Taipei in a Day

  Taipei, Taiwan
Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Another early morning wake up call to catch an 8:00 AM flight to Hong Kong. There are no direct flights from mainland China to Taiwan so Dennis and I had a two hour layover in Hong Kong. We found a Starbucks. The Hong Kong airport is by far my favorite airport of this trip. There are actually stores and restaurants there -and they were open!
We finally landed in Taipei at 3:30 and were greeted by rain. Rain, and a Mercedes which took us to the Grand Hyatt Taipei. After checking in we thought we would explore as much as we could (anything within a two block radius of our hotel). Found a memorial building, and a McDonalds. A little anti climatic.
I had dinner Wednesday night with one of our UC Irvine alumni. We wound up eating at one of the fancy restaurants in the hotel and I spent the next two hours hearing all about her very interesting work experience-what brought her out to California, and then back to Taipei. Her English was excellent, and so was our food.
I was booked with interviews before the fair on Thursday, but did have an hour and a half break around lunchtime. Dennis and I ran across the street, in our suits, so we could visit Taipei 101, currently the tallest building in the world. We rode on the world's fastest elevator (89 floors, 39 seconds) and spent an hour staring down from above the clouds. I wish it had been a sunnier day, but at least it had stopped raining.

Taipei 101

Taipei was a very busy fair for us, and I was joined by two alumni, which made my job a little easier.

My extended family on the road

After the fair the Fordham alum offered to take us to one of the night markets that Taipei is (supposedly)famous for. It turned out to be about five minutes from our hotel. The alum was in charge of ordering us our dinner. I couldn't tell you exactly what I ate. I can just say that most of it was good, and much of it was frightening.

Eating weird stuff on the streets of Taipei

We were back at the hotel by twelve. This was Dennis' last night on tour, so we said good-bye and went upstairs to pack. I was meeting Rachel, from Fordham, and Jay, from Thunderbird at 6:00 AM for our car to the airport. We were heading back to Hong Kong.