JD and Laura š
After spending 5 packed days with our hosts in Seoul, we took a quick flight over to Taipei on a low cost airline called Eastar Jet (we’ll have a post about them soon). Ā Our lovely Taipei hosts, Laura and JD, generously let us stay with them in their apartment near downtown Taipei. We had a wonderful week hanging out with them, exploring Taipei and eating the fabulous street food. So far on our journey we have concluded that Taipei has the best savory street food for vegetarians. In Chiang Mai the street food is amazing…if you eat meat. For us we ended up having to go to a restaurant if we wanted a savory dish. But in Taipei we feasted on vegetarian dumplings, grilled vegetables, potstickers and spinach filled pancakes. Taipei also has some Ā great vegetarian restaurants including one Buddhist restaurant near their apartment which was a massive vegetarian buffet, heaven for us vegetarians.
Vegetarian buffet amazingness
Best dumplings! You can get black sesame, vegetable, soy beans etc.
Did we do anything else besides eat? Good question. Somewhat. š We took a train to Jiufen and Jinguashi where weĀ hiked in a misty mountain, walked down a crowded market lane, saw the largest gold block and got soaked in a rainstorm that didn’t let up. We went to Kareokee and sang until our vocal chords couldn’t handle it anymore (though Laura could have continued all night long). During our first song, Hit Me Baby One More Time, the entire room shook, probably because of our fabulous performance, but in reality because we were in a 6.3 magnitude earthquake! We toured to the Presidential Palace and marveled at theĀ Chiang Kai-shekĀ Memorial Hall. My computer managed to malfunction so we got to learn about Apple computer repair in Taipei, $70 later I was relieved to have my computer back after four days of it sitting there broken.Ā One day we took a gondola up to a small, yet touristy, town with tea plantains and many tea shops.
Enjoy the photos!
Touristy town Jiufen
Misty hike, the rain started shortly after and didn’t stop the rest of the day.
Largest gold bar in the world, worth about 9.5 million dollars (currently)
Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall
Meat on a stick. Everywhere in SE Asia
Happy Aurelien, hot potato on a stick
- View of Taipei from the gondola
Hi guys,
if you sign up for Affordable Travel, it only costs $20 nite to stay with people in their homes worldwide. Pick the hosts who are closer to your age. Happy trails,’Nan and Nick
Hi Nan, thanks for the tip. I assume this is the correct website: http://www.affordabletravelclub.net/index.html. We will look into it and see if we can find hosts in some of the places we are staying.