Taipei 臺北市

Finally some photos on Taipei. The day we arrived in Taipei, we stayed at Camel Oasis, which is near C.K.S Memorial Hall. We managed to catch the sunset at CKS, and it was beautiful! We highly recommend Camel Oasis as a place to stay in Taipei. Its a first grade hostel.

On our second night in Taipei, we visited the Taipei National Palace Museum which is way way better then the museum in Shanghai! Opposite the road is the Shung Ye Museum of Formosan Aborigines which is worth a visit and the museum tour is highly recomended! I shamelessly use my Student Card to get a S$5 discount on the admission tickets :) That night, we visit Shilin Night Market, and Lungshan Temple show here in the photo. Nearby the temple is another night market(Hua-Hsi 华西) which we return to on our last night in Taipei. Its better then Shilin!


What made my Taipei's visit especially memorable, is the encounter with the famous Mazu Festival! I've seen it many a times on documentaries, and even seen the exhibit in Singapore's Asian Civilization Museum, but to get the chance to see it live beats everything else hands down!

Mazu Festival was in full swing in Taipei on 27 May, from Shilin Night Market area, to Lungshan Temple area! It was totally amazing! A religious procession smack in the middle of a night market is quite a rare sight! And no one was complaining as the traffic comes to stand still as the procession take place! Everywhere you see all this giant god-like figures walking around, and fire crackers were being let off everywhere non-stop! There were also fireworks everywhere lighting up the sky!

The last in the procession is Mazu herself, and people bow down on the floor for her to pass over to get her blessing. We pretty much follow the whole procession down the road at Lungshan, and at every temple, the procession will stop to bless the local temple, and more fire crackers and fireworks were let off! That totally blew me away! Taipei is indeed a very vibrant city!

As for the other sites of Taipei, well, we didn't see much. We managed to drag ourselves to Taipei 101 after one week in Taiwan, and left after having dinner there as it was rather boring. The bookstores there is also another reason I love Taipei! Too bad I can't read Chinese books much. And the books are a lot more expensive then in China.