Kristin Reporting!
*All pictures of this port were lost due to losing the camera in Singapore! The few pictures posted here were taken on Kristin’s cell phone.
Alright, let's get to it! Today's events for your reading pleasure!
We got up at 7:20AM today. We were bummed last night to find out that our tour today was meeting at 8:00AM. Our tour in Okinawa that met at 9:30AM spoiled us! Happily we mostly got enough sleep, so we were feeling pretty good.
Loaded up on the bus, we headed from Keelung Port into Taipei. Our first stop was the National Palace Museum. This museum is made up of artifacts that were taken from the Beijing National Palace before the Chinese civil war broke out after WW2. The Nationalists fled to Taiwan and brought their priceless historic artifacts with them.
[Davin Interjection: I did find it kind of ironic that many of China’s treasures are actually located in Taiwan. According to our guide, the artifacts spent a couple of decades in temporary storage, before the nationalists finally realized that they wouldn’t be making a triumphant return to the mainland. It was only at that point that they built a museum to house them.]
The museum was a TOTAL MADHOUSE! Our 37 person tour group was one tour group among a hundred such groups! There were swarms of people all over the place. We had to queue up to view the artifacts! That aspect of the museum was very unpleasant. We saw innumerable priceless bronze, jade, and porcelain artifacts. It was all very nice.
One interesting fact was that initially precious jade was just used like any other stone to fashion regular stone tool implements, like a hoe. Eventually it became recognized for its beauty and became a precious stone only affordable by the rich and powerful.
[Davin Interjection: It was nice seeing the museum artifacts, but the sheer number of people there was a bit of a downer. There were times that you’d be looking at something, and another group would start to try to force their way in, cutting you off. Obviously we had no more right to be there than anyone else, but if you’re going to visit here, it’s probably best to figure out when the down seasons is (it certainly didn’t seem to be when we were there!).]
After walking through the museum for two hours, we headed to our buffet lunch at (as usual) a 5 star hotel. The Grand Hotel of Taipei was indeed grand. It was modeled to look like a Buddhist temple, but it is a 10 story hotel! As far as hotels go, it was very impressive! The buffet wasn't half bad either! D and I enjoyed some delicious tuna and salmon sashimi. We finished the meal off by eating some ice cream, although the selection of flavors was a bit odd.
[Davin Interjection: This lunch was one of the better ones offered on the ship tours we took, possibly the second or third best overall. There was a very wide selection of food to choose from, and all of it was pretty good. The only negative is the buffet was pretty busy because in addition to numerous Cunard tour groups, there was also what looked to be a large highschool class, or possibly some sort of sports team, visiting (all wearing matching uniforms). I’d say there had to be about 50 highschool students there with us.]
After lunch, we were taken to a local handicrafts store. What a tourist trap! We ogled some sculptures that had price tags of $15,000 or even $28,000 USD!!! There were cheaper items for sale, of course! We perused the items but found nothing worth buying.
[Davin Interjection: I was actually sort of afraid to stand too near these super expensive crafts. What if you tripped and knocked one over? That would be a real nightmare!]
Our next stop was the wonderful Long Sun temple. It was a Daoist temple which originally housed the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, but since the local Taiwanese worship many other gods, about 10 gods in total have moved in to the temple! We greatly admired the temple's colors, and intricate carvings. The dragon and phoenix symbolism was particularly striking. Those two mythical creatures are apparently the most powerful according to Chinese religious beliefs and are the best able to grant food health, fortune and luck.
[Davin Interjection: Like all Chinese temples, there was a lot of incense smoke filling the air. I think that’s one of the things I like the most about Chinese temples! Also, there were people tossing these odd, semi-circular wooden blocks on the ground, and saying a prayer. It seemed like some sort of fortune telling device– maybe based on how the blocks fell?– but I didn’t have a chance to ask our guide about it.
Another interesting thing about this temple is that it had a lot of lanterns hung outside of it, and while we were there a crew was working to take them down, revealing the light bulbs inside each one. Apparently, the previous day had been a special occasion for the deity of the temple. Overall this was a very nice temple, and I was glad we visited it.]
Next we visited the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial hall. It reminded us a lot of the Abraham Lincoln memorial in Washington, D.C. It was very nice.
We followed that up with a visit to Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall. Here we got the chance to witness the changing of the guard. Both the Sun Yat Sen and the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial halls have guards on duty who stand there unmoving (and supposedly unblinking!) for one hour periods. They are relieved on the hour. The choreographed routine to turn over the guard post was extremely elaborate! Although I find the whole business ridiculous, I was impressed by how perfectly they performed the routine. The timing and execution was flawless!
[Davin Interjection: I watched one of the guards for a couple of minutes after the transition, and it really didn’t seem like he ever blinked. I’m not sure how they manage it, or whether it’s good for their vision, but they indeed don’t seem to blink!
We just missed the changing of the guard at the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial, and only just saw them as they were walking toward the door of the building. It seems like the guards at the Sun Yat Sen memorial have it a bit easier, as they only need to march out of the room, whereas the guards at Chiang Kai-Shek have to walk all the way out of the long hall beneath the memorial to the front of the building, all the while, people were running next to them taking pictures! We’re still not sure how they got from the memorial on floor 2, down to floor 1– whether they took the stairs or the elevator.
On the topic of Sun Yat Sen, it seems that he was a political philosopher who came up with a staged plan to transition to democracy. Assuming that transition plan was always what Chiang Kai-Shek had in mind for China, I have to wonder whether it wasn’t bad luck for the Chinese that the Communists won the civil war. It’s a stretch to say that China is truly a communist country today, so the whole communist revolution seems kind of pointless, but they still don’t have a government that is responsive to the will of the people, either.]
From in front of Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall we had a great view of Taipei 101. We took the opportunity to get some photos.
[Davin Interjection: Like most places in South East Asia, the air quality here was not that good. Even though Taipei 101 wasn’t that far away, it still was not entirely clear. Overall, I didn’t find Taipei 101 to be that impressive. Maybe it was a lack of perspective (no other tall buildings to compare it to), but I just couldn’t fully appreciate its size.]
And that was our day out in Taipei, Taiwan! Overall, it was an excellent tour and we had a great time!
Back aboard the ship, we spent the evening on our laptops. D has been working on his story, but he bit the bullet and got back to writing blog posts for our time in Australia. Soon we will catch up on that blog!
[Davin Interjection: The blog is very time consuming, and I honestly wonder whether it is time well spent. I could probably have written at least one more chapter in my story, if not two, in the time devoted to working on this blog. I guess it’s good to document our experiences, but it is not without a significant cost in time and effort.]
We went to check out tonight's show which stars a master pickpocket who's hands are insured for $1 million! It was great! The guy's name was James Freedman, you should look him up.
Next Stop: Hong Kong (March 30, 2016)
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