2015/07/20

臺北 2

Day 2 Taipei, slept like an angel in heaven and woke up way too early, but I didn't fly all this way to sleep, so let's get at it!

 Very large dining hall in the student activity center we stayed at.

Now that's a breakfast!














The Taipei metro is amazing.
















Hopping on another train on our way to Jiufen 【九份】where some of Miyazaki's Spirited Away was based on.
 I particularly like this set I shot of William
  


And bam, we're in Ruifang 【瑞芳】 looking to hop on a bus to Jiufen. William made me buy my ticket to Ruifang, which I totally botched the pronunciation of to the ticket dude, but after a couple times he figured out my crappy Chinese.















Unfortunately not the bus we end up taking, but had to get a picture.

 Some wandering around pictures and a police station with a police scooter. The only time I've actually seen someone pulled over in Taiwan is this one scooter guy for not wearing a helmet.
 Asked several people where the bus station is, so we headed that way.
And bam, on le bus to head up a mountain pass haha.
 And we arrived! Took maybe 2.5-3 hours from the first train station in Taipei.
 
 
And of course stopped to eat some food. We asked this incredibility beautiful Japanese lady to help us take this shot.

Forgot what this was called, but apparently it's quite famous. Shaved ice, tapioca.... globs.... and different beans. I know I've said it before but I seriously think shaved ice/ice cream and beans could take off in the U.S. (looking at you Aaron).
 
 I did finally buy some real hair sticks, those will be featured in later blog posts. One even has dangley beads! (that unfortunately get caught in random strands of my hair... but that's beside the point). Still like to use the chopstick from time to time, it's a good conversation starter.
 
 So as I'm sure you can tell by the 15th blog post I'm just kinda throwing pictures up here now and sometimes the comments for the pictures are above, and sometimes below. This next picture will have the comment below :P
Finally got some xiao long bao! 【小籠包】 literal translation being 【small caged parcel】籠 being a particularly interesting character. So another long character is our good pal the dragon 【龍】. In this case the dragon character is under the bamboo radical, though I don't suspect a bamboo cage would hold a dragon very well. Another related character I find interesting is 寵, the dragon in the house, which means to spoil (a child) or pamper. See, my blog can be educational too! :D

 Anyway, these little bastards are darn tasty, super hot though and can seriously wreck your mouth (scalding hot soup in an inconspicuous little package).
 When in Rome.... make the stereotypical picture hand symbols... 
 I seriously look like William's lover in this picture




Random people take really dang good photos over here

Gotta have that bubble tea for the trip back home
Taipei people are so cool (not sarcasm, they really are very interesting)















Main Taipei metro station, I didn't take any pictures on the way back from Jiufen because I was trying to level my 【sleeping on public transit】 skills again, very unsuccessfully I might add... 

Went to this museum showcasing the aboriginal tribes of Taiwan before the Chinese showed up. Again, could not take any pictures, but there was some super old tools and pots from like 2000 B.C.
After that we headed off to another museum of dinosaurs!


 
 
 

 So that was pretty awesome! After that we head off to the Presidential Office Building 【總統府】, the building is sometimes open for visitors to wander around, unfortunately on this day it was not.
Taipei 101 off in the distance. I'm actually super proud of this picture because I stopped to take it while walking past the Presidential Office Building and while taking it a security guard with an assault rifle blew his whistle at me, and made a hand gesture to move along. 

Then we head off to the Chiang Kai-shek 【蔣中正  or 蔣介石】 memorial plaza. This is the main guy that was leading the Kuomintang fighting the Chinese Communist Party during the Chinese Civil War (1927-1950, but is technically still going on). After the KMT lost in Mainland China, the Nationalists fled to Taiwan and Chiang Kai-Shek was the President until his death in 1975. The history is complicated and the present even more so with political parties other than the KMT wanting a chance to create their vision of Taiwan. Anyway, enough politics for now, here's pictures!
Found this really awesome De Stijl style building on the way. 

 Some alkaline water
 
 
 
 
 
And we're there! These buildings are the National Concert Hall and..... something else....
 
 This is the actual memorial building
 
 
The KMT Pan-Blue political party colors. The opposite political is the Pan-Green Democratic Progressive Party. William was explaining that there's a lot of mixed feelings about this memorial hall from both wings of government.

Two guards stand on duty for an hour then switch. I actually got to see the changing of the guard, which is quite a lengthy ceremony (like 15min). Got a few pics of that for ya'll. Soldiers come out of the elevator.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 The pictures don't really do it justice, they probably completed at least a hundred moves all in perfect synchronization from clicking toes, slamming boots, swinging weapons, and grabbing their guns very powerfully. This next pic was pretty intense, the dude slammed the hell out of his boot on that stand, it was neat.
 
 
 

Asked another person to take this picture, and like I said any random person you grab is a professional photographer these days, I mean look at this pro shot!
























Anyway, that was my second day in Taipei. We're going to have to head back now and catch the bus back to Taiwan. Officially a week behind now on posting blogs, going to try and speed though the rest to get to Host Family Weekend (which just ended and was amazing, you can see some photos on Facebook of that).

As always, thanks for reading!

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