Day 3: Off to Taipei

Being a morning person, at least temporarily tends to help when having to catch early flights. My flight was out at around 10AM, but I still hadn’t figured out the route to my hotel yet or what I wanted to see for the day so I got packed up and headed to the airport 2 hours early so I had a bit of time to research some attractions before my flight. The Japanese have their own take on security theatre, every passenger on the shuttle bus had the show their ID before being allowed through the checkpoint into the airport. The check only took about 2 minutes and wasn’t very thorough. The flight actually turned out to be pretty scenic, first I got a good view of Tokyo bay from the plane.

Tokyo Bay

Tokyo Bay

Than even better. I got an overhead view of Mt Fuji!

Mt Fuji

Mt Fuji

My flight was on EVA Air, and was excellent. I went for the Chinese meal on board which was pork and rice, served with soup.

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Upon arrival at the airport, customs and immigration was efficient and I had my luggage within 20 minutes of getting on the plane. I got a 10 day unlimited data SIM card at the airport for 500 TWD ($18 CDN). It took about 2 hours from the airport to my hotel, including a bus from the airport to the high speed rail, and a metro journey from Taipei main station to my hotel. Even though it was pretty cloudy, I decided to get in a visit to Taipei 101.

Taipei 101 is a huge office building, shaped like a bamboo shoot. It’s probably one of the most touristy places in Taipei, but it’s still worth a visit. Like observation decks anywhere though, it doesn’t come cheap. Going up cost $18. In the bottom of the building, there is a luxury shopping mall.

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The mall in it’s self has some nice architecture. I got up to the observation deck just around sunset, luckily there was only about a 20 minute wait to get up. Taipei 101 was the worlds tallest building until a building in Dubai took that honour, but it still has the worlds fastest elevator. It only takes about 36 seconds to get to the observation deck.

View from Taipei 101

View from Taipei 101

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After a quick dinner at the food court, it was time to head back to the hotel.

 

 

 


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