Welcome to Taiwan! 歡迎台灣!

Hi All! 

Continuing my Asia adventures, my second stop was Taiwan! This was my first time in Taiwan, and it was everything I expected! 

My first destination was Taipei and we stayed right in the middle of XiMenDing (西門町). Perfect location for food and shopping! As soon as we stepped downstairs, we were greeted by countless number of stalls and food carts. 

There's a number of things to do in Taiwan, but what I enjoyed the most was visiting the PingXi Railway Line. The Ping Xi railway line is most famous for their historical look and feel and the PingXi lantern festival. I have a deep appreciation for Asian history and was really excited to come here. Many movies are filmed here because of the scenery. However, if you decide to drop by, come early! Shops usually close by dinner time (however I'd wait till night time to set off lanterns - it looks better at night !)

Next on my favourite things to do in Taipei was hiking. There are a set of mountains called the Four Beasts Mountains (四獸山), Elephant, Tiger, Leopard and Lion. However, don't be alarmed! None of those animals actually live on these mountains, the shape of the mountains just resemble these four animals. We only had time to climb the Elephant and Tiger mountain (we did both of them in a day, started around noon and ended around 8). The mountains were well paved, and there were many locals and tourists climbing the mountains with us! It was a relatively easy hike with nice scenary along the way. We saw temples, outdoor gyms, decorated rest areas and since we stayed for sunset, we caught a glimpse of Taipei at night. It was nice exercise since we'd been eating so much night market foods! 

My third favourite adventure in Taiwan was to the BeiTou (北投) Hot Springs! The Bei Tou area was developed into hot springs while Taiwan was under Japanese rule. As a result, the area has a very Japanese feel to it and very scenic. It was really hot while we were at Bei Tou (35°), so we opted to try the hot springs in the evening. As the saying goes "When in Rome, do as the Romans do", we opted to try the public hot springs which was frequented by many locals. They had several different pools each with different temperatures (kind of reminded of Scandinavia Spas here), and it was truly relaxing.

And these were the highlights of my stay in Taipei...next stop, KhaoSiung! 

- Alice

P.S. For more Taipei pictures...