It only took four nights, but I finally found a pillow to get through the night. I had a pretty tight schedule in the morning again - not sure why I keep doing that - so I figured I'd turn up five minutes early for the 7:00am breakfast start. The woman was not happy. After rushing through breakfast and saying farewell to the hotel once and for all I was on the subway back to Seoul Station. One benefit of these early starts is that I managed to get on and off the rail network before the peak hour rush began.
A benefit of paying a few extra dollars for the express train to the airport was that I was able to check-in with Korean Air before leaving the train station. I got my boarding pass and dropped off my suitcase, so I was able to relax on the train and not have to worry about any of that stuff at the airport.
The plane was idle on the runway for about half an hour once again - it seems like that has happened every time so far. As we were getting close to
Taiwan and started decreasing in altitude I started having some intense ear pain that I'd never experienced before, I'm guessing it had something to do with my sickness. I was feeling really uncomfortable and we were still twenty minutes away from landing, then I was saved because we got stuck waiting for clearance and had to maintain our current altitude ! In the time we spent going around in circles above the airport my ears managed to settle down and didn't have a problem when it was finally time to land.
The
Taipei airport was a bit small, and I didn't manage to find any visitor information before jumping on the bus to get to the high speed train station. When I went to buy my ticket at the train station I encountered VISA pay wave for the first and last time, incredible. Taipei was off to an even better start when I made it to the hotel, with only my own printed maps, without any problems at all.
Just as I was finishing my unpacking and deciding what to do for the last few hours of the afternoon a big thunder storm came in, so my options suddenly became quite limited. The hotel didn't have any good maps in English so I went back to Taipei Main station to find the visitor centre, only Taipei Main station is part of a miniature underground city with 4 train lines, 2 underground malls (those two words together never result in anything good) and about 30 different exits - this is the one downside of having underground stations I suppose, also not getting any sunlight. I got some maps from the visitor centre eventually, and there was a lot of small food stalls around which had some good stuff, but ever since I got sick I seem to have lost my appetite for Asian bakeries, which is no good at all.
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| Rained out. |
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| Taipei Main - I had no better photos to choose from. |
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| Monster muffins - hard to tell with no perspective. |
I got back on the train to get dinner, and found a restaurant called KGB (Kiwi Gourmet Burger) hidden down an alleyway. The menu was great because there was about twenty different varieties and most of them you could choose to have either a beef, lamb or...veggie burger ! I got the standard cheeseburger, it was alright but the pattie seemed a little bit dry. With a vanilla milkshake it cost 410 New Taiwan Dollars (is there an Old Taiwan Dollar, and why does everyone use dollars) which was slightly expensive perhaps, but not too bad.
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| It's not Burger Fuel, but a decent NZ burger. |
As the rain was still heavy and it was getting dark that was it for the day. Thoughts about the hotel:
- Much better than Seoul
- Spacious room
- Free washer and dryer, including free powder
- Strangely no fridge in the room
- But a communal mini fridge with a few free drinks
- There was also a big fridge one floor down where you can put your own labelled items
- Reception speaks good English
- Reception didn't have any English maps
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