{"id":16153,"date":"2014-04-18T09:45:59","date_gmt":"2014-04-18T14:45:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/?page_id=16153"},"modified":"2014-04-19T04:36:04","modified_gmt":"2014-04-19T09:36:04","slug":"taiwan-day-3","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/?page_id=16153","title":{"rendered":"Taiwan Day 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Taiwan Day 2<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As mentioned earlier, I suck at this jet lag thing. Wanted to sleep in, but woke up at 1am in the morning after about 3 hours of sleep. Not cool. Blogged some, then laid in bed, and eventually fell asleep…for a little bit at least.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nFinally, it’s almost 6:30am, time for breakfast downstairs. Before heading down, I am going to have a prebreakfast of egg pudding in the room. This thing is the best!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nOC, isn’t this the Hello Kitty plane that you took to Indonesia recently?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nWe did not have a whole line of eateries lined up for later today, so I plan on just getting the most out of our breakfast buffet.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nMore duck, don’t mind if I do.<\/p>\n

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\nWe are checking out of our hotel in Taichung, and heading to Taipei up North.<\/p>\n

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\nDown at lobby waiting for my sister to come pick us up.<\/p>\n

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\nAnother childhood favorite, shrimp flavored chips.<\/p>\n

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\nOh no, a scooter accident.<\/p>\n

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\nThat does not look happy. There were no bodies laying around so I assume the injuries were minor.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nIt’ll take us close to 2.5 hours to drive to Taipei. It’s around 10 in the morning, but it feels really late in the day since I’ve been up for so long already.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nThe landmark of Taipei, Taipei 101.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nWe parked around Taipei 101 to have lunch nearby.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nRotating Sushi Restaurant!!!! I LOVE THESE PLACES!!<\/p>\n

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\nSo good, and so fresh!<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nHow much you pay at the end of the meal is calculated by how many plates of each color you’ve got.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nSatisfied!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nAnd now prompt jet lag. We need coffee to keep us going.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nA vending machine that sells sauces. How stingy to not give out sauces for free.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nLife.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nRL is still stuck on buying a slip, so we visited the underwear section of Uniqlo, a floor above the restaurant.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\n10 minutes of talking about the different colors of underwear and pajamas between RL and my sister, then we walked out empty handed. Yawn. Let’s head to our hotel so we can chill out for a bit.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nOur home for the next 3 nights in Taipei.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nVery nice. When we were booking for our hotel in Taipei, we had a lot of trouble finding a reasonably priced hotel in Taipei. Apparently, this week there is some sort of big conference going on, so all the hotels in the city were full. This is what $150 a night gets you in Taipei, not too bad. My sister reserved the hotel for me, and this is a special rate only available to Taiwanese residents. We lucked out.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Unpacked, sat around and felt tired. No, must get up and move around, fight jet lag and not fall asleep.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nHeading out towards Taipei 101, close to where we had lunch. RL and I are on our own now, so we headed to the subway station.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nFound the subway.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nNevermind. Found an underground cross walk.<\/p>\n

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\nHere we go, this is more like it.<\/p>\n

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\nEasy breezy.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nNot too bad, not crowded.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nOh cool, we found seats!…nevermind, we found a seat. Some woman had an accident in the seat next to RL…gross.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nThese pictures kept on changing by flipping like the old school train announcement boards.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nOut of the subway and the first thing we see is Din Tai Fung, a Michelin Star rated restaurant. This is my friend RE’s favorite restaurant in Taiwan, or perhaps the whole world. RE also happens to be in Taiwan right now, so we plan on meeting up with him and his family when we get a chance.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nUp we go to the observatory.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nWhy are these always breaking? I don’t get it.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nNot the most flattering photo, but it’ll have to do.<\/p>\n

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\nHigh end shopping mall on the way to the observatory elevators.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nLong line, they said it was a 30 minutes wait.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nIn order to get to the end of the line, we had to walk past tons electronics stalls.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nFinally to the elevator. They were right, it took 30 minutes. They claim that this is the world’s fastest elevator. I am surprised that none of the newer skyscrapers have topped this yet. Anyhow, it was indeed super fast. In about the time it takes for me to get from my parking garage to the 9th floor at home, here it gets me from ground floor to 89th floor.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nNot the best day for viewing. It smoggy and looks like it’s about to rain.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nGiant wind damper on the top to reduce swaying.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nThere’s an outdoor viewing area. What was interesting was that the winds would blow through the metal bar enclosure surrounding the perimeter, and the bars would whistle ever so slightly depending on how the wind was blowing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nWell, that’s that, let’s head back down.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nThey force you to walk past a bunch of red coral shops on the way down.<\/p>\n

When we got down to the ground, we decided to meet up with my friend RE to grab a bite to eat. His hotel is not too far from here.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nNo idea what this is about, but they were noisy and annoying.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nToo lazy to take the MRT(subway) and walk around trying to find RE’s hotel. Taxi it is.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nThat was easy, RE’s hotel is straight ahead after a quick short taxi ride.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nThat’s really close to the curb, and also in the fire lane, along with most of the cars parked on this street.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nEnjoying a beer with RE, LT, and their super cute daughter S. Apparently S gets all the attention here in Taiwan being a mixed race baby and all. RE showed me a photo of a whole gaggle of girls crowding around S wanting to take a photo with her. She’s a little celebrity.<\/p>\n

We sat around, had a beer, chatted a little. RL and I are fading, we need to eat and head back to the hotel to sleep.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nCool looking building for a school.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nIt started to sprinkle a little.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nOh, I recognize this area. I believe my sister took me to eat at a restaurant around here years back.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nFound our dinner spot, a 24 hour dim sum place.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nRE said that one of the review said that this place was like “The Denny’s of dim sum” in that it was 24 hours. Let’s see how it tastes.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nFood was pretty solid, I’d eat again. Yum.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nOther patrons agree with us. The place got pretty packed as we ate our meal.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nGroup photo. The guy standing on the right is LT’s cousin who met us for dinner.<\/p>\n

RE and LT picked up the tab for us as their wedding gift to us. Thanks y’all!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nMRT ride back to our stop. Standing room only.<\/p>\n

Back to the hotel, quick shower, then blog…screw that, I am going straight to bed.<\/p>\n

To be continued at Taiwan Day 4<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Taiwan Day 2. As mentioned earlier, I suck at this jet lag thing. Wanted to sleep in, but woke up at 1am in the morning after about 3 hours of sleep. Not cool. Blogged some, then laid in … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":16063,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-16153","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16153"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16385,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16153\/revisions\/16385"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/16063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gottobepresenttowin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}