Taiwan May 2005

This vacation came to us by chance. It wasn't something that we actually planned. We have a friend who is from Taiwan who goes back to visit family often. She mentioned that she was going and we said something like - we'd love to go with you sometime. That sometime was now. How lucky were we? We had the opportunity to (1) travel with friends and (2) go to a foreign country with someone who speaks the language. It was awesome!

May planned the entire trip (and did a great job). We went over Memorial Day weekend and spent 10 days traveling. It was a long, LONG flight. We stopped in San Francisco and then again in Narita, Japan before we finally landed in Taipei.
A photo to document our 1 hour stay to Japan. We stayed at a hotel called Les Suites that was really nice. It had two rooms, was very comfy and had a nice breakfast buffet. They had this bread that was really good.
Here's J walking around Taipei. Everyone rode those little vespas. You'd see whole families on one of those things zipping around town. Also, 7-11 is very popular here.
We stopped at the National Palace Museum. This is J with a statue of a Chinese civil servant. Next to the museum was this park that was cool.
This is the Chihshan Garden. The lake there had these huge fish that were not shy about asking for food. They all hover over there by the pavilion hoping someone will drop in some food.
I mean, look at this guy. Doesn't he look like he could tap you on the shoulder and ask you to pass the potatoes?
I'm just resting my eyes! It was very warm here and I was wearing jeans. I don't know what I was thinking. Luckily, June, our 4 year old friend, needed to go back to the hotel for a nap and a swim. Bless her! We all went back and rested up...and changed into shorts. (J & I were pretty pathetic. Every time we got tired, we'd ask if June needed a nap or a rest.)



This is Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world, as of May 2005. As we rode to the top, my ears were popping. There were stores and things on the bottom floors and then some offices on some of the higher floors. Then it was more like Rockefeller Center where you ride the elevator up to the top.

The view from the top of this building was amazing. You can see the entire city.J and Chris at the top of Taipei 101.
Dr. Sun Yat Sen Memorial where they have a statue as a memorial to the man. Every hour they have a changing of the guard that is very similar to that of London and that of the guard over the tomb of the unknown solider at Arlington Cemetery.
The guards stand like statues until it's time to switch. Then they all move very gracefully to relieve the current guards and leave the new guys.
Here we are in front of Chaing Kaishek Memorial at night. It looks really cool all lit up.

Our next excursion was a train trip (2hrs) to Hualien. It was south of Taipei and a lot more rural. Taipei was a lot more cosmopolitan and you actually saw people that were not of Asian decent. Some people actually spoke English. In Hualien, not so much. Poor May! She had to translate all the menus and do all the communication for all of us. It was like she had 4 kids.

We went to Taroke Gorge which was just beautiful. It was up in the mountains. She arranged for us to have a guide drive us around all day.
This is a view from one of the stops. All that white is marble - like marble counter tops. There were all kinds of trails and waterfalls and lakes.
J and May by one of the many lakes. It looked nice in cool in that water but probably too cold to actually wade around in.
Check out the face in the side of that mountain. We spent so much time wandering around we had to hurry to make the last train back to Taipei.
Here's one last picture before we race back to the train station. Behind us was a temple that we just didn't have time to visit. We literally had to run once the guide dropped us off at the train station. Chris picked up June because she couldn't run as fast. The train took off just as we found seats and we settled in for the 2hr ride back.

May scheduled a trip to a resort at the other end of the island to Kenting. So we took a plane to get there faster. That was one of the scariest flights I've ever had. During the flight, the plane just dropped a few feet and scared the daylights out of me.

The resort was nice. Once again, we were the few non-Asian people at the resort so we got a lot of stares. But what was weird was that the desk clerks had names on their badges like "Betty" or "Susie". Bizarre. We were right on the beach (across the street).
J on the balcony of our room in Kenting. We ate at this restaurant next door called Smokey Joe's. (I kid you not). They had Tex-Mex and BBQ Ribs. How could we go wrong? It wasn't half bad. I think I got nachos that were about what you'd get at Bennigan's.

We had free tickets to the aquarium so that's where we spent J's birthday.
There was a trail from the hotel to the beach that went underneath the street. I thought that was really cool.
We had some time to kill before we headed out to the airport to go back to Taipei so we went over to the beach to test the water.
We hopped a plane back to Taipei. For dinner that night we ate at Friday's. That's right - TGI Friday's and it was EXACTLY like we have at home. The servers all spoke English and had the striped shirt uniform. The menu was the same. They even had the same decor in the restaurant. Amazing.

We had one more day in Taipei so we took the train to Wulai Falls. There were so many waterfalls. It was just beautiful. We took a cable car across this gorge.
The car took us to this little platform on the other side of the gorge. It didn't look like much but once you left the little platform, there was a whole resort back there.
This is where the cable car dropped us off. Way down there is the village.
So up here, they had several little foot bridges like this and lots of waterfalls. In the little lake there, they had fish and there were fish food machines where you could get food to drop in. There was also a hotel over here. There was a lady that rode up with us along with her son. I think they were German (so they spoke multiple languages, including Chinese). All the water made it very humid up here.

That night we had dinner with May's family. We met her parents, her brother and his wife. They were really nice. They treated us to dinner at a Hibachi restaurant that was in our hotel. It was unfortunate that her parents only spoke Chinese (and even more so that we only spoke English.) but, May translated for us.
This is our friend June, who is 4 at the time of this trip. She was a trooper because I'm sure the stuff we did wasn't very entertaining for her. However, she was entertaining for us. We played the "Boo" game (along with all the other games she invented) all across Taiwan. I think she's the smartest person I know and she doesn't miss a trick. In Kenting, she wanted me to swim with her and I said that when I was done eating my tootsie pop I would. When I was finished, she came over and said, "you said you'd go swimming with me when you were finished". She was right so we went swimming. She was very entertaining in the pool as well. She thought of all kinds of games to play. She took way too much pleasure in dunking us under the water.

What an amazing trip! The whole experience is one that I will never forget. Anytime she wants to go back and wants company, all she has to do is call us.