Our Weekend in Taipei!

Happy Monday!

This weekend, Bryan and I flew to Taiwan and spent 2 nights in Taipei! It was a short, 1.5 hour flight away from Hong Kong, and it was amazing to be able to see another country.

Before the actual weekend started, we were able to see two of our friends (a couple) who we hadn't seen in over a year! About a year ago, they moved from California to Singapore for work, and we were happy they were in Hong Kong late last week. Bryan works with Todd, so Nicole and I were able to spend the day exploring Hong Kong. She found a tea tasting experience that was delicious and fun, and then we went to dinner and met up with the boys in LKF (area with many bars) after that for some drinks. It was a really fun day!

Below is a collage of the tea tasting - the top left is tea that started out as a ball and blossomed into this beautiful flower! And it was delicious :) Almost too beautiful to drink. We also tried rose honey, which was surprisingly good. I don't usually like floral-tasting things or honey, but apparently I like the combo.

Tea Time!

On Friday night, Bryan and I went straight to the airport after he got off work. It's super easy from where he works because there is an "Airport Express" tram that takes you right to the airport from the IFC (international financial center) in under 30 minutes. When we got to the airport and got our tickets, the machine also printed out passes to the lounge for us to go to after security, which was a nice surprise!

Our flight was delayed, so it was great to have a comfortable place to hang out while we waited. Since our plane ended up being a few hours delayed in total, we got into Taipei after 1:00am, so we went straight to the hotel and went to sleep. At 9:00am on Saturday, "A Taipei Tour" picked us up (which we had pre-booked) for a day tour in Taipei. It was a great way to see Taipei in one day, and we saw a lot of different things - Longshan Temple, Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall, National Palace Museum, Presidential Office Building, Taipei 101 + a dimsum lunch, Yangwingshan National Park, Beitou Hot Springs, Danshui River old street, and Shilin Night Market. It was great to be able to see so much, but it was a bit too rushed. We're glad we got to see most of these places, but I think it would've been better if the tour company picked a few of the best highlights and spent more time at those. We spent the most time at lunch, the museum, and the Danshui River old street. I don't know if you need much more time at many of these places, but fitting in the areas in the mountainous parts of Taiwan made it so that we didn't actually stay at those places for that long. With that said, we were still able to see beautiful views from the bus, so in the end, it was worth it to go up to the mountains. I also think our group made a difference. Some stayed on the bus at multiple stops, and they were constantly ready to just move on to the next stop. Bryan and I would've stayed at some longer by ourselves, but we moved with the group. Overall we did have a great day!

The Danshui River old street and the Shilin Night Market were very interesting to see, just because they're so unique to this area of the world (at least compared to the US). There is so much street food and so many things you can buy, and it was just very interesting to see it. We tried a few samples of things, but mainly just looked area, and didn't actually purchase anything. I think that's pretty rare here, but we just wanted to see it all. And, as usual, it was just so nice to be able to spend the entire day with Bryan - always wonderful!

Memorial Hall, Taipei 101, dim sum, Night Market, and Hot Springs

When we were at lunch, we had some extra time to walk around the indoor market in the Taipei 101 building (which is the tall building in the photo above). While walking around, we found a fruit called a "durian". We had heard of this fruit on the Travel Channel from Andrew Zimmern's show. He's someone who tries a lot of different types of foods (mainly ones that look nasty) and he likes almost everything. He hates the durian. He described it's smell and taste, and so when we saw it, we had to try it. This may sound like the opposite of how we should have reacted, but we were just too curious!

I think our faces are pretty revealing - it was nasty. We smelled it first, straight from the fruit, and thought "oh, that's not too bad", but once it's out of the fruit, the smell is SO much stronger! We could smell it through a plastic bag in a plastic container that was sealed. We each had a tiny bite, but it tasted like rotten, mushy mango with a horrible aftertaste. I honestly think the smell was probably worse than the taste - we could smell it from many feet away, but the aftertaste lingered on for a while. Even after drinking our Coke Zero to make it go away. Needless to say, one taste was more than enough.