Our time in Taiwan was a roller coaster of emotions. Just before leaving Japan we had submitted our visa applications for Vietnam, which was our next stop after Taiwan. That was still 5 days out and we thought we had time as we were told it takes 2 – 3 days. Unfortunately, we were unaware of the effect of the TET (Lunar/Chinese New Year) holiday on Vietnam. We applied late in the afternoon, and the next day the offices were closed for a week. This left us scrambling to try and figure out what to do and having to rebook things and change our schedule for Vietnam. This was definitely the low side of the roller coaster ride. On the upside, we were staying with my cousin who does missionary training in Taiwan and if this was going to happen anywhere, staying with family was the best possible scenario. So rather than hosting us for 4 nights, we ended up staying for 11 nights! They were such gracious hosts making room for us in their apartment, feeding us so well, and welcoming us to Taiwan. We felt uplifted and blessed to spend time with them and the girls really loved getting to know their 2nd cousins.
Because our activities bounced around quite a bit, I’m following the logic of previous posts and creating posts that are geographically similar and not necessarily chronologically. Using this post as an example, we visited downtown Taipei on the first full day there and the last night we were there.
It was a pretty cloudy morning when we went to visit Taipei 101 so we decided it wasn’t worth the cost to pay for a visit to the top. Instead we explored around Taipei 101. Taipei 101 has 101 floors and was the tallest building in the world when it was finished in 2004. It has a huge weighted pendulum between some of the upper floors that help the building weather hurricanes and earthquakes.
My cousin and her family live north of Taipei and the YA from Julia’s year is from south of Taipei. This made central Taipei a good place to meet.
Always a joy to reconnect after all the years!
We got our first taste of the effects of Tet as the first three restaurants our friend tried to take us were closed! Those amazing local family run business are basically shut down for the holiday. She found a dumpling restaurant that was open and treated us to a feast!
She also introduced us to Bubble Tea which was invented in Taiwan. Definitely a family favourite drink in Taiwan!
After lunch, we met back up with the cousins and headed off to Chiang Kai Shek Memorial. Chiang Kai-shek was the leader of Republic of China, first in mainland China and then setting up in Taiwan during the Communist revolution on the mainland. His memorial was closed for Tet but we could still walk around the building and memorial square which is flanked by the National Theatre and National Concert Hall. The sun came out in the afternoon and the grounds and buildings were stunning.
The day ended with a rainbow sunset at Rose Garden Park. There was decent size hedge bush maze and the kids tired themselves out playing tag in the maze and even convinced the parents to join in for the last round.
As mentioned above, our last night we went back downtown to do the ShiLin night market. When we had originally gone downtown, a lot of the stalls were closed for Tet but now we got the full experience with packed streets and a plethora of food stalls.
Over the course of the week our cousins introduced us to so many different new foods that our tracker of foods we have tried almost doubled in one week. Bubble Tea was highest on the like list, with stinky tofu hitting the bottom of the list. Markets like this were great places to try new things. Here we are trying fried milk and candied strawberries, both great!
The girls had such a great week because they got to hang out with cousins and goof around doing regular teenage stuff!