Taiwan
The boat docked in a suburb of Taipei called Koolown. While it was nice everything we wanted to see was in Taipei so we did a little research and ended up on the commuter train for Taipai. The trip was a little over 30 minutes long and it brought us right to the main MRT subway station. The subway stations in Taipai are really nice and they are very easy to use. We took the train to a station at the Chang Kashek Memorial (I`ll fix the spelling later) which is a tribute to one of their war heroes.
We jumped back on the train and went to a memorial for the Taiwan soldiers. We had to walk a bit for this one but we arrived just in time to see a changing of the guard ceremony. This monument was nice because it had a series of displays explaining the history of Taiwan which I had never known.
These were the two big things we wanted to see but since we had time we went to the Taipai 101 center. At one point this was the tallest building in the world however Dubai has a newer, taller, building now. It has 101 floors occupied plus several stories above. The big attraction here is that there is an elevator that takes you from the 5th floor to the 91st floor in just a few seconds. It's so fast you can hardly pop your ears.
Oncećyou'at the top there's not much to see except for the view outside but it was worth our time and the $10 to see it since we were here. We had a great lunch in the mall that surrounded the tower. They served Cantonese food I think and I was suprised at how good mall food could be.
There wasn't as much time here as I would have liked especially since we had nearly 2 hours in travel time each way but I had a good visit. The currency here is the Taiwan Dollar and it exchanges for about 30TWD to 1USD. Prices were pretty comparable to the US so I wouldn't call this a bargain location.
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