Taiwan

            On April 4, we arrived in Keelung, Taiwan for three days.  This port was to replace our stop in Japan so I really had no idea what to expect.  Taiwan is technically a republic of China, but don’t say that to the Taiwanese; many of them want independence.  We arrived in Keelung and immediately got off the ship.  We left in a big group to search for an ATM, which was a lot harder than expected because not as many people speak English in Keelung than I experienced in China. Keelung is kind of a rundown city, but it was also hard to judge the city because it was rainy.  After finding money, we decided to head to Taipei, the capital city for the day, and maybe for the night.  I wasn’t sure if I was going to spend the night so I only packed the bare essentials in my backpack before taking the half hour bus ride to Taipei.  We traveled in a big group, but after having lunch in the really, really nice bus station, we split off since we were likely spending the night and wanted to do different stuff.  In the end, it ended up just being Me, Courtney, Cass, Kristin, Steen, Matt, and Ross who decided to stay.  We found a hostel for less than ten dollars a night with free internet, and decided to stay there.  That is where we met Kevin, a guy only a year or two older than us from Florida who moved to Taipei to teach English for a year.  His family adopted a child from China so he decided to come to Taiwan to learn Mandarin in order to teach his sister, very cool. 

            While Kevin went off to go apartment hunting, we went to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial.  I barely saw the inside of the memorial though.  As we walked around, we saw dozens of street performers dancing onside.  Courtney, Cass, and I danced with them in front of everyone.  They tried to do their own moves, but I mostly focused on trying to copy the pros’ moves.  We weren’t’ that good, but it was fun and the professional street performers seemed to enjoy our presence and congratulated us at the end.  We mainly walked around the memorial for a while before walking around Taipei and going to a craft store.  We then headed back to the hostel using the MRT and found an Italian restaurant, something I had missed throughout my time in Asia.  We went back to the hostel for a while, listening to new music in America while we waited for Kevin to come back.  We agreed to meet him later that night to go out to a nightclub, Luxi, which was supposed to be a great place to spend the evening in Taipei.  Before that, we went to a karaoke bar where we had a private room to sing for an hour and a half.  It was fun and no one was really self conscious at all.  We mostly did duets, and I rocked out to some Blink-182, TLC, and No Doubt, among others.  We then headed to the club, which wasn’t as crowded as I expected, but was full of lasers, which was really cool.  Courtney and I were hit on by so many people from Hong Kong and Malaysia (it’s a good story; ask me about it in person).  After a couple of hours at the club, we headed back to the hostel to hang out and didn’t go to sleep until 5 am.

            The next morning, we causally woke up, and walked around Taipei.  We ate this delicious egg dish from a street vender, and then went to an American restaurant for lunch.  It was fun to see other countries’ take on American food.  We saw a lot of burgers and fries on the menu and portions that were way bigger than I was used to seeing in other countries.  We just relaxed at the restaurant, talking to Kevin about life on Semester at Sea and learning about his life in Taiwan.  We were the first people his age he met who also American so I think he was eager to hang out with us.  After a couple hour lunch, we went to 228, a memorial in Taipei of a police massacre in the early twentieth century.  Next, we went to Taipei 101, the second tallest building in the world, next to that building in Dubai.  I went up a hundred stories in an elevator that only took half a minute to get to the top of.  I got to see some sweet views of the Taipei skyline before eating dinner at the food court at the bottom of the mall the tower is attached to.  We decided to head back to the ship that night to go hang gliding in the morning.  The bus ride is only about $1.50 USD to get to or from Keelung.  The best part was that Kevin came with us.  He slept in an internet cafe since he isn’t allowed on the ship and met him the next morning.

            Thursday morning, Courtney, Cass, Kristen, Ross, and I met Kevin outside the ship and tried to find the hang gliding place.  We finally figured out how to get there, and after making a few wrong turns, we finally made it to the company, right on top of a mountain.  It was there I found out that it wasn’t hang gliding, but rather paragliding.  I volunteered to go first, even though I had no idea what I was doing, but I was given harness and helmet.  I was strapped to a guy who was strapped to a parachute.  Once I was strapped in, I could barely stand up because the wind blew the open parachute around and the guy who tied me in had to hold us down.  My only instructions came from the guy who strapped me in and pointed to the edge of the mountain while telling me to just run.   I ran off the mountain and began to rise up.  I just sat down in my harness while the instructor flew us around, above the clouds over mountains and the ocean.  It was epic and lasted about ten minutes.  Once we all finished, we walked around the town a little more before heading back to Keelung.  We had lunch and then just decided to find a bar for drinks and to hang out since we only had a couple of hours left before we had to be back on the ship.  It was a lot harder to find a bar than we planned and we had to pass a lot of brothels along the way, but w found one and hug out there for an hour before heading back to the ship.  We said goodbye to Kevin and left for the United States.

            Even though I had no expectations for Taiwan, it ended up being one of my favorite ports.  We had the perfect sized group for traveling, and everything we did was so spontaneous.  I had no idea I was going to spend the night in Taipei (I didn’t even have a change of clothes with me) but it ended up being a highlight of the semester.  I learned that I don’t want to always have plans when I travel and I would rather just be free and open to new experiences.  The hostel was fun because that is where we met Kevin, which turned out to be fun for everyone.  It didn’t even matter that there was a Japanese monk in our room from Korea who was mean, racist, and smelled bad.  These are the types of experiences I wished I had had all semester.