去Taiwan旅行 Day 1 Part 1
May 31st, 2007I’m still in Taiwan right now, by the way.
The day I left for Taiwan was rather enjoyable. I was over at Daphu’s aunt’s house in the morning, before heading off together to Anju’s house. Anju’s parents treated us to a happy lunch and dinner over at their restaurant. Maybe pictures will come later. We flew out of O’Hare with American (NEVER RIDE AMERICAN EVAR) and met up with another friend, Joe, over in LA.
After some loitering, we boarded the plane which would ferry us over to Taiwan.
Before I left for Taiwan, the Chicagoland area was experiencing a rather unusually cool temperature during the week, with temperatures even dropping down to the 50’s. It was almost as if the weather was cold just to make my transition to Taiwan’s sub-tropical climate even more of a shock.
So, is Taiwan hot? Yes, it is hot. Taiwan typically averages at least 6 or 7 degrees (Fahrenheit) higher than Chicago (I think). While the temperature is indeed higher, it’s not what makes Taiwan’s climate uncomfortable. The humidity of Taiwan is what really buys the ticket. Remember that smelly kid in your classes? In Taiwan, you’d be able to taste him too. At the same time, your sweat can’t evaporate as readily, with all the water in the air already. So what happens is that you’re left to stew in your own juices, while you get to “taste” everyone else.
Anyway, after enjoying 20+ hours of travel, I had crossed over to the future and landed at the Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport. After the necessary customs schtuff, I reached Taipei around 8am or so. While riding the taxi to town, I got my initial glimpses of how Taiwan’s traffic would be. Lots of scooters, not a lot of space.
We headed over to Daphu’s house, where we took much needed showers and unloaded our things. One of the things you notice about Taiwan in comparision to the States is that the neighborhood is a lot more colorful. Taiwan also doesn’t have very many(or big) sidewalks, but the space in front of the stores are all “sheltered” for people to walk under. I’ll find a proper word for this once I get back to a proper English mindset.
Ate some breakfast, which consisted of a small omelet, some bread thing, and soy milk. It was good.
After breakfast, we entered Dayeh Takashimaya, a large Japanese mall/department store-ish place. It had a international grocery store in the basement, and other various stores for the upper floors.
Hey look, black chicken!
There’s a bit more to write, but I’ll save that for another time. I’ll also prolly be editing this post after I read it, so don’t be surprised when you see changes.
May 31st, 2007 at 10:40 pm
black chicken ftw. glad you’re having fun.
August 3rd, 2007 at 7:23 pm
[...] Breeze Center is another shopping center/department store similar to Dayeh Takashimaya. We went down to the food court and ordered up some sandwiches. The tonkatsu were quite the [...]