Hello everyone! You will be delighted to know that we all made it back to Taipei safely! Since my mom and sister have returned to the USA, I figured I should give a run down of their trip and probably not this post but next post I can talk about the April 3rd earthquake in greater detail as there are more reports about the damage and the aftermath. But for now, let’s talk family coming to visit Taiwan!
Similar to my partner, my mom and sister rolled in first thing in the morning. I arrived at the airport not minutes before they walked through the airport gates. The goal of the first day was to keep them awake long enough that they could start adjusting to Taipei Standard Time. I took them to visit my place of work, the large mall at Nangang station and the river park by my apartment. I like this for the first day because there’s not pressure to see anything other than were I spend my normal days. I got them checked into the hotel around 3 pm and they went to freshen-up. We made it to dinner and then around 7:00 pm, they decided to go back to the hotel to sleep.
The next day, my mom and sister were still feeling the time change. I took them to the National Palace Museum. I really like this location for the second day in Taipei because it’s a huge air-conditioned building that is full of interesting things to look at and lots of places to sit. There also lovely gardens on the grounds so you can re-acclimate to the outside. I got them both audio guides and unleashed them onto the museum. They spent roughly 5 hours wandering through the different rooms and learning a bit about Chinese history. I bounced between them looking at the new displays and showing off my favorite things. The gift shop at the bottom was a big hit as well. We finished the day with a quick stop to 7-11 for dinner followed by us wandering around the gardens. We got back to their hotel they took a bit of a nap before heading out for dinner. This time they made it 8:00 pm before they were too tired to carry on.
Day three began with rain, and while my mom and sister were feeling more awake, they weren’t quite ready to a rainy hike. So, I loaded them onto the MRT and took them to Chiang Kai-Shek memorial. The grounds are really nice to walk around. CKS, himself, is a complicated figure in history, one that has a bloody, violent legacy. But they spent the next hours learning, first about the KMT’s celebratory history of CKS; and then the long road to democracy and freedom of speech. The two exhibits face one another but are not visible whilst visiting the other. It was an interesting choice of space utilization. Following the exhibitions we went for lunch at Hangzhou Soup Dumplings 杭州小籠湯包, which is across the street from the memorial. This was the first time mom and sis had soup dumplings and they were all devoured. The final time was spent wandering the gardens of the CKS grounds while we let the dumplings and side dishes digest.
The next stop was Sun Yat-Sen memorial. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that main building of the memorial was closed. So while we got to walk around the grounds, there wasn’t much to do. Thus there was only one thing to do, head to the Taipei 101 and enjoy the view. The 101 like every day was crazy busy. It took us almost and hour of waiting in line to go to the observation deck. Once we were there we spent probably 2 or so hours wandering around getting different pictures and just enjoying the spectacular view. We eventually made it back to the ground and grabbed some dinner. We called it a night around 8:30, my family finally on Taipei time.
The next day we had plans to travel to Kaohsiung, in the south, but that wasn’t until the mid-afternoon. To kill the time, I took everyone to the Botanical Gardens. My family is from a high Sierra Nevada desert environment, so they were awed by how green and how much was already in bloom for Taipei. The lotus pond in particular was a big hit. After a few hours of wandering, we made a quick souvenir run to the Weekend Jade Market. Mom was very excited to get her trinkets to hand out to everyone back home. I caused a bit of a stir because I was running around translating, but overall it was a fun time. Then we gathered our bags and headed out to Nangang station. We would be taking the high speed rail for a little under two hours. It was delightful to the west side of the country fly by. Around 5 pm we rolled into Kaohsiung station, and after a quick pit stop at the hotel we headed off to the night market. Well-fed and exhausted we headed back to the hotel.
The next morning we had some time to kill before we headed to the rail station and up to our next destination, Hualien. We decided to walk around the pier, which had a railroad park, and an art district area. It was fun wandering around and checking out a different city. There was definitely a different vibe to the city compared to Taipei. People were, in general, just a bit more relaxed and there was way more Taiwanese spoken. There were a few moments where people could understand what I was say, but I couldn’t really understand them. One of the neat public transit options was the light rail, which was a street level train that loops around the city. After a minor mix on my part about tickets for Hualien, we found lunch in the station and manged to get ourselves onto the four and half hour train up the east side of the island towards Hualien.
We made it to our hotel with little incident and we were all excited for the tour to Taroko Gorge in morning. Hualien city is a beautiful city, which is punctuated by the F-16s screaming over head, there’s a large military base in the city as well. Fatefully, I’d warned my family that there was a chance of us feeling an earthquake while we were in Hualien, but not to worry too much since they were rarely big. Next post I will continue our adventure on the east side of the island, our trip into Taroko, the earthquake, and our return to Taipei. Until next time!
Strange Travels 
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