First Impressions of Taiwan....

Well I have been in Taipei for about 24 hours now so I thought I would give some first impressions...

Firstly, my Mandarin is way worse than I thought it was...I thought I could at least count but the speed in which people talk over here is just mind boggling. I think I need a couple days to get used to it. I did, however, realise that I remembered the characters for some food. I have been eating at places that only have mandarin menues and just pointing to the things that I recognise and are cheap. So far everything I have had has been very very tasty...lets hope I keep the streak alive.

Secondly, its very wet. And colder than I thought it would be, I found myself wearing lots of layers today (or at least the layers that I have...which is 3).

Thirdly, Taipei 101 is huge. I went there today and it is a freakin awesome structure. It really stands out and was well worth the trip over there. One thing I noticed, however, was there was no mention of the CN Tower on their world's tallest building list. Maybe its only Canadians that think it is the tallest (except for the new Burj)...a quick check over at infoplease.com says that the CN Tower is the world's tallest tower at 1815 ft and Taipei 101 is the world's tallest building at 1667 ft. Which means that the CN Tower is the taller structure....which makes me feel warm inside....haha. There is a picture in the observatory on the East side with cities and famous buildings to the east of Taipei. There is no mention of Toronto, but there is a picture of the CN Tower and they make it look small. And I mean small...smaller than the space needle in Seattle among other things....I sense a little jealousy perhaps??? On a side note, First Canadian Place is 38th on that buildings list...who knew?

Overall Taipei is a very easy city to get around in, extremely friendly and has some great food. Tomorrow I am going to a town called Wulai just outside of Taipei on a day trip. Supposedly there are some nice waterfalls and nature to check out, so I am hoping that it is warm outside. After that I am going to make my way down to Tainan to see my friend Josh, and stick around there for a couple days to bother him. He and I at the end of the month are going to be going to a music festival at the southern most point of the country called Spring Scream...supposedly its free but there are tickets for sale. We shall see...either way I am very excited to hit festival number 3 with my good buddy Moss (1 and 2 being CTMF).

Just as an aside, my plane ride over from Singapore was fantastic...that is until they started to descend into Taiwan. We got stuck in clouds for what seemed like an hour and every now and then the plane would drop a couple feet...and by drop I mean FALL. And my heart went with it believe me...by the end my palms were pretty sweaty and my knuckles were white...so much so that I almost forgot my camera on the plane. I had to run back through the terminal and while the crew was cleaning up run back onto the plane and search for my camera. Luckily I found it but I was a little thrown off...I need to start paying more attention haha.

Tonight I am going to a night market called Shilin to eat some crazy food and possibly purchase some cheap crap..errr I mean artifacts. Anyone want anything??

Cheers, Ari

ps - The WBC is huge over here...I was having a coffee and watching the Puerto Rico/ OZ (?) game earlier today...they also have a MLB store right near my hostel with WBC stuff. I asked if they had any Team Canada "jia na da" tee shirts and they laughed at me....