GETTING THERE: Taiwan

On Thursday, I met my three traveling buddies at the airport in Fukuoka. They're all ALTs, and they live near Sasebo, which is a city northwest of Nagasaki. Rachel is a boring American like me, Zoe is British, and Mutia is technically American but ethnically Indonesian.

We had to make a connection in Taiwan, and, thanks to some creative planning by Mutia, we had a "layover" that gave us a whole afternoon and night in Taipei. If you have an international connecting flight, you can take a bus tour of Taipei for free. While we waited for the tour, we had lunch at the same airport restaurant where I saw an Asian boy band while waiting for Ju back in October.

The tour took us to the Wanhua Longshan temple, the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial, a memorial to soldiers lost in the war against the mainland, and the Taipei 101. Our guide was excellent, and spoke pretty good English. Longshan was much better than last time--when Ju and I went in October, it was raining. Chiang Kai-Shek, which was closed for renovation in October, was pretty neat, too. The guide taught us lots about Chiang, and we saw two of his cars.

The next memorial we visited was impressive, though we only stopped for about ifteen minutes. We broke off from the tour once we got to Taipei 101. We walked around the place for a little, then found the food court. Passing KFC and McDonald's, we decided on a hibachi restaurant. We paid about the same amount for about the same amount of food as you'd pay at a hibachi place back home--$15-$20 a head. It was tasty, but they didn't have yellow sauce...

We walked around gawking at the designer stores for a while, and I was proud that none of the girls wanted to browse much. I also learned from seeing all the stores that I know maybe ten designer names, something I'm almost proud of. We milled around a little more before taking the elevator up to the 89th floor observatory. Unlike last time, it was sunny, so we were able to go up to the 91st floor observation deck. The view is amazing, though since it's been hazy each time I've visited, I wonder if smog's the problem.

At any rate, we went to Cold Stone next, mainly so I could prove to the girls that one was in fact in Taipei. It was delicious, but still nothing compared to Marble Slab.

We took a cab to the Eight Elephants Hostel. It was my first hostel experience, and it's freaking awesome. I have no idea if all hostels share the same vibe, but I met some great people heading to all kinds of different parts in Asia doing all sorts of different things. The place was safe and clean, and even had a nifty elephant hat.