First Day in Taiwan!

June 3, 2024

Our arrival day was a very busy and exciting day full of sightseeing and new adventures! We arrived at around 5 am in Taipei. In customs we saw the one and only “Linus Tech Tips” from youtube (15.8M subs), which was pretty awesome. Then we navigated through a maze of metro stations, eventually ending up at our hotel to drop off our luggage. The streets were full of surprises! I even saw this kid who I went to school with in lower school, and William called his name and he turned! So it was him! What a coincidence.

The main form of transportation we have been using today is the metro station, and something we immediately noticed was how clean and quiet the station was compared to the metro in LA. The view we saw the moment we stepped outside the metro was unforgettable. Moped is a very popular form of transportation here! Then, we went to eat breakfast at a cafe called AP paninis that was famous for their breakfast paninis; we all ordered a ham, egg, and cheese panini and got coffee since we were all exhausted from the morning flight. The food was amazing! With our new energy, we traveled to the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial. At first we looked to our right and saw a pretty cool building, but nothing much to write home about (haha). But after we rounded the corner, the full magnitude of the memorial was visible. There were three, massive buildings. The most impressive was the cobalt-roofed castle-ly looking edifice. Inside was a massive bronze statue of Chiang Kai Shek that was guarded by two wax figure guards…..wait! They were actually real???!! But they didn’t blink! We watched in amazement as we waited for them to blink—they never did. At exactly 11 am, the crowd cleared the way for the guards to switch places. They performed an entire 10 minute ritual and their in-sync marching was impressive.

Then came the yummy part of our day!!! The ORIGINAL boba. We ordered a variety of dishes including beef noodle soup, chicken essence soup, spinach dish, and we even got a complimentary red bean dessert!! Afterwards we headed back to the metro and went to the Long Shan or “Dragon Mountain” Temple. It is the oldest temple in Taiwan. Classic taoist temple, with its concave roofs dotted with intricate dragon sculpture atop of them. Many locals come to pray and ask questions about their future with two red crescent-shaped blocks.  Some of our travel mates will soon find their soulmate, since the blocks approved them to get a special red string which symbolizes their tie with their future partner!! We walked through this alley called “herb alley”, and it was fascinating watching the local citizens sell herbs and concoctions to help with curing ailments and attaining health; before the influence of western medicine, this was the pharmacy. The scent of strong spices and herbs filled the air as we made our way to the other side and continued our tour. 

The Taiwanese people are very friendly and seem to notice immediately that we’re not local. We even talked to one elderly man on the metro who sparked a friendly conversation. After a quick conversation, we learned that he actually lived in Monterey Park years ago! What a small world! As our first blog is about to conclude, we’re off to walk and meander the streets of the XiMenDing neighborhood before the hot pot dinner. The food is amazing and we look forward to reuniting with the Fuhsing students tomorrow afternoon. 

Link to our Taiwan Trip Photo Album 

Zai jian from Taiwan!

From Dylan and Theo (who are both extremely jetlagged)