We went to the Shilin Market - the biggest night market in Taipei. And big, it is! A lot of it is under a roof, which is nice for a rainy night (which it was and often is in Taiwan). There is a lot going on in this area, and we ended up eating our waffles on some steps in front of a "Playboy" store. Asia is obsessed with cartoons, so I think they just love the Playboy bunny logo without actually knowing what it stands for. At this same location, there were speakers playing an awesome playlist of American dance classics, including some very inappropriate songs that I'm sure the Asians have no idea are inappropriate.
We visited the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial, which was beautiful and grandiose. Ole Chiang is a Taiwanese hero, to say the least. I don't really know anything about him, other than that he was some kind of great political leader and his name is all over Taiwan. And he liked nice things...like this memorial.
We took a detour through the Botanical Gardens, which was a nice little escape-from-the-city-within-the-city.
And we had to stop by the Taipei 101, the third tallest building in the world! This thing is dramatically taller than anything else in Taipei and can be seen from just about anywhere in the city. It costs about $14 USD per person to go up to the observation deck, but it's only on the 89th floor (of the 101 floors it's named after). And $400 NT is a fortune in Taiwan, so we opted to just enjoy the view from below. The first five floors of the 101 is an obnoxiously swanky mall, so we wandered inside for about 2 minutes then left because we were far too intimidated to hang around any longer.
A really cool little area is Ximending. It's right of the MRT and is what I refer to as the "Times Square of Taiwan." It's an area of bright lights, stores, restaurants, illegal street vendors (that are constantly disappearing to escape from the cops), and is kind of closed off to vehicles (but cars and scooters do whatever they want in Taiwan) for easier walking. It's great for people watching and hanging out.
Even though we are not particularly interested in Chinese art, the National Palace Museum is considered a must-see destination in Taiwan by many sources. It has the largest collection of Chinese art in the world - 650,000 pieces that are displayed on a rotation. It is ranked as one of the top 4 museums in the world. It is absolutely massive, and the building is beautiful. We got bored with the Chinese art pretty quickly, but the modern art section was awesome and had a lot of really cool interactive pieces. The garden outside of the museum was also really nice and is free to enter with a museum ticket.
Taipei is a really great city, and we have enjoyed all of our time spent there. There is so much to do, it's so easy to get around, and English is far more prevalent than other places in Taiwan. Go to Taipei!
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