China 2011: Day 2 Morning

So as it turned out, I was still too tired to go out last night, so I begged off the whole distant relatives thing. I stayed in and sort of "rested my eyes" while my mom went by herself. She later came back rather disgruntled at the food they had available in Taiwanese restaurants here. Apparently none of the dishes ordered me her tastes. She brought back for me a to-go order of sushi she picked up on the way back.

After a good night's sleep, I woke up sometime around 6 AM again. *shrug*

Might as well take some time to describe the Hotel. Palais de Chine is the name. It's supposed to be a five star. Motif is very dark.. as in dark brown wood, low lighting, and glass/mirror strips everywhere that are decorated with black patterns that my mom thought was rust at first.

No free internet, alas. No LAN connection either that I've found. They charge for wireless access here at something like NT$100 for one hour (exchange rate is something like $1 ~ NT$29, so that's like slightly less than $4). Boo.

The controls for lights are very... confusing. I think I got them worked out now, but it's not very intuitive. Same for the shower tabs. Although the nice thing is there's a tab that allows you to adjust the height of the shower-head, which is good for short people like me. Another amusing bit is the toilet, which is one of those fancy things with a control station next to it with a bunch of options, including washing your butt or, quite literally, blowing hot air up your... :P

Elevators are kinda annoying also. Apparently, if you want to select any of the guest room floors, you have to swipe your room card first. That's kinda odd to me, because what if you wanted to visit someone on another floor? Is that not allowed? Meh.

Breakfast was okay. Nothing to surprising at the buffet tables. I still don't think it's as good as the hotel I had last year in Shanghai. But, well, Shanghai. Which incidentally has about the same number of people in its metropolitan area as the whole island of Taiwan, I'm told. Yeah, no wonder the streets remind me more of Chinatown in the US than of anywhere in China in terms of population density (and cleanliness, and lack of air pollution, etc.)

Another thing I've noticed here, in various stores, and even the airport. A lot of fairly low ceilings here. Especially at the airport on our way out. Even I felt the ceiling was low and my height is puny. I can only think that most foreigners with some height on them would probably be able to smack their heads onto the overhanging lights at that place. It's somewhat interesting.

Also, noticing a lot of Japanese everywhere. It's pretty pervasive, on signs, instructions, reading material, tour groups... hell, every waitress/waiter/service professional gives that impression with the whole service with a bow thing. I guess the whole 50 years of occupation pre-WWII really left a mark.

China 2011: Day 2 Noon

Our first guided tour was a 3 hour of the city, hitting various major attractions...

1. Chiang Kai'shek (how the heck do you spell his name under the Wade-Giles system again?) Memorial was first. We saw the changing of the guards thing at 9 AM. Poor guys. Shiny metal helmets in the muggy subtropical heat (getting worse throughout the day) for hours must suck. Then we went under the memorial where they displayed various historical stuff. I took photos of the shiny medals things. Unfortunately, our guide was rushing us through the exhibit, so I'm not sure what/where the medals are from, but I'm sure I'll get that info once I sort through my photos. Oh, and there was also an Egyptian exhibition there too (we didn't go in), which gave me a WTH moment.

2. Quick drive by of some major goverment cities, cuz apparently traffic control don't allow people to park anywhere close for photos, apparently.

2.5. Stopped by a handicraft/tea shop, purely for advertising purposes. A waste of time, but whatever.

(Then! Suddenly! It started to rain. Hard.)

3. Martyr's Memorial was next. Pretty much a memorial to all soldiers since the start of the Nationalists. It's about what you expect... buildings with rooms that have walls full of names.

(Then! Suddenly! The rain stopped and the sun came out. The muggy heat immediately returned, and you'd never knew that it'd rained except for the wet ground.)

4. Some...temple...forget the name. Apparently dedicated to the local earth diety (tu di). And to Guan Ying.

5. National Palace Museum again. We were only guided through the main attractions and the special exhibition though, quickly. Only about an hour spent there total. All I can think is that my aunt would've been appaled. :P I did like the special exhibition on carvings though - I don't recall seeing it at all yesterday, so I guess it was only for tours or something.

Since I won't have any photos of the museum, I guess I should go over some of the "main attractions" of the museum since our guide took special care to point it out...

* Jade Cabbage - Carved from a single piece of jade, white on the bottom, green at the top. Two grasshoppers (crickets?) are carved into the cabbage leaves, representing fertility.

* Pork Skin - Carved from jade (nephrite?) of all things. Brown colored thing that looks just a layer of pork skin. (Foreigners might not get the resemblance, but since pork skin is a common delicacy for Chinese, it's readily recognizable.)

* Small boat carved from a single piece of walnut (shell?). Magnifying glass shows 8 people carved onto the boat as well as intricate designs on the boat itself.

* A layered (dodecahedron?) something-hedral ball of 17 layers one inside another, each an independent layer but all carved out of one block of ivory.

There were other awesome carvings of rhino horn, bamboo, wood, and ivory too. Nice. We also bought some souvenirs from the shop to give to family/coworkers.

Then it's back to the hotel. I noted further on the way back that while there's a decent amount of cars and pedestrians on the streets, there's virtually no bicycles like normal Chinese cities. Instead, their presence is replaced by a large amount of motor bikes everywhere you look. Interesting...

China 2011: Day 2 Night

After a snack (can't really call it lunch) we decided to go do the tour of Tapei 101 ourselves. It's supposed to be the second tallest building in the world.

Let me just state for the record here that the main metro station in Taipei is a pain and a half to navigate. It's not only the hub junction of all three metro lines, but it also connects to the Taipei train station, and overlaps with both a major bus stop and an underground market covering several city blocks sprawling both east-west and north-south. Not only that, the areas are apparently discontiguous, and require going up and down into other sections (such as the market) to get to another part of somewhere else (like another metro line). And the maps in the place are useless for anything but giving you a rough direction of where to face.

Anyway, we made it to the 101 building. Bought tickets to go up to the observatory deck (floor 88), and were told the line was 45 mins. Shyeah... So we headed down to get dinner first. There I came across an interesting store that was selling pizza in a cone. Basically, they make pizza crust into the shape of the usual ice-cream waffle cone shape. Then they stuff in the toppings (cheese, tomato sauce, the pizza toppings of your choice. Then bake and serve. It was cute, and I think it also results in more toppings than crust compared to normal style pizza. Given how stingy most pizza places in the US are about toppings, I doubt the same thing will ever come overseas. Especially not at their low low price (NT$90 = ~$3 in case you wondered).

After eating, we went up to the observation deck and took pictures. The buildings in Taiwan might not have been as eyecatching from the street as buildings in Shanghai. But from a bird's eye view, it was apparent that they've got some very interesting architecture pieces too. We also stayed up for sunset, so that we could get some shots of the nightlight. I'm not sure how that'll come out, since digital camera...or at least my digital camera/technique isn't that great on LED lights at night.

On the way down, we passed by an exhibit on coral and jade carvings (modern works of art). They've got some really pretty stuff and I ended up taking probably as many photos if not more as of the observatory.

Then, after anothe struggle to navigate our way back to the hotel, we're finally done with Taipei. Tomorrow we start heading south.

(BTW, I just realized that it's not just the ceilings everywhere that's made for Chinese-sized (height) people. The bathrooms are biased too. The tub here just about fits someone of my size. Which means those six-foot-something foreigners are not only going to be walking through a lot of areas bent over, but they'll probably be unable to cram themselves in for a normal bath. Thank goodness for showers, eh? :P)