Ian Rambles
The original journey plan would have seen us arrive in Taiwan by ferry and would have given us a week in Taiwan and an opportunity to make trips out of Taipei to se the countryside and mountains. Because we had to stop in Okinawa we took the opportunity to spend a few days there at the cost of our time in Taiwan. In the end just three nights - and hardly time to get more than the briefest of impressions.

Fiona's Journal
Thursday August 7th to Saturday Auust 9th
After a quick 8.00am breakfast at Burney's we caught the MRT to Naha airport and our China Airways flight to Taiwan. The ferry journey we had originally planned would have been more fun but this was much faster and we landed at Taipei airport after just an hour and a quarter in the air. The airport express bus service dropped us outside the massive and spralling Taipei Main Station and our YHA hostel was only a short walk from there.

It occupies the 13th floor of a 30 storey commercial tower block, with a department store occuping to bottom four floors and an underground carpark beneath and I have no idea what goes on in the other 26 floors. The three lifts in the lobby are kept very busy anyway. We have a Starbucks next door and, to my great delight, they make their coffee twice as strong here as they do in America and at half the price. We became regulars there during our 3 day stay.

Our rooms were huge, after Japanese economy of space they seemed positively extravagant. For some reason we had a bank of small lockers and a weight lifting machine in our room so perhaps it doubles as a gym sometimes?

There is a small glass fronted smoking room at the front of the building which affords fantastic views over the city. I love to sit there after dark just watching the crazy city traffic and the bustling metropolis below us. This is definitely a city that never sleeps. Two thirds of the vehicles on the road seem to be yellow cabs and buses and most of the remaining third are small motorbikes with riders of great courage or great stupidity, I'm not sure which!

The MRT (metropolitan rapid transport) uses a combination of underground and elevated railway lines. It is admirably simple to use, and cheap, and utilises blue circular discs, like betting chips, in place of cardboard tickets. When you have completed the journey you have paid for, you use the disc to get out through the exit gates and it is not returned to you, so they are constantly reprogrammed and reused.

We used the MRT to visit the tallest building in the world (currently), Taipei 101. A superfast elevator takes you from the fifth floor to the viewing platform on the 88th floor in 37 seconds. The top 13 floors are not generally accessible to the public but the views from the 88th are quite spectacular enough. As well as the the sprall of the city you can see the beautiful tropical scenery and impressive mountains beyond. In the centre of this floor is a massive hydraulic mechanism for counteracting sway in the upper floors in high winds. This is one of the high tech solutions that allowed them to build a tower of this height.

The next day Harry, George and I took the MRT to Taipei zoo which was well set out, with a great variety of interesting animals and, for the most part, they were pretty well housed and cared for with reasonable sized enclosures.

George charged on ahead as he is inclined to do and Harry and I kept thinking "we will catch up with him soon" but we never did. We bought some hot meat-filled dumplings off a stall and sat and ate them for our lunch, hoping that George had somehow got behind rather than ahead of us, but he did not reappear. Then the afternoon rains came down and, although this had happened both the previous afternoons, I had come out completely unprepared. Harry and I were sodden to our underwear in minutes, while the well-prepared Taiwanese looked at us askance from under their umbrellas and plastic ponchos.

I was getting worried about George by then so we continued to walk round the circuit at speed, ignoring the animals, when suddenly I heard my name, perfectly pronounced, echoing from the tannoy system. That's twice in less than a week that we have necessitated the use of a tannoy!

Harry and I hurried to the Information centre, which was of course at the very opposite end of this large zoo to us, and there was George grinning, slightly nervously, until he had guaged correctly that my over-riding emotion was relief. He had been made a great fuss of by the staff and even had his wet hair blow-dried and he came away with a big bunch of stickers so I hope he doesn't think that losing us is rather a good scam and start making a habit of it!

We dripped and squelched our way back onto the MRT train and felt antisocially soggy to be so closely confined with other passengers.

We were not in Taiwan long enough to get any real feel for this country. We did not even attempt the language and most Taiwanese, in the capital city, seem to speak and understand enough English for basic transactions. Taipei is a soaring modern city with an very visible underbelly of third-worldish dilapidation and poverty and hand to mouth, street-edge businesses. It does have a real atmosphere of optimism and energy and fearlessness however and I enjoyed my short stay there. I was completely unafraid to go out onto the streets late at night on my own which I would not say of Reading, for example.

Arthur's Log:
Ate breakfast. Bus, plane, hello Taiwan. Smooth as can be expected. Finding the hostel was a different story. After wandering around for half an hour we found it. To get to the hostel you go round the back of one huge 24 story skyscraper and in through a marble hall that looks like something out of the matrix. Were on the 13th floor and have a fascinating view over the city. From the smoking room window you can see down the about 5 intersections and I sit there for hours watching yellow cap after yellow cabs pass by 100 feet below.

8th
We spent near all day just to do Taipei 101 (tallest building in the world). It was amazing. I think the speed of lift was the best bit it and the 660 ton damper in the middle was cool but I didn't come back a different person.

9th
I didn't go out today, just sat in the window and wrote this.