Night Tour

We snoozed in the afternoon today. Then we took a Taipei Night Tour. We started with a dinner at a Mongolian BarBQ restaurant tucked in an alley. It was very busy and very much a local place. A lot of families there. Adam loved it. He went back for seconds and the cook saw Adam's bowl full of pork and no vegetables and just shook his head as though to say "tourists!" Anyway, several hours later, after a vigorous tooth brushing, and some gargling Adam has the worst projectile dragon breath I have ever smelled.

Our tour guide was very friendly. He was a retired horticulturalist for Taipei and tour guiding was his second career. He had been an exchange student to Kansas State to learn agricultural methods. It certainly seems to be a smalll world. He has grown children. One of his sons was a computer engineer, 40 and unmarried with no girlfriend. Our guide said his son has poor social skills; he only talks about computers. We thought this was kinda humorous. He also has a 10 month old grandson who he described as "very cute, but also very naughty."

After dinner we visited the Tapei Center, the second tallest building in Taipei. We got a nice view of Taipei. The drive there and back also helped us to get oriented. During the drive our guide had some opinions to share about the US packing up its Navy base in Taiwan to become a friend to China.

We also visited Longshan Temple, which is a must-see, and a night market. The temple was very busy while we were there which was very interesting. There were shrines to about 25 different gods. We paid special attention to the Matchmaking God for the sake of some of our friends. The air was very thick with incense. People were kneeling, praying, giving offerings of fruits (Buddha is apparently a vegetarian), and were also dropping these plates to find out the answers to questions . (Kind of like flipping a coin). The building was constructed in the 1700s. It was beautiful. The pictures above don't do it justice.

The Night market was our final stop it is very much like a flea market. We saw some pretty offensive key chains with some outrageous depictions that we decided would NOT make good gifts for any of you. We also checked out the snake shops where they hung dead and live snakes and sold snake meat and various other snake items. There were a few shops that had more unique items. Overall it was a good experience, but I would be fine without going to another night market.

This was a nice tour to do as something easy to just get an overview of some of Taipei's highlights. I would recommend it if it falls in the right place in your itinerary.