Top 5 reasons to live in Taipei

By Perrin

Our friend Ashley

1. Thoughtful People
Everyone is kind and helpful here! We have been lost at a train station multiple times, and almost every time some random person has come up to us and said, “You look confused, do you need any help?” (Taiwanese love using their English on us) When my mom was here in November setting things up, she was trying to make a U-bike account which is an account that lets you rent bikes all over the city. She didn't know how to set the account up, but a man and his daughter went up to her and helped her. We have made friends with them since then and coincidentally the girl is Carly’s age and her English name is Ashley! My mom and Dad were really surprised when we first took the subway because their former experiences in Beijing were all about shouting, pushing and arguing. Here, there are marks on the floor to tell you where to line up if you are waiting for the subway. People actually pay notice them and follow the rules which makes it easier for people to get on and off without pushing. If someone bumps into you, they almost always say sorry (“Dui bu qi” or “Bu hao yi si”, in Chinese).  The people here are half of what makes Taipei a truly amazing city.

2. The Food

Taipei is famous for its food. Stands of all kinds litter the streets and people selling everything you could think of shout advertisements at you from all directions, “Try these chicken feet! Come try! Try these pig blood cakes! 1 for $1.00!”  Not only can you find “interesting” local food, but also, if you walk down some random little lane in a random part of the city, you might find the best pizza that you have ever tried! Another nice thing about Taipei and food is that there are tons of places to get western food too. There are two AMAZINGLY DELICIOUS pizza places both one to five minutes from our apartment. There are also real bakeries, cafes, and guess what? Even chocolatiers! You don’t have to go far if you’re looking for food in Taipei. You only have to know where to look or be adventurous enough to explore to find it! Around Shi Da road there are many excellent restaurants where we love to eat. Here is a list of them (or the ones we know of and like) all 20 minutes or less walking from our apartment, just to show you how many there really are:

Restaurants: Maryjanes Pizza               Desserts, Cafes and Bakeries: Waffle Waffle

La Pizza         Cafe a la Mode

Macciato’s         Zhen Fei Coffee

The Dumpling Place         Cupcakery

Kao Chi (The Iron Pot Place)         Bread Society

Din Tai Fung                 Crepe Place                        Wisteria                                                  Night Market Waffles

Spice (Indian)          Boite de Bijoux

Mexican Burrito Place                                                        Truffle One

A Chinese Restaurant                                                        Gelato Place

Spring (Vegetarian)

Evan’s Burger

Vino Vino (Western)

Pengs (Asian)

Thai Place

Sichuan Restaurant

Beijing Duck Place

                               

            

A specifically nice subway station

      

3. Easy and Cheap Public Transportation

The subway (or “jie yun” in Taiwan) here is amazing! It’s new, organized, clean, and very efficient. There are subway maps and signs with exit numbers on them everywhere so you almost always know where you’re going. We rarely get lost in the subway.  However, we do get lost in Taipei Main Station which is the place from where all the buses and trains leave.  It has what seems like a whole world under ground that connects one subway stop to another.  It also  has a whole underground mall and movie theater in it. The subway cards here are called “Yo Yo cards”. To put money on them, you place them on a little sensor and press “add money” on a screen in front of you. Then you insert money into the machine and it’s done. You can choose the English version if you want. There are information counters where you can get one time tickets if you are only staying in Taipei for a short time.  You can use your Yo Yo card to pay for buses, U-bikes, and even purchases at 7/11! It costs about 20¢ per metro ride, but when you beep your card on the way out, the machine charges you for however far you went. Once you are waiting for the train, there are TVs that say how long it is going to be until the next train. It is all so quick and convenient. We use the subway almost every day.

4.  Mountains and Hikes

As you drive into the mountains and away from Taipei City, you realize that Taipei is not only a city, but also a mountainous hiking wonderland.  There are countless hikes around and in Taipei.  Hiking some, you feel like you are in the complete wilderness while hiking others, the city is spread out in front of you, waiting for you to appreciate its nightime beauty as the sun sets.  Lots of the hikes start and/or end with stairs.  Sometimes the whole hike is stairs, and I mean literally all stairs.  Some have almost no stairs but instead have massive boulders, cliffs, bare ridges, ladders, ropes, chains, roots, rocks and require lots of steep hands and knees hiking. 

 Still other hikes, you hike up and take a glass-bottomed gondola down!  It is also very convenient to get to most hikes.  Just take the MRT to the closest stop and then get a bus or a taxi.  Taxis are much less expensive here than in the US.  Be sure to plan your ride back, too, otherwise you might be taking a longer hike that you were thinking of taking.  There are more than 150 mountains in Taiwan that are 3,000 meters and over (9,843 feet).  Just to give some perspective, Mt. Washington, the tallest mountain in the Northeast, is 1,917meters (6,288 feet), so if you hike here you might be climbing some pretty high mountains!

5. The River Bike Path (he-ti) and Parks

My dad is crazy about the river bike path. Every time we go on it he says, “It’s amazing that they have this!” The city bike path, he-ti in Chinese, is a paved path that goes almost all the way across Taipei. Along the side of it, next to the river, the city has built climbing walls, playgrounds, basketball courts, baseball fields, skateboard ramps, and beautiful places to hang out. It is a convenient way to get places and to have a lovely ride if you want some fresh air and exercise. It is definitely unique to Taipei. Taipei also has many beautiful parks and gardens. Some parks have ponds with animals living in them, like cranes, ducks, frogs and fish. The Botanical Gardens have a pond with lotus plants and flowers. The huge, bright pink blossoms are magnificent! Most cities haven’t put that much money and time into people’s health and enjoyment and they also don't have as much open outdoor space!

Us on the "He Ti"

A Terrifying Moment

By Carly

     Try to imagine a creature, a spider perhaps, that, it scares me to say, is as big as an adult's hand, its legs and all.  Black.  All but one yellow line on the back.  No, I bet you can't imagine it, but let's keep trying.  The legs were as thick as a thin twig and were black also.  There were two joints that connected three pieces of legs into one.  If you still can't imagine it, too bad.  Just do your best!  If you can picture it, it still probably isn't as scary as the one I saw.  

     We were walking down a shaded brick path in Kending, at the southern tip of Taiwan, when my Mom yelled, "OH! MY! GOSH!"  And there it was, sitting on its web devouring a fly.  A tiny orange spider, similar to the kind you find in your garden in the summer, scuttled on it's back.  WOAH!!  My whole body tensed up like a Basilisk (from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets) had just petrified me.  It was truly terrifying!

Incense

By Carly

Sniff, sniff…the pleasant smell of incense drifted through the temple.  We walked over through the bustling courtyard to people in blue robes holding incense and waving it around people.  It was a funny sight.  There was a waiting line in front of all the people in blue robes.  We realized as somebody took out a shirt and had incense waved around it, that they were blessing clothing.  We heard crying.  A baby, by the looks of it, was getting blessed and screaming at the top of her lungs and obviously trying to wiggle out of her father’s grip until the blesser let them go.  There were teenagers with unusual hairstyles and earrings getting blessed.  There were old ladies and all sorts of funky people.  Since the line had about 20 people in it, we decided to give up the opportunity of getting blessed and walked off to explore the rest of the temple.

The temple

The blessing people in blue robes

The doors

Fish-Foot Pool

Fish-Foot Pool

By Carly

As we dipped our feet into the pool full of little fish, I read the sign that was nailed to a pole at the edge of the blue, warm water.  “Put your feet into the pool and be still while waiting for the fish to eat your dead skin,” it read.  Eeeeeewww!  That’s so gros-ow!  A little fish had swum up to my feet and started to nibble.  As it did so, 10 or so fish darted through the water toward my feet like a swarm of bees.  OH!  AW! EH!  OW!  EEE!  The pack of little fish was nibbling away at my feet.  Nibble, nibble, nibble.  There was a sudden shout.  I knew my sister Perrin had just been bitten also. The fishes’ teeth felt like a feather and a knife blended together.  It tickled and hurt at the same time.  It was like the love-hate relationship that you sometimes have with your mom or dad.

Ha ha!  The deep laugh of my Dad’s friend’s 3-year-old son Julian echoed across the pool.  He was also getting tickled by the fish and was thrashing his feet around the water.     

“Hey!  Let’s see who can keep their feet in the water for the longest time,” my Mom laughed.  “O.K.,” we replied nervously.  We all took our feet out of the water and prepared for the contest.  “Ready, set, go!”  I plunged my feet into the water and again felt the nipping fish at my feet.  I jerked my feet away from the tickling fish and sat on the side of the pool.  Soon after, my Mom, my sister, Julian and Julian’s mom, Jennifer, laughed their feet out of the water also.  Although the fish looked like happy little gold fish swimming around a pool, we decided that they weren’t very friendly when they were feasting on our skin.    

 

"Injections" in Taipei

By Perrin

“Where are we going?”

“To get shots.” Said my dad.

“Ya right” I said with a small laugh. It simply couldn’t be, but I had heard no joking tone in his voice. I was worried that it was going to be true.

“No, really. We have to get the Japanese Encephalitis shots for going to Thailand and China. Your mom already got it.” My dad replied.

“What?! Why do we have to get shots?! I thought we were done with all of them before we got here.” I was angry and now, anxious. 

“Well we weren’t sure if we had to get it, so we waited until we got here but the doctor thinks it’s a good idea.” My dad said to my sister and I who were both getting a little nervous.

Japanese Encephalitis is a disease that you get if you’re bitten by a mosquito  and you can die from it. If you live, you can lose your hearing, and/or it can affect your brain. The mosquitos that carry it are usually found in more rural places in Asia. All babies in Taiwan get the shots when they are just born and everybody says its good to have, so that's why my parents decided to get it.

In Taiwan shots are done very differently than in America. The hospital seems to trust people to do the right thing without one doctor doing it for you. The first thing you need to do in the process of getting shots in Taipei, is check in at a desk where they ask you all the questions a usual doctor would ask when filling out a form: Do you have any allergies, have you stayed overnight in the hospital before, and what is you weight, age and height? That was a fairly uneventful, boring part of our visit to the McKay hospital.

The boring question room.

Next, we went up to the second floor via the magic carpet-like escalator and took our own blood pressure with a special machine that you put your arm through. You then jot down the numbers that it shows and give them to the nurse when it’s your turn. When we got called in from the waiting/blood pressure-taking room, a female doctor who spoke surprisingly good English welcomed us to a room that looked vaguely like a doctor’s office in America. She asked us what medication we wanted and why, so we told her that we needed the Japanese Encephalitis shots.

Picking up the medicine. 

        Instead of the doctor getting the medicine and doing the shots for you like in America, you go to the “Hospital Pharmacy” yourself to pick up your medicine and the actual syringe.Then you “follow the blue line” to the sign labeled “Injections”. By this point I was pretty nervous. I think the woman that was giving the shots noticed, so when it was my turn, I gave her the medicine, she set it up and when she was about to do it (or maybe after I’m not sure because I didn’t feel it) she slapped my arm, not too hard but it seemed to have done the job. Afterward, when I came out smiling, my dad and I both said that it had been the best shot that either of us had ever had. We went in scared, and we walked out smiling. 

Before my shot. I am telling my mom not to take a picture of me.

During the shot.

After the shot.