Taipei

Tuesday, 12 July

We arrived at Taipei about 8 am very tired and cold (it was too cold on the plane). We hadn’t seen anything of Taipei before, it being night time and we were inside the airport waiting for transfer. This time we had a whole day before our next connecting flight, so we had a free hotel stay.

Taipei was hot and dirty, like much of Asia. There were several on the bus to the hotel. The hotel itself was not near any obvious places of interest. I had no map so had no idea where, in fact, it was.

We slept for a couple of hours. I woke the girls at 12 noon local time (6 am Germany). We had lunch in the hotel. The hotel was decorated quite bizarrely with what looked like cheap Christmas lights, artificial plants, massive vases and some ghastly tinkly music was playing the whole time. After lunch (the smorgasbord food was varied and tasty) we went for a walk down the street a couple of blocks. That was enough to have rivers of sweat falling off our backs, it was so dreadfully hot. Took 2 photos and headed back, our backs soaked. Had another shower and slept til 4.30 pm or so.

C came in about 5pm and we went to dinner about 5.40. The restaurant was over-staffed. They would prowl the tables ready to pounce on empty dishes or refilling empty glasses. It was quite weird. It was getting dark already by 6pm, the sun struggling to shine through the smog. As it sunk it was a brilliant red, which the girls found astounding (like something out of a movie). They were highly amused by the sound of some music on a truck which sounded like ‘Mr Whippy’, an icecream van. We looked out the window and discovered the music was coming from a rubbish truck as it collected people’s rubbish. They stood with their rubbish waiting for the truck. We were in fits of laughter.