TAIPEI, TAIWAN
Taipei, Taiwan
Where we stayed: Grand Hyatt
From Hawaii, we flew to Taiwan for two nights before heading to Singapore. This trip started as a joke, similar to a lot of our trips. When we were booking our flights out of Hawaii to come home, we noticed that the flight to Taiwan was heaps cheaper and joked about going, but before we knew it, we’d booked it.
Neither of us had been to Taipei but have heard great things, so we decided to give it a try. Before this, the only thing we knew about Taiwan was that they spoke Chinese, and this is where the famous night markets started from; we also were aware of there being a lot of great food items like bubble tea. We stayed at the Grand Hyatt Taipei, one block away from Taipei 101, a massive mall with a tall observatory.
The hotel was nice, the staff were terrific, and we had a great breakfast buffet included in our stay. The buffet food was delicious, and they had a vast variety of food, both Asian and western style cuisines. We didn’t have much time, but with our one full day so we ventured out to see Taipei right after an early breakfast. Somehow we always get drawn to tall buildings, like Taipei 101, we decided to go up and check it out, you can see the whole city from up there, and it’s mildly terrifying how high up we were. After Taipei 101, we took the metro to see a few of the sites in Taipei. It was quite easy to get around Taipei despite not knowing any Chinese. Apple Maps was great at directing us to which line and station.
Our first stop was the National Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall, which we accidentally found. They had some sort of military ceremony going on, and we got to watch a parade. The area is a garden and memorial, and it was gorgeous and massive, I highly recommend checking it out. We then made our way to the Shi-Men Ting shopping district, in that area, there are tons of shops and restaurants and also the Red House which is a historic building that has a ton of neat little vendors. We then made our way to Bopiliao Historical Block, which is an old 18th-century city block that they’re keeping that way. There are many old heritage sites like this throughout Taipei, which is cool; it’s delightful to see history being maintained and repurposed. With one full day, we really couldn’t see it all, but we had a blast exploring this city for all that its’ got to offer.
We couldn’t end the Taipei trip without a visit to a night market. There are dozens of night markets in Taipei, far better than what we have back home. We decided to go to the Shi Lin Night Market, the original and one of the largest. We were amazed by the size of the night markets, they span entire neighbourhoods and are open all hours of the night, every day of the year. There is so much to see, eat, and do. We were impressed with how much there was, and we wouldn’t mind another visit to Taiwan.
