures, calligraphy, ceramics, you name it. You think it looks good, it’s here. The three of the most impressive works of craftsmanship that I’ve ever seen was also exhibited here. The first one was an imperial gift given in dynastic times; a ball of complete ivory, but carved completely so that there were two more free-rotating balls within the biggest ball of ivory. The second and third works of art are very famous for the National Palace Museum, considered national treasures. The two are a set, both are jade works of art, and crafted to look like a bunch of bok choy, and a piece of seasoned pork. Yummy enough to eat, no?

Last stop for today was at Jiang Jieshi’s private residence. A lot of the place was actually still under renovations, so we couldn’t see the entire estate. However, there were plenty of sites to see even in the portions that we were allowed to wander around. There were literally thousands of roses in the rose garden, a huge tropical like theme, and just huge estates and offices. Hey, if you’re gonna live, you gotta live in style...Jiang Jieshi, knew style.

Oh, and pictures for those who want to see what I'm seeing:

DAMPER BABIES: http://www.chinanews.com.cn/tw/dnjw/news/2008/05-07/U124P4T8D1242159F107DT20080507153415.jpg

IVORY BALL: http://images.johnsontuma.com/jtimg/thailand/ivory-ball.jpg

JADE BOK CHOY: http://images.johnsontuma.com/jtimg/thailand/cabbage.jpg

MMM, PORKY STONE: http://images.johnsontuma.com/jtimg/thailand/stone-meat.jpg