I’m really liking this hotel - the mattress it delightfully firm, the bedding is great, and it is very quiet. I didn’t hear anything from other guests or traffic noise. I finally heard a siren at about 8 am. My window looks out over other buildings, not a street, so maybe that helps with the noise.
Despite the comfy hotel, i had a variable night of sleep, as I might have expected. It was good for about 5 hours, then I was awake for a couple before drifting off again. I didnt feel great in the morning, with a headache and a bit queasy. Jet lag, dehydration, or something I ate? Or possibly a combo. Not great timing, since we were booked for a food tour this morning. Luckily, I perked up after taking a couple of Tylenol and drinking some tea.
Sue and Rick had arrived after 2 am and were troopers, getting up and heading out relatively early. We took the metro to the Dongmen area for a private food tour, getting our first glimpse of Taipei 101, once the world’s tallest building, but now number ten on the list.
The Dongmen Market was fabulous. We viewed the many products on offer at this very clean wet market, including vegetables, fresh local fruit, seafood, fish, and every possible part of pigs, sheep, and poultry. Plus handmade products like dumplings and fish balls. ‘Wet market’ has a bad reputation after COVID, but it just refers to a market where everything gets cleaned up and hosed down daily. This market is only open until 12:30 pm. The only live creatures for sale were seafood and a few lethargic looking frogs. We were able to taste small bites of a lot of things, all very good. And our guide June was delightful, sharing lots of info about Taiwan’s history and culture. We wrapped up with a tasting of various locally grown teas. Oolong tea is the preferred local variety. But June says lots of people here actually drink coffee in the morning.
A typical older Taipei walk up apartment building. Not earthquake resistant, so the government would like them replaced.
The woman at the left is 93 and still works six days a week, by choice. Her two sons are doctors, so she doesn’t have to work. She was disappointed that we didn’t want to try her pork offal/blood soup. I just couldn’t do it…
We learned lots of interesting tidbits, like how there is a government receipt lottery. Originally conceived in the early 1950s to make merchants more honest about paying taxes on their revenues, it’s still popular. All store receipts have a QR code. By people scanning and submitting their receipts, the government knows who’s selling how much. And the holder of a receipt that is drawn in the lottery can win up to $10 million TWD. Sadly for us, only residents are eligible. But there are donation boxes where we can give our receipts to charities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Invoice_lottery?wprov=sfti1#
After the food tour wrapped up we walked to the nearby Chiang Kai-shek Memorial. It’s a massive memorial to the authoritarian leader of modern day Taiwan. The present day government’s acknowledgment of the not-so-good parts of his leadership is balanced by an exposition focused on Taiwan’s ‘long walk to freedom of speech’. We didn’t stick around the memorial area too long, taking the metro back so Sue and Rick could pick up their bikes a day early at Taipei Bike Works, because we realized that the shop doesn’t open until 1 pm daily, and we’d like to get an earlier start than that tomorrow, even though we’ve planned an easy day one. I tested my bike on a short ride, and pumped up my tires using the shop’s pump.
We saw some evidence today of trees uprooted by last week’s typhoon.
We had just one brief light rainshower today. And the future weather is looking pretty good, so we booked accommodation for the next couple of nights on our planned route.
Our bikes are safely tucked away in a corner of the hotel lobby. They are locked, but are very safe here, I think. We found a smart phone on the sidewalk today. June insisted on simply moving it to where it wouldn’t get stepped on so that the owner could use ‘find my iPhone ‘ to recover it. She wasn’t the least bit concerned someone would take it.
We headed back to the nearby night market for some food, even though none of us were very hungry after our earlier tour. We shared one of the deep fried squids I took a picture of yesterday. And then had some delicious crispy pork. No vegetables were consumed (but we did eat a few on our afternoon tour). Our lack of hunger may also have been the result of seeing the U.S. election results. ☹️
