World Taiwan Taipei Taipei

2010 Molenda Trip to Asia

Taipei, Taiwan Apr 4, 2010

A Happy & Blessed Easter to everyone! It was certainly a different Easter for us. We were up early this morning because we had to leave for the airport about 6 am. We had a flight to Taipei, Taiwan to catch at 9:15. Flight was uneventful and about 3.5 hours long. Kids thought that was a pretty quick flight.! All in the perspective I guess. Taiwan is not what I would have thought so far. It is humid and 60 degrees right now. The land is very lush, jungle like and with lots of rice fields. It is more dirty that Beijing which is saying something! After we settled into our room we headed out to do a little exploring. We went to Taipei's most famous temple. It was certainly special to see. Lots and lots of people were there. They say a prayer, light incense, and offer food. It was very interesting but it was so crowded with people all burning incense it was difficult to breathe. Abigayle was having some trouble. (Not that the air quality outside the temple is much better!) We could not be sure if it was so busy because it was Sunday or the weekend or maybe it is always busy. I will have to find out later this week. From the temple we walked along Snake Alley. You guessed it…dinner. They offered everything from snakes, to lizards, turtles, rabbits, rats, or the specialty snake blood. Talk about different! We passed on that option. This area was filled with people having dinner with their families (not so much the snake restaurants but others near by). It looked like most food was different seafood (fish, shrimp, squid etc.) I still was not interested in any of that either! Afterwards we went to another night market. I think we stayed about 20 minutes. It was so crowded it was difficult to move. We are talking wall to wall people. The food there was all very different to say the least. Plus I really question how safe it would be for us to eat. Yikes! So, we headed back to the hotel. Here we all took a good shower and had some recognizable food. Oh boy,Taiwan is different. Very tired tonight so I will add more tomorrow. Night, Laura

Advertisement