Day 4 in Taiwan

The wet weather continued to follow us. We watched the rain falling while having our breakfast. An obasan was quite friendly and recommended us to go to a newly opened big shopping mall instead of cooping in the room. She also suggested Miramar Ferris Wheel near Jian Nan Road Station. The kids were happy!

Upon seeing the rain became lighter, we took the subway to CKS Memorial Hall. Despite the non-stop rain, we managed to take some photos and watched the hourly Guards Changing Ceremony.


From there, we went to SYS Memorial Hall. I still cannot remember clearly the significance and importance of CKS and SYS. From there, Taipei 101 is just within walking distance.


(Taipei 101)
(View of Taipei City from Taipei 101)

The entrance to the Observatory is at 5th floor. The entrance fee is NT400 for an adult and NT370 for a child. If the weather is dry, we can visit 89th floor and 91st floor. But since it was such wet, the 91st floor was closed. Within 40 seconds, we travelled in a lift from 5th floor straight to 89th floor. The speed of this lift is about 1010m per min. Inside the lift, we did not experience discomfort at all. We found the ride in this special lift was simply too short.

From the 89th floor, we could have a good bird eye view of Taipei city. Due to the rain and clouds, we could only see buildings closer to Taipei city. At the 88th floor, there was a display on how to ensure this building is stable against strong winds and earthquakes. Taiwan is affected by typhoons and earthquakes yearly and thus its buildings have to withstand such shocks.

On 88th floor, there is also a big showroom on various corals made into different shapes and sizes of "gems", which were too expensive for us even to look at. The kids were already very hungry.

We had our lunch at the food court in Taipei. The prices were comparable to Singapore's. After lunch, D and I went on our own to explore this city. We took a free shuttle bus to City Hall Station. Immediately is the newly opened Ban Ji Departmental Store. We have seen advertisements on Heat-tech from Uniqlo selling like hot-cakes. We saw the shirts and blouses, real thin and soft, claimed to keep warm etc. But since we don't need them back home, why waste money to buy them. We continued to Eslite Bookstore. Instead of selling just books, this store sells a lot of other things. Customers can sit comfortably in the store to read books. Unlike our big bookstores back home, many books are wrapped to discourage browsing without buying.

J wanted to visit Hakka Culture Association located on Da An Station on the Brown line. We didn't take long to find this place. We spoke to the staff and were surprised to know that a lot of Taiwanese are hakka.

Finally we reached Jian Nan Road Station. We saw the Giant Ferris Wheel but there were little lights. We confirmed with the subway staff before exiting the station. The Ferris Wheel was located at the 5th floor and since it was slightly after 5pm, maybe we could have an early dinner before taking the ride.

The Miramar Building was not as crowded as Ban Ji but the prices of food were pretty expensive. We decided to take the ride first and have our dinner on our way back to the hotel. There were 2 types of cars in this Wheel, the normal and the transparent types. Since we made all the way here, we joined the queue for the transparent cars which were just 4. It was still raining but there were more and more people taking the ride. The fee was NT150 for an adult and NT120 for a child.

(Tickets for the ride on Miramar Ferris Wheel)

We waited for about 20 minutes before the transparent car arrived. The whole ride was also about 20 minutes. The car was smaller than our Flyer. The bottom of the car was transparent. However, I was too scared to look down. We could have quite a view of Taipei city at night. We saw lights from Taipei 101 though it was slightly blur due to the cloudliness and rain.

After much debating on what to have for dinner, we settled on Ah Zhong Mian Xian AGAIN! We ordered 3 bowls and bought 1/8 duck at NT200 from that famous duck store.

Another day of cloudy and rain can be expected for tomorrow but I pray hard for a good weather since we will be taking the High Speed Rail to Tainan.

I must say that the locals are very organised in taking the subway. At around 6.30pm, the trains were such crowded that we were literally shoulder to shoulder with strangers. The crowd can be comparable to Tokyo's if not worse. But there was no chaos as there were train personnel deployed to control the huge crowds.