Bus 1819 drives me from Taoyuan Airport to Taipei. The hotel that the tourist office sent me too is very simple, very budget and the worst room I have ever had I think. But I am not complaining, it is cheap and it serves the purpose of a place where I can

leave my backpack and where I can sleep at night. The Lion City hotel will never make it into my long term memory though.. I shower and walk into town. I feel very foreign, very out of place and quite lost here in this jungle of Chinese signs, noise, people, traffic and rain. I make it to a modern looking building, shopping center and I am back in the western world. But this is not what I want either, here are the big brands and even the golden M is present. I am supposed to meet Iris at 3 pm, she is the friend of Lulu's, she will show me around Tapei. I hope she has some good tips otherwise I will need to get a crash course in Chinese or be prepared to wonder around like a zombie for 5 days.. We meet downstairs at the hotel, at the street filled with 3000 shops, food outlets and scooters. Straight away I have a good feeling about this and decide to ask her as much as possible about the Taiwanese ways. She is from HongKong and studies here, but knows a lot about the local things to know. We walk through different neighbourhoods and when we sit down for tea and coffees, she pulls out out sorts of brochures with interesting things to do and see. We go through them and slowly but surely i am starting to feel that is going to be alright here in Taipei and that i will see interesting things. We start in an area called Monga, at the Red House, a former theater and now a place where young designers can

Display and sell their work. A lot of facinating stuff here. We continue by metro to a night market area. On the metro i buy single tickets that cost from 50 €cents to €1, depending on he distance travelled. You buy a coin from a vending machine, this coin you keep with you until your destination and then you return it at the checkpoint. Works really well. At the night market we see snakes, seafood, massages with butcher knives, exotic foods and many many people.

It is obvious there are not many foreigners in Taiwan. If I count 10 Eiropean people like myself a day, I am on the high side of estimating. But although you hardly see any Europeans or black people, nobody looks at you twice like they would in certain other Asian countries. A weird experience. People do speak some English but in general very little. They will try though and are extremely friendly!

Back to the area of the Red House and we have a well deserved beer after all this walking. We agree on meeting the next day at 10:30 to head to the Zoo and some other sights. I am tired (this second jetlag situation is very strange) and before i go to bed I update FB a bit and add some pics. In my very small and let's say historical Taiwanese room I close my eyes and fall asleep immidiately. I wake up and think it was a great night sleep. Unfortunately it is only 1am and i sleep more. Getting out of bed at 7, get coffee to go from downstairs, read the news and wait for Iris to show up. We head for the MRT (metro) train and go south east towards the zoo. On the metro, announcements are made in four languages; Kantonese (Chinese), Taiwanese, English and in a local dialect. There are people in uniform everywhere to tell you the way to your platform, to tell you when to board, to tell you when to cross the street, where to get your ticket, where to walk, where to stand or how to move. But they all do it in a friendly way!