Nightmarkets and food in Taiwan

Possibly the most amazing thing so far in Taiwan has been the variety and availability of food. Around the city there are lots of 'night markets'. Having lived in Asia for a while now you visit places and most of them are the same and sell the same tat however, these were for locals as well as tourist and were different in a very good way.In the four nights we've been here, we have been to a different night market every evening.

The night markets are usually busy but the variety off food you can get is amazing and there were so many things that I'd never tried before. You can even see the people preparing the food.

There was so much food combined in so many ways, its hard to know where to start. I've taken a load of pictures of the various food, most of which we tried.The dumpling were the best I'd ever had.

Yangminshan National Park, North Taiwan

Today is our last day in Taipei before we move to the east coast and one of the most famous national parks in Taiwan, Taroko, anyway, more about that later as today we took the metro and bus to another national park just north of Taipei called Yangminshan.

It only took about an hour to get there and was pretty straight forward. This national park is up in the hills and they grow lots of flowers and have Japanese cherry blossoms. At the moment they are in water lily season.

It was a nice place and good to walk around. Its very scenic and I've never seen so many water lily's in my life.

As well as lots of flowers there are lots of hiking trails. We walked one that went a few mile from the main flower place back to the car park. It was great as it went through the forest. 

It would have been nice to spend more time here are there is a great hike up one of the mountains that would have taken an afternoon or morning to complete. Again, this is such a good things to have so close to the city center.

So tomorrow morning we are getting a train to the east coast of Taiwan. We will probably come back to Taipei in a few days as there is still lots to see and do.

Day 3 in Taipei, Taiwan. Elephant mountain and Ximen shopping

Today we went for a hike in the hills and to the main shopping area in Taipei. As I said previously Taipei has hills and mountains around it. At the end of one of the metro stops, Xianghan, is a hiking trail called 'Elephant mountain'. It's highly recommended as it gives great views o the city. As you can see from the photos they were pretty impressive.

There were lots of routes to take and lots of steps but it wasn't too challenging. Certainly not like that bloody volcano I went up in Indonesia.

The higher you got the better the view and all of them had a view of Taipei 101 in it.

It is such a cool thing to be able to do in a big city and something lacking from Ho Chi Minh City. There were lots of locals hanging out and enjoying the views.

After an enjoyable morning and afternoon doing this we went to the main shopping area called Ximen. I'm not much of a shopper but like to see there places.

It was really cool to walk around the area and see how its different to other places.Since its been a bit cold and I didn't bring a jumper with me, I had to do some shopping and managed to find a reasonably priced jumper.

I didn't buy anything else.

Taipei metro system

At this point I feel that the Taipei metro system deserves its own post. Taipei is a pretty big city and having a metro has made it so enjoyable to travel around.

 

Its incredibly clean. Everyone ques before getting on and off and no one sits in the 'reserved for old and pregnant women seats'. Its also really cheap and easy to navigate.

As well as being really friendly, it's also really transparent how civilized the people here are. Perhaps this is made more obvious as I live in a city where people are at the other end of this spectrum. Everyone shows respect for the rules and as a result it creates a really safe, clean and friendly environment.

Taipei 101, Taiwan

Today, I got to go up to the top of Taipei 101. This is one of the biggest buildings in the world! This is a place I've always wanted to go after seeing loads of pictures of it and seeing the fireworks on New Years Eve.

There was a pretty long wait of around 40 minutes to go to the top. But it was well organized and the time went quickly. The elevator was pretty cool. Its the fastest in the world and made the 90+ floor journey in about 30 seconds. 

Once we were at the top the views were pretty cool! there are some nice mountains around the city which looked great against the other big buildings. 

The viewing area was really good, you could walk the whole way round and even go outside.

Right at the top!

It was a very enjoyable day and a really nice building. There was an enormous shopping center at the bottom of the building which had an impressive food hall.