It’s a wet Sunday Morning as I type this.
There were a lot of people at the airport long queues to check-in yeserday [thankfully I’d checked in at KL Sentral] and long queues at the Autogates too. Then I realised, oh yes, school hols have started...
Endured another long queue at the boarding gate - turned out that the security on passengers to the US and Taiwan is stricter. No water bottles or anything of that sort.
After the delay - the flight only took off 45 minutes after the scheduled time, it turned out to be a pleasant flight in the modern plane. The seat was futuristic and my seat was at the upper deck, cool! Was assigned the back seat though, not cool. But I was alone in that row, cool! And was well-fed and well taken care of, cool. Syukur alhamdulilah.
Arrived in hazy Taipei at 3 pm. Yet another queue was endured. Bought a return coach ticket to Taipei Main Station. And, guess what, there was another blinking queue to board the coach. The journey to downtown Taipei took 50 minutes and shortly after arriving at the Main Station, I found myself navigating my way through the maze of underground network of shops and subway station. Finally arrived at Taiwanmex Hostel at 5 pm. Met a friendly, unusually-tanned English chap by the name of Barry and he’s cute too! Quite a friendly chap and we chatted a bit - told him he was the first foreigner I’ds met since leaving the aiport 1.5 hours earlier - before I left as it turned out that my room is at another building.
Took the Taipei Metro to Shilin Night Market after prayers. There was a building with what must be among the largest food courts in this part of the globe. I didn’t feel hungry [and it wasn’t as if I could partake any of the food anyway!] so I made my way to a nearby street. There must be at least half of Taipei there... and I was being jostled and hustled, shoved and pushed aside, elbowed and poked and ran into by the mad shoppers. The narrow street didn’t help and to make things worse, there were peddlars in the middle of the already narrow and congested street. Almost everything was sold from street food to clothes, bags, ties, shoes... everything but souvenirs. Duhhh!
I got fed up of the crowd and having to fight my way through so I decided to return back to the hostel. Besides, fatigue was setting in already.
The hostel is compact but cosy. There’s a cute, frisky [if it’s not curled up on the sofa] tortoiseshell cat in residence [thankfully, not a dog!]. The hostel is situated on the top floor of a building and if not for the haze, I’m sure the view would have been fantastic. Oh well... By the way, the hostel is managed/owned/ran by a Mexican who I think is married to a local and I’m now typing this on a keyboard with both the normal alphabets and Chinese characters. One terminal pops up the Mexican/Spanish version of Blogger.com while the other pops up the Chinese version so I’m relying on memory to sign in, provide password, create posting etc. There’s a local chap with shoulder-length hair who told me he hangs around here on a semi-permanent basis and bunks out on the sofa [poor kitty relegated to elsewhere]. For a Taiwanese, he speaks very good English although he’d make a poor tour guide.
Alright, I’m off to meet my Taiwanese friend shortly, she’s offered to bring me around. I hope to persuade her to bring me to the Taipei Grand Mosque and some halal eatery, among other things. See you later!
There were a lot of people at the airport long queues to check-in yeserday [thankfully I’d checked in at KL Sentral] and long queues at the Autogates too. Then I realised, oh yes, school hols have started...
Endured another long queue at the boarding gate - turned out that the security on passengers to the US and Taiwan is stricter. No water bottles or anything of that sort.
After the delay - the flight only took off 45 minutes after the scheduled time, it turned out to be a pleasant flight in the modern plane. The seat was futuristic and my seat was at the upper deck, cool! Was assigned the back seat though, not cool. But I was alone in that row, cool! And was well-fed and well taken care of, cool. Syukur alhamdulilah.
Arrived in hazy Taipei at 3 pm. Yet another queue was endured. Bought a return coach ticket to Taipei Main Station. And, guess what, there was another blinking queue to board the coach. The journey to downtown Taipei took 50 minutes and shortly after arriving at the Main Station, I found myself navigating my way through the maze of underground network of shops and subway station. Finally arrived at Taiwanmex Hostel at 5 pm. Met a friendly, unusually-tanned English chap by the name of Barry and he’s cute too! Quite a friendly chap and we chatted a bit - told him he was the first foreigner I’ds met since leaving the aiport 1.5 hours earlier - before I left as it turned out that my room is at another building.
Took the Taipei Metro to Shilin Night Market after prayers. There was a building with what must be among the largest food courts in this part of the globe. I didn’t feel hungry [and it wasn’t as if I could partake any of the food anyway!] so I made my way to a nearby street. There must be at least half of Taipei there... and I was being jostled and hustled, shoved and pushed aside, elbowed and poked and ran into by the mad shoppers. The narrow street didn’t help and to make things worse, there were peddlars in the middle of the already narrow and congested street. Almost everything was sold from street food to clothes, bags, ties, shoes... everything but souvenirs. Duhhh!
I got fed up of the crowd and having to fight my way through so I decided to return back to the hostel. Besides, fatigue was setting in already.
The hostel is compact but cosy. There’s a cute, frisky [if it’s not curled up on the sofa] tortoiseshell cat in residence [thankfully, not a dog!]. The hostel is situated on the top floor of a building and if not for the haze, I’m sure the view would have been fantastic. Oh well... By the way, the hostel is managed/owned/ran by a Mexican who I think is married to a local and I’m now typing this on a keyboard with both the normal alphabets and Chinese characters. One terminal pops up the Mexican/Spanish version of Blogger.com while the other pops up the Chinese version so I’m relying on memory to sign in, provide password, create posting etc. There’s a local chap with shoulder-length hair who told me he hangs around here on a semi-permanent basis and bunks out on the sofa [poor kitty relegated to elsewhere]. For a Taiwanese, he speaks very good English although he’d make a poor tour guide.
Alright, I’m off to meet my Taiwanese friend shortly, she’s offered to bring me around. I hope to persuade her to bring me to the Taipei Grand Mosque and some halal eatery, among other things. See you later!
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