Taipei Arrival Evening

I'll probably update these posts at some later point, but at the moment I just want to get my thoughts down.  I booked this trip as a Rakuten tour last month. It cost 43,000yen for return flights with EVA Air, return airport/hotel transfer in Taipei, and 4 nights hotel and breakfast at a decent hotel with in-room wifi.  And importantly, it was a free tour so time was completely my own in Taipei.  A great price, although the booking was a little complicated - lots of Japanese, and the e-ticket is only available about 5 days before the flight.

EVA Air seems to be sponsored by Hello Kitty, so everything was cute...　；） The welcome music as you got on the plane was a bizarrely funky remix of Oh Come All Ye Faithful...  Everything but everything was Kitty-chan themed right down to the food and toilet paper.  Even the cabin crew had Hello Kitty aprons.  The flight was comfortable,  there was a meal, seat-back TV, and even a USB port for recharging your mobile phone.  Would definitely recommend them.


Got to Taoyuan airport, ignored the Rakuten group as I came through because I first wanted to pick up a Taiwan Mobile data sim for my mobile phone.  5 days unlimited data for 350NTD (about 1000yen), can't be bad and added 150NTD of voice, just in case.  Very simple, provided you have two forms of ID - for me, I used my passport and Japanese alien registration card.  It took about 5 minutes and all in English.

Then went back to join the Rakuten group.  It was probably about an hour and a bit from landing and getting the transfer bus, which was also probably about an hour and a bit getting to the hotel.  I reckon I understood about 50% of the Japanese spiel, but it was interesting and fairly useful.  Without it, I probably would never have found out that it's a national holiday for the next two days, and would have gone to Juifen (Japanese Kyuufun) at its busiest.

Checked into the hotel, still in Japanese mode which was a little embarrassing, and then went out to get something to eat.  I went into a pretty busy Chinese restaurant with an English menu and ordered one of their recommended dishes - peas and shredded chicken with rice, which it certainly was.  It was also far more expensive than I'm going to spend in Taipei for the rest of the trip.  After that I had some energy so found a MRT station (bought myself an EasyCard - stored value plastic card like SUICA or Oyster - 500NTD, 100 of which is a refundable deposit) and went to the nearest night market.  Night markets are probably where I'm going to be eating dinner for the rest of the trip - great selection of food,  good atmosphere, and very cheap.  Many of the street stalls have a brief English sign which gives an indication of what they sell, but I think I'm going to find it useful to know a bit of kanji.  Although the Chinese pronunciation is completely different, I at least know what some of them mean, so can be slightly more adventurous with the menu! 

More photos at a later stage, but this will do for today!   Tomorrow is going to be sightseeing in Taipei itself.