June 25: Okinawa to Taiwan

This morning we woke up and had to finish packing for the flight to Taiwan. We left the hotel and took the monorail to the airport, caught our flight and landed in Taiwan a little before noon and by the time we got through customs and met Uncle Cliff Lin curbside it was about 1 pm. Uncle Cliff had arranged for a van to pick us up and take us into the city and our first stop was at the National Palace Museum. Unfortunately they didn’t allow any photography inside the museum, so that was a bit of a bummer, but the exhibits were really neat. They had a jade exhibit that they are well known for and two of the showcase pieces are a piece of braised pork belly carved from banded jasper and a small cabbage with a locust and a katydid was carved from one piece of white and green jadeite. They also displayed some amazing ivory carvings that had intricate details that you could barely see with a magnifying glass, and porcelain pieces that were extremely rare and difficult to produce.

After we had finished at the National Museum we had the driver take us to our hotel, the Landis, so we could check in. It was the same hotel my parents had stayed at for one night after their Bhutan trip.

Once we dropped off our luggage in the rooms we headed back out to get a quick tour of the town. We drove by the President’s office and Supreme Court before we were dropped of at the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. They closed right when we got there, but the building was really impressive without going in at all. The building stands about 250 feet tall and is made of white marble with a blue tile roof. After we walked around it a little bit we started to leave and caught the tail end of the flag lowering ceremony.

When we were finished looking around the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial we got back in the van and drove by the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial before heading to the skyscraper, Taipei 101, to meet Uncle Cliff’s in-laws for dinner at Din Tai Fung. The xiao long bao at this Din Tai Fung was better than the ones I’ve had from the Arcadia locations. They seemed like they were cleaner tasting. In addition to the pork xiao long bao we also had chicken xiao long bao, crab and pork xiao long bao, Taiwanese bamboo shoots, vegetable dumplings, truffle and pork xiao long bao, sautéed ong choy, braised beef noodle soup, steamed beef noodle soup, noodles with minced pork sauce, sautéed Taiwanese lettuce, stewed bean curd with mushrooms and soy beans, Shaoshing wine marinated chicken, black sesame dumplings in a sweet rice wine soup, steamed red bean rice cake, and taro dumplings.

After we finished dinner Christal and I went up to the observation deck of the building up on the 91^st floor. It was a little expensive to go up there, but I think it was still worth it to see the night views of the surrounding city. The elevator to the top of the building apparently got a Guinness Book record for being the fastest passenger elevator in the world. The building also has the largest wind damper in the world and the only one viewable by the public. When we had finished we came back down to meet everyone in the mall and then caught a taxi back to the hotel for some shuteye.