We left the Maldives on November 8 at 9:00pm and arrived in Kuala Lumpur on November 9 at 4:30am. We departed at 10:00am and arrived in Taipei at 2:40pm. After going through immigration and customs we headed to the metro station (MRT Station). With the instructions from our couchsurfing host we took the metro to the city centre and then to her house.
The ride from the airport to the city takes about 45 minutes. The train system is impeccable, everything looks brand new. The city is modern with great infrastructure, nice highways and very organized traffic.
Once at the interchange station we saw the book dispenser or library. Here, people can borrow books 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. A beautiful system for people not to have an excuse not to read. There are also cellphone charging stations, bike rental places, etc. This place is nothing like we imagine and we are sure we will be in for more surprises!
We waited at a restaurant for a few hours because our host was not arriving at home until 8:30pm. We arrived at Momo’s house at 8:30pm and met Ann and Derek, Momo’s daughter and son. Ann is 5 years old and Derek is 11 years old. Both are nice kids and eventhough they do not speak much English the language barrier was not an impediment to communicate with them.
We talked to them and played until 10:30pm and although tomorrow is a school day they do not want to go to bed. We think they are too excited of having us as guests.
November 10 was a day pack with activities. The day started breakfast at the local restaurant a couple of blocks away from Momo’s house. We had pork dumplings, soy milk drink and Shaobing youtiao (cake fritters). Momo had asked us if we would like to go to Derek’s school to talk about Colombia to the student… something we did not hesitate to accept. We then headed to the school and met Lucy, the music teacher, who asked a lot of questions about our lives, our country and everything in between. The kids arrived around 10:00am and we presented Colombia, watch a video and ended up the session teaching them how to dance. It was a great experience!
We then headed to Momo’s school, she is a teacher at a high school nearby, where we will be presenting again. On our way there we stopped at Baofu Temple, a beautiful Chinese temple that was recently renovated. One of the temple workers came to talk to Momo because he wanted to know where we were from and what we were doing in Taipei; he wanted to explain a lot about the temple and sure he did. He even gave us a souvenir. Momo acted as a translator for a while but then another lady helped and the information we got was great.
Once we arrived at Momo’s school we went to two classrooms to present about Colombia and dance… they really liked the dancing part of it. Look at the pictures.
In the afternoon we went to several activities the school has on Friday. There was a traditional bag painting activity where we painted our own small handbags using ink from persimmon fruit. We then went to an exhibition of handpainted bags and cushions. We ended up the afternoon playing a complicated boardgame with school teachers.
At 6:30pm we met Carol, one of our first couchsurfers we received while in Canada. Carol and her friend Eva took us for dinner at a local restaurant. We had a taste of lots of local food, including drunken chicken, pork belly, etc.
After dinner Carol and Eva took us to the hot springs in the mountains nearby. This is not your ordinary hot springs, this is the Taiwanese version of hot springs. I will try my best to describe the experience without a lot of details. There are two options: private or public. Private is a room for a couple with a hot spring in pool. The public option is a big room with sauna, steam room, hot spring pools at different temperatures, spa and showers. In this option men and women are separate. We chose the public option so Marcela could be with Carol and Eva.
Once you register you get a locker key where you leave everything behind. Everything means everything… YES, YOU GO NAKED! Once inside the room you get the real Taiwanese hot spring experience… a whole bunch of retired old man enjoying the sauna, hot spring pools and steam room completely naked!
We went back to our couchsurfing host around 10:30pm. The kids were still up waiting to play with us. It was a very long but rewarding day!
On November 11 we went for a couple of free walking tours around Taipei. The first one was around Old Taipei. We visited the Longshan Temple, the Red House, 228 Park among other historical places.
In the afternoon we went for the Golden Age tour. In this tour we visited the north gate (Beimen), the Taipei Xia Hai City God Temple among other attractions. Both tours are highly recommended while in Taipei, however we enjoyed the morning tour more than the afternoon one. The company running the tours is Like it Formosa.
The day ended up at the night market where we had amazing food!
On November 12 we spent time with Derek, Ann and Momo. Momo invited us to have breakfast with them and then we walked to her mom’s house where we had an amazing lunch cooked by a local Taiwanese lady. Everything we tried was delicious!
Momo and Alex then took us to the train station where we got our train to Taichung. We arrived in Taichung a couple of hours later and after the battle trying to find our hotel we headed to the street night market. We had great food and drinks!
Carlos! I had no idea you were a dancer! Anyways, knowing that you are now in Japan, you mayalready have visited an onsen, which seems to be what the Taiwanese call hot springs.
Sergio… there might be other talents you don’t know I possess, wait and see!
The Taiwanese hot springs are just a vulgar imitation of the Japanese onsen. The Taiwanese are just swimming pools, normally indoors, not as scenic at the Japanese onsens.