Taipei: Day 2

Sunday morning came and I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to do. I thought it would be neat to go to a museum to learn the history of my new favorite country. The Taipei National Museum in 228 Peace Park looked like it might be my best bet, so I took the train back out there after I had breakfast at the hotel. When I got back to the park, I wasn’t quite sure where the museum was, so I walked around hoping to find it. I ended up in the north side where I sat on a bench for a while and watched some people practice Tai Chi. When I got up to walk around some more, I saw a sign for the museum that pointed south. So I started backtracking when I saw a Chinese family with two little girls feeding the fat squirrels. I noticed these squirrels the day before during my visit to the park, they were really big and so dark that they were almost completely black. These girls were sticking bread on the end of a single chopstick and holding it out for the squirrels to take. I recorded a bit of it, it’s kind of a large file, but it’s pretty cute!

I eventually found the museum but I wondered if there would actually be any English on the exhibits. I asked the ticket lady “Is there English?” and she said “Yes” and handed me a pamphlet. I paid the $20 entrance fee (remember, divide by 100, multiply by 3) and walked inside. The first exhibit was the skeleton of a wooly mammoth, and the description was in Chinese. I thought “uh-oh” but then a lady said “there is English on this side.” I thanked her and asked if the museum has any exhibits about the history of Taiwan, but she said no… So they didn’t have what I wanted, but I figured I’d look around anyway. I quickly discovered that the wooly mammoth exhibit was the only exhibit in English. Oh well again…

It took about 30 minutes to look at everything in the museum. Once I was finished, I headed back outside to the 228 Peace Park. I noticed a Taiwanese man sitting in front of the museum painting with watercolors, so I walked over to watch. He was very friendly and wanted to show me all of his paintings. The paintings were mostly of animals, and they looked very nice. I saw a cute painting of the Park squirrels, so I told him that I would like to buy it. He said it cost $50, and I said ok. I was still pretty fresh to the Taiwanese dollar at the time, so I thought I was paying 15 US dollars... I thought, a little expensive, but it’ll be a nice souvenir. It was later in the day when I realized that I only paid $1.50 US!!! What a deal!

As I was paying the man for the painting, the first raindrops of the day started coming down. I wanted to keep my newly acquired painting dry so I ran to the nearest train station. Once there I bought a ticket and started my journey to the zoo. I hoped it wouldn’t be raining over there, but if it was I figured I’d buy another umbrella. When I finally arrived (2 transfers and 3 trains later) it was raining VERY hard. There was a woman standing right outside the station selling umbrellas for $100. I bought one and walked to the zoo ticket stand.

This was the best zoo I’ve ever seen. They had every animal that you can imagine and they had many of each kind! Not just one or two of each animal, they had like 15 zebras! Here are a few of my favorite pictures:

White rhino covered in red mud
Close-up of chimp
Gorilla eating
Formosan black bear
Lotsa monkeys!!!

It rained hard all day, but the air was very warm. The air was SO humid, and there were many stairs and ramps to climb, so by the time I had reached the back of this giant zoo, I was really exhausted. I tried to find the shuttle bus to get me back to the entrance, but I couldn’t find it so I walked all the way back. I missed the camels on the way in anyway, so I got to see them on the way out. This was really quite an amazing zoo, if you like animals at all I’d say this is a must-see while in Taipei.

After the zoo, I took the trains back to Taipei Main Station and walked around a bit. I ended up back on the 8th floor of the department store to watch more Mushi King and this time I had enough time to figure it out. It’s essentially a game of rock, paper, scissors… Before you start, you swipe one of your cards to determine which beetle you are going to be. Then you get to swipe up to 3 more cards to determine which move will be assigned to which button. Your opponent does the same, and then your attack strengths for each move are displayed (I assume that certain moves are stronger with certain beetles, etc). Then the kids simply play rock, paper, scissors and the winning attack knocks off a certain amount of health (determined by the strength of the attack). It was kind of funny because after I watched for a while it finally dawned on me that they were playing rock, paper, scissors. And then not more than 15 seconds later, I noticed that on the buttons were pictures of hands in the shape of rock, paper, scissors… At that point the game became completely disinteresting. Not only because I figured it out, but that it turned out to be such a banal game underneath… The card reader/dispenser thing is pretty neat though.

I was pretty exhausted from a day of walking, so I headed back to my hotel and took it easy for the rest of the evening.