Taipei 1

When I tried to buy a ticket for the 0850 service from the vending machine at Hualien station, it said it could not complete the transaction. I went to the counter and the girl said the earliest service with an available seat was 1115. Grrr, why were so many people going to Taipei on a Friday? So I walked back to the hostel and whiled away the time checking travel information on my smartphone. Unfortunately I could not update the blog because the power cable to my netbook had developed a break.

No matter, I was not due at the hostel until 1500 anyway. When I got on the train I realised that I should have grabbed a snack or something as I wouldn't get into Taipei until 1320 with this Puyuma (another native name) service. The trolley girl came and only when she had gone past I realised that she had bento lunches in cardboard boxes. I had read about those, they are supposed to be tasty and good value. The next time she came past they were all sold and she was selling drinks. Grrr.

Anyway when I reached Taipei station I headed for the upmarket food court upstairs and had a belated but delicious lunch of a teppanyaki hamburger steak with egg and rice.

The underground passageways around the HSR, TRA and MTR Taipei stations are lined with shops. I bought an Easycard and loaded it with money to travel the MTR at will. Fares are reasonable, starting at about 60¢ for the shortest trip. The passageways are a veritable maze and I had to consult the wall maps often. Even the locals had to. I found it confusing that the maps had north every which way. Eventually I worked it out; the map was oriented to represent the viewer's current position, i.e. from you are here, down means backwards, and left and right mean those. That made sense in its own fashion.

I found the hostel after a bit of wandering and they checked me in. The dorm had air conditioning, essential due to the humidity. I rested a bit then went out for coffee and cake.

Taipei is a large metropolis with about 2.7 million and Greater Taipei has 7 million. The traffic would be far worse without public transport. But there was no way to avoid the large numbers of people. It was tiring to weave in and out of crowds.

In the evening I went to the Ningxia night market for dinner. It actually isn't that large a market, only one street about 200m long but it has every kind of food you might want.

Part of the market sells bric-a-brac and offers amusement games, as is normal for Taiwanese night markets. The other part sells food.

I started off with a bowl of Cantonese pork and preserved egg congee, eaten sitting at a shared table just next to the stall. It's not a native Taiwanese dish, so it was qualified with Cantonese. But it was like the comfort food I used to enjoy.

Next a couple of skewers of grilled smelly tofu with salad on top. It doesn't taste as bad as it sounds, the grilling tones down the fermented taste of the tofu.

After that a jelly drink to slake my thirst and then some steamed língjiǎo (water caltrops). They look like a buffalo's head or bat. I hadn't had those since I was a kid and I was trying to remember what they tasted like. Turned out to be floury since they are an edible seed. The hawker had helpfully scored the front of the caltrop to make it easy to extract the seed. That was a trip down memory lane. It's unlikely I'll get to eat water caltrop in Australia since it is classified as a weed.

I made my way back to the central stations. There is a large underground department store called Q Square. It was pandemonium with counters calling out bargains for the next 10 minutes or similar and customers rushing to examine whatever was offered. Most of the goods were ladies fashion.

I found a small cluster of food shops in the basement and had a bowl of premium ice cream. I opted for Founder's (of the ice-cream chain, not Taiwan) Choice. It was very good and half the price of the ice-cream back home. In general consumables were half price, except for global items like gourmet coffee.

And that was my first night in Taipei.  I was glad that I had planned to end the holiday on a high note in Taipei. It would have been an anti-climax to end in a smaller city like Kaohsiung. For the next two days I had only the National Palace Museum and some shopping on my list, so I could relax.