Taipei, Republic of China (Taiwan)

Days 14-18:
As expected, Taipei was very similar to all of my other recent stops in Asia (Beijing and Shanghai in particular). A dichotomy of people (the wealthy and the poor) but what seems to be a universal happiness regardless of status...at least in the eyes of this outsider. There are very nice parts of Taipei (eastern half of Taipei) and not so nice parts (western half of Taipei). That's a little bit of a generalization, but for the most part true.

As you'll note in the "Title" of this post, I list the country as "Republic of China" which is it's official name - not Taiwan. I must have missed this day in 7th grade geography but I didn't know that mainland China ("The Peoples Republic of China") considers Taiwan a state within China and under its rule. However the people of Taiwan (R.O.C) have been trying to gain independence and be recognized as a sovereign state - apparently unsuccessfully. Mainland China has been threatening force to bring Taiwan in line but so far hasn't resorted to any serious military conflict. I'm glad they didn't decide to use that force when I was around. For some reason I thought Taiwan was a sovereign state...learn something new everyday!

Two of the 5 days I was in Taipei were raining, so the weather seems to be following me around Asia - in actuality, the weather has been pretty good considering the time of the year. I bought an umbrella in Tokyo and it has been very handy to have!

When I originally booked my hotel for Taipei, I decided to start saving some money and stay out of the Grand Hyatt and JW Marriott type hotels and start trying some local boutique hotels. So, I booked a room at the Riviera Hotel. A very nice hotel on the inside and large rooms with a separate sitting room/kitchenette, but the neighborhood was a little on the "rough" side. Here's a view from my room...


...not quite the same as the Grand Hyatt view of Seoul or my JW Marriott view of Hong Kong Harbour! However, as I said, the inside of the hotel was very nice and the staff was very friendly. After getting used to the neighborhood, I'm actually glad I stayed there...and saved $100/night in the process!

I toured what was once the world's tallest building (Taipei 101 - which was just recently topped as the world's tallest when the Burj Khalifa opened in January of this year.) The building is beautiful and has some characteristics that make it "Chinese" - like the architecture, there are 8 sections (a lucky number in China), the interior design, etc. - however it's very odd in that it is the only building of any significant size in all of Taipei.








Throughout the rest of Taipei, I didn't see another building over 30-40 stories tall and there were only a few that were even that tall. When I think of New York City, Chicago, Dubai, Shanghai, Hong Kong, etc. there are many buildings that are all of significant height with one or two super skyscrapers of 80+ stories. In Taipei, it's the Taipei 101 and that's it. Makes you wonder if some government official woke up in Taipei one morning with an inferiority complex and decided to see how tall could he go. From a real estate and cost perspective, there is no reason to go that high unless you simply want attention.

The views from the 91st floor (as high as a tourist could go) were spectacular:











A building that is 1,700 feet tall (+/-), has to have some sort of sophisticated device to counteract the wind. On the 89th floor, they have this giant ball that is tethered to the top of the building and sways in the opposite direction of the wind thereby preventing the building from toppling over.


I'm sure there is a huge amount of complicated physics behind this mechanism - which is evident in the name for this sophisticated work of engineering: the "Super Big Wind Damper" - nice name huh? I thought it was funny so I had to take a picture of the name...


(having problems with the blog software again...see the next post for a continuation of Taipei)

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:LínSēn North Rd 671 Jhongshan District Taipei City 104 Taiwan