This virus I picked up is like magic, every day one new symptom arrives. It started with a fever, then muscle aches and weakness, then headaches, then running nose and now I can't stop coughing. Just when I thought I might be getting through the worst, I was up half the night coughing every couple of minutes.
With my lack of appetite still going, I just picked up my new standard breakfast meal - an ice cream and a malt milk from the convenience store next to the hotel, before leaving for the day.
I took the train out to Taipei 101 and set out in search of the
Elephant Mountain hiking trail. Surprisingly the directions were very well marked and in English too, also surprising was how warm it already was at 9:00am - I guess that's what happens when you travel much more than 1000 kilometres closer to the equator. I picked up some supplies from the 7 Eleven and should point out that all countries had 7 Eleven but none had slurpees ! Taiwan also seemed to have no sports drinks at all, which I thought was really weird. The only thing that maybe came close was this one lemon flavoured water drink that tasted quite poor - probably like England are their fascination for that terrible Lucozade. Even the soft drink range was just a few Coke brands, although they did have a 920ml bottle of Coca-Cola which was quite an achievement.
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| A handy 920ml bottle. |
The hiking tail was non-stop steps, which was very challenging but rewarding. I was sweating like mad by the time I reached the first lookout, which provided the first view of the Taipei 101 building - it's impossible to miss - and everything else which looks tiny by comparison. I kept going up to the peak of the hill, where the trail breaks off in a few directions. Since each path was quite long and heading away from the city - meaning there probably would not be any more good views along the way - I finished up and headed back down.
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| The beginning stages of. |
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| Taipei lookout. |
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| Taipei lookout again. |
By random luck I found an article on the main page of Yahoo NBA promoting some weird looking Kobe Bryant artwork at a basketball art expo in Taipei, and it was still running during my visit. Most of the information on the internet was not in English, but I was able to determine it was the
Conscious 3 Basketball Art Expo at
Huashan Creative Park. When I arrived at the park I thought I might have got some bad information, as there was some One Piece exhibition being promoted instead. I thought I had covered all of the park without success when I found a small sign pointing off to the basketball expo in some secluded location. I walked in the front door only to find out they weren't starting until 1:00pm, which seemed quite late to me, and it was still only 11:00am. Luckily it wasn't much of a detour and I now knew how to find the place for later.
Longshan Temple was described on my map as the top tourist attraction, or maybe it was top five, so I decided to give it a try even though one temple is usually about the same as the previous...and the next. Getting from the station to the temple was a bit depressing as there was this run down underground mall offering things like massage and nail salons, but it was a bit dank and there were no customers, although I did see this really nice piece of artwork on one of the walls. The best thing about the temple was that it was free. There was a couple of shrines inside, and unlike most that are just full out of tourists this one seemed to be mostly locals praying and dropping off their joss sticks, so it felt a lot more authentic. I also picked up a pudding pop from 7 Eleven on the way out, always wanted one of them...
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| Subway art. |
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| Longshan temple. |
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| Not sure if you're supposed to join in. |
Ximen was only one stop away on the subway - since Taipei is a fair bit smaller but still has a good train network, it is quick and easy to get from one place to the next. First I was going to see
The Red House, about which I had no idea. The sign out front solved the mystery, it is one of Taipei's oldest preserved buildings and was the location of the first market - not incredible but it'll do. Although the building was quite large the accessible area inside was pretty pathetic, it was just a small round foyer with some historical information and then about the same amount of space was allocated to a gift shop.
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| The sort of Red House. |
Across the street was the
Ximen Pedestrian Area - fun fact, I just started watching an old season of The Amazing Race which begins in Taipei and they are wandering around the same place. The area was all quite new and had some shopping streets running in various directions, kind of like a smaller version of Shibuya. I found several places selling magnets, each overpriced by the same amount - $7 for a metal magnet and $10 for a large rubber magnet, crazy ! There was a lot of advertising around for The Expendables 3 movie - another fun fact, in The Amazing Race the same street arches were being used to promote The Green Latern movie, so not much has changed. I got another curry for lunch, which came with a mountain of rice.
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| Ximending. |
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| Lots of happy smiling people. Also The Expendables. |
After getting a good meal down for a change, I went south to the
Gongguan district. I happened to come across Taiwan University which looked fantastic, lots of open space, endless rows of palm trees and thousands of bikes - not sure what the education is like though. There were some outlet stores on the same street at the university, I found Adidas and Nike, and a couple of others I forget. The Nike one was pretty empty and had very dated stock, but the Adidas one was good. Amazingly I found an Adidas t-shirt that I liked, possibly the first time ever, but it was only available in large. Closer to the station a number of sports stores also had big Nike logo's on display, so I tried a couple and found a good discounted running t-shirt for about $30, so I'd say it was a successful trip.
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| Taiwan University main entrance. |
I was planning to check out the Maokong Gondola next, but some announcements at the station said it was suspended due to high winds, so I went back to the basketball exhibit instead. This time it was open and there was a lot of artwork on display, from a number of different artists it seemed. A couple of the more comic-y collections were a bit stupid, but most of the others were excellent, my favourites were of Kevin Durant, Kawhi Leonard and the Spurs team - but the little Kobe statue was a bit weird. A few t-shirts and bags were being sold with some of the artwork printed on them, I definitely would have bought something but the choices they had made available for sale did not include any of the pieces I liked.
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| LeBron. |
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| World champions. |
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| Carmelo, Reggie and Kawhi. |
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| The dream team. |
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| #linning. |
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| KD. |
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| Some lego house around the creative park. |
. I spent about as long typing out the name as I did visiting. I think every Asian city has at least one of these Yat-sen places, but this one was a bit more elaborate than most, a huge building with a big curved yellow roof. Inside some guards were performing some kind of ceremony that had attracted a large crowd, but I was about to have a coughing fit that would have probably disturbed the proceedings so I ducked back out again.
Back at the hotel I took a short break, then started having a weird headache again which seemed to be originating from my neck, not sure what that was about. I found Gone In 60 Seconds on the TV just as it was time to go back out again.
. A lot of carnival games were just being set up as part of the night market - those games that look easy but you never win. I passed a few magnet stores on the way to the night market, located the street with all of the food carts but nothing else worthwhile. All of the laneways started to become a bit confusing after a while, so once I'd seen enough I just wanted to collect some magnets and get out. I chose a store which was selling magnets for 80 TWD each, so I asked how much for three but the girl didn't really seem to understand. I tried to reword the question and she came back with "buy ten get one free" - who the hell is going to buy eleven magnets ? So instead I offered 200 TWD for three which I thought seemed fair enough, but she seemed either confused or angry that I would even contemplate a discount, and said she couldn't change the price. So I just shrugged and went off to buy some different ones at the next store down, before heading home.
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