Taiwan

Long weekend in Hong Kong (public holiday on monday), quite a few days I still had to take as holidays, someone willing to travel with me, and a very reasonably priced package deal... what do you do? That's right - book a trip to Taiwan.

It was one fo these trips where everything seesm to go wrong, but the more it does go wrong the funnier it becomes. A typhoon was passing over Taiwan on sunday, so flights got cancelled and delayed. Our was delayed by about 6 hours, but Alex managed to get us on an earlier flight so in the end we only got there about an hour later than planned. The streets were empty, no traffic at all, people were staying in while the rain washed the streets clean.

At the hotel we got an upgrade to the top floor suite because there were so many cancellations. It was amazing: pink walls, white Louis XV-XVI furniture, and a large bathtub with jets and colour changing lights. The public areas of the hotel were decorated in the brightest colours and patterns, never seen anything like it.

We decided to go tot he famous 24h Eslite bookstore, and that's where it started. It had been open for 15 years non stop, and closed for renovation 2 days before we arrived. Then there was the Confucius temple: closed for restauration until the 25th. The open air observatory deck of Taipei 101: closed for maintenance. The big concert hall on the square by the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall: in scaffolding. Etc etc. All we could do was laugh, the weekend ended up being so different from what we had imagined it, and there was just nothing we could do.

We had a good time though. Saw some nice things, had great food and had a very relaxed time at the hot springs. I guess I also should mention our visit to Hello Kitty Sweets, the one and only Hello Kitty cafe. As you can imagine we were the only guys in the there, the rest were girls :)

Taipei is a nice place, very friendly and damn cheap compared to Hong Kong. I'll be back there at some point, I'm sure. It's only an hour and a half away :)