Last night’s trip to Taipei 101 was completely unprepared, apart from having both the camera and the camcorder. The most important thing we didn’t have was money – at least Irene didn’t have any money. I thought I was fine with $NT1,300 ($US43).
You have to take the subway to the Taipei City Hall station and then take a bus (or, as it is less than 1 mile, just walk). With two kids, we took the special bus, No cash needed there, buses and subways are paid for with smart cards.
When we got to Taipei 101, the first thing I noticed was that it was crawling with foreigners – and not American foreigners, either. When you’re walking through parts of Taipei, you’ll hit areas where there are more foreigners, but when you hear them talking, predominently they’re speaking American English.
At Taipei 101 it was a veritable Tower of Babel. (No pun intended, but the parallel wasn’t lost.) I suppose as the Taipei 101 during planning was called the Taipei World Trade Center, it makes a certain amount of sense. There are many banks and financial institutions located in it, along with fine shopping.
There are also guards everywhere, who, although not visibly armed, have been dressed to the nines to look something reminiscent of Special Forces, or perhaps a crack RAF commando unit from a 1950’s movie.
Michelle and James were both free to get in. In Taiwan, they don’t usually go by age buy by height, and Michelle is already pushing the height cutoff, but it won’t happen this trip.
This is when Irene reveals she has no money at all except change. So, I fork over the $NT700 ($US21) for two to go to the 89th floor.
I already mentioned the upper, outside, observation deck, that was another $NT200 ($US6) total for us to go up, leaving me now with $NT400($US12) for the rest of the evening, including dinner.
My goal was to buy souvenirs for the guys at work from the Taipei 101 gift shop; however, prices started at higher than $NT400 so nothing came of that. (Sorry, guys at work.)
Down in the basement, like most places with shopping, there is a food court. Usually the food courts have a series of stalls that sell a few set items with a theme, although most of the dishes from one place to the next look pretty much the same. In Japanese style, most of them have wooden food models to choose from.
I ate at Singapore Sentosa and had a breaded chicken cutlet and rice, smothered in curry sauce. It was really good. Looking at the wooden model, it appeared to come with chunks of watermelon, also smothered in curry sauce. This is Taiwan, I can believe someone would think that was a good idea. It turns out they were yams and it was just a seriously bad choice for wooden food representation. Without the curry sauce, this is just the type food Michelle would like.
Michelle; however, was being obstreperous this evening and also refusing to eat. I ended up eating her dinner, too. (Luckily we had the currey sauce put on the side.) We used about $NT360 of my remaining $NT400 for dinner, with Irene eating at some place with a pig in their logo.
It was not a good day for a delay, either, as I had a deadline to be back at the house for a teleconference at 10, but I had a good idea how long it would take to get back.
The problem was, combined with Michelle’s intransigence and then discovering that the return bus doesn’t make frequent enough rounds, I had to head out on foot at full speed, on a very full stomach, leaving Irene and the kids behind to wait for the bus.
Normally, with my stride, I can leave anybody in this city far behind, and I pushed off for the 3/4 mile or so walk (through somewhat unknown territory) at full speed. There’s shopping complexes in the area, and once I found a familiar landmark I was off even faster towards the subway.
This is where I was really shocked. A little guy, no more than 5’8″, walked right past me. Although after he passed me, he never got more than 5 feet ahead of me, it was still a shock, but it helped me keep pace, as he was obviously heading to the subway too.
As we came around the last corner, and he was loosing ground to me again, he broke into a run and disappeared into the station. I maintained my pace, and saw the train close it’s doors and disappear as I came to the top of the last escalator. I missed it by seconds!
The gratifying part was that when I did get on the next train, 5 minutes later, they guy I’d been following was on it too.
 |
Go to the full-sized picture at flickr and look at routes 662 and 663 in this picture for a sample. |
My stop is still about a mile away from the house, so I text messaged to Irene to get the bus numbers I should take. Buses don’t run straight lines and any given stop can have 15 to 20 different busses that stop there. The routes are all nicely posted at the stop, in Chinese. Sometimes the busses will have them inside in English, but by then, it’s too late to decide if that’s the bus you want to get on.
Irene sent me the list of about 6 busses, but as it was almost 10:00PM, I needed to have my phone available, and wasn’t sure what would happen if a call came while I was reading, so I had to memorize it. Bus stops on Xinsheng Rd. are in the middle of the road, literally traffic flows on either side of islands used as the stops. This gives the buses the ability to stay out of the right turn lanes, which helps speed things up, but that also means that bus stops are very noisy, and I was positive the call would come while I was standing in the midst of 8 lanes of traffic, but it didn’t.
One of my busses finally came and I hopped on, at 9:59PM. Of course, this bus was was the one with the really noisy engine, the PA system turned up full blast, and two old women sitting behind me talking at the top of their lungs. Surely the phone call would come now.
But it didn’t.
10:05, I get to my stop and get to the sidewalk. I’m still 3 blocks from the house, and the call comes in. I answer it and 100+ scooters take off right next to me, screaming down the road. Taipei is a noisy city.
I was able to walk the last 3 blocks while participating in the call but as soon as I got back to my computer (where I’d planned to take the call in the first place) the call got dropped. Irony of Fate.
In case you were wondering, they called me back and we completed our 3-way conference from Taipei, Houston and Phoenix. All at IBM’s expense. I realize teleconferencing isn’t a new technology by any stretch of the imagination, but it was still cool to be able to accomplish something from the other side of the planet. You gotta love working with IBM!
Maybe I should just arrange to work remotely from Taipei all-year ’round? At the rate I’m going, another 6 months here and I’ll be able to speak the language enough to get by.
I’ve attached a short clip of the sound of the Taipei 101 singing here.