7/4/05-1/5/05 Trip to Taipei

Day 1 ximending, yongkangstreet, huasi night market
Day2 101 shopping center, xinjiuang baseball stadium, huasi night market
Day3 Beitou, museum, hot spring valley, hot spring pool, danshiu, fisherman’s pier, Shilin night market
Day4 Jiufen town, Feiyang baseball shop, rao he nihgt market
Day5 Yangming park, Feiyang baseball shop, Shilin markert

This tour is 70% food, 20% shopping, 10% sightseeing.

When I arrived the airport, the immigraion officer asked me why travel to TW the 2nd time cuz he thought there was not much to see, I replied “the first time is 10+ years ago, things been changed a lot."

Well, perhaps many years ago I came to TW for sightseeing. This time not much interest in sightseeing, so we just followed the guidebook and nearly ate >90% food suggested by those guide books.

The highlights of the trip was the Day3 when we visited Beitou and Danshiu, those 2 towns were different from Taipei city and full of “old town” atmosphere. But having hot spring in summer was not that relaxing…cuz lots of sweating and no cool breeze to balance the hot water. Sandy said the scene with people in the hot spring was like “monkeys”.

Watching the Taiwan baseball league was good, the stadium was nearly full with very exciting crowds. Tho there was no homerun dance as in Japan league, the audience was much involved!! We shop like crazy in Feiyang baseball shop and bough 2 full boxes of goods!

On the 30th April night in the hotel roon where we were having take away seafood, I suddenly felt dizzy, the surrounding were swinging, and then I realise it was earthquake. The most severe earthquake I experienced. It was a 5.8 scale earthquake with the center in Hualian. But in Taipei the shaking was quite prominent as well.