My joint longest stay in one place is currently between Kuching and Busan, though Bangkok, Vientiane, Kuala Lumpur and Jeju rank pretty closely. Looking back on what I've done so far, the average length of time I usually spend in each city is about three days and I think in most cases that is sufficient as it gives me the day I get there to get settled in followed by two full days of sightseeing before moving on. I decided pretty early on in the trip that I wanted to be efficient and see as many different places as possible, so that's meant me not staying in each places for too long. Although this has meant an extremely packed schedule, it has been advantageous in some cities, especially those that have lots of sights all centred in one place meaning I can visit them all within one day in the city.
The length of my stays in Shanghai, and Beijing (to take place shortly) were obviously dictated by visa requirements but everywhere else has just involved me looking at how much there is to do, and then attempting to assess exactly how to spend my time. I've certainly had to do some prioritising in some cities where I've had to decide which things I could not leave without doing, but on the whole I think I've covered every place that I've been quite well.
Taiwan is perhaps the only country where I have stayed for longer than three days but selected to stay in just one city. Five days is a pretty awkward length of time to be travelling to different parts of the country as if I arrived in Taipei on the same schedule I had done yesterday then I'd probably only have one full day to spend in another city before moving on somewhere else. By default I selected to stay in Taipei as I knew from my list of things to do in Taiwan that it was pretty well stocked with almost everything I could want to see and experience whilst in the country.
To pat myself on the back I think I have done a pretty good job of selecting which cities to visit, although quite a lot of them have been no-brainers.
Not that I will probably end up doing this, but it'd be interesting to consider once my journey is completed how I could have trimmed it up, and for example whether I'd have chosen to stay in the Philippines so long, and if I'd have chosen to go to Brunei at all.
I feel that the little short bursts with changes of location every few days or so has not only kept me on my toes, but kept my fairly active and also meant I've had to make the most of the time I've spent in each city. If I stayed somewhere like Vientiane for seven days instead of three then the chances are that I would have gone completely mental!
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The threat of rain lingered in the air this morning almost from the second that I got out of bed.
When I looked out of the window after getting up it seemed to be one of those classically tropical-type days that often occur in Asia where it's very humid but there is a menacing breeze blowing that you know could whip up storm-like conditions at any moment.
Checking the forecast I was pretty sure that at some point today it was going to absolutely bucket it down, but I thought rather than pick something indoors to do, I'd brave it outside and made sure I packed my coat in case the weather did decide to turn.
Even in the short stay outside of my room last night, I'd started to grow an affinity with Taipei. This is all very subjective I know having spent less than twenty-four hours here and not having gone anywhere near the actual centre of the city. From what I've seen, Taipei is a fairly busy place, and it seems strange to describe it this way, but things are very spread out, which makes it not seem that busy at all.
The footpaths here, for example, are extremely wide, meaning that you don't feel like you're walking down a clostrophibic alley each time you take to the pavement. The roads themselves are also really wide so it doesn't seem like the traffic builds up that much - although aside from the bus yesterday I haven't taken a ride in any other vehicle on the road to prove or disprove that theory.
I described yesterday how it seems to be very clean, and both last night and today I have seen people out on the streets sweeping them with the witch-looking brooms. It was the same in Shanghai, but yesterday I also saw a couple of people cleaning the escalators and also the glass doors that open once the train arrives, and it makes things an awful lot more plesent. It's good that countries like Singapore and Taiwan take pride over their public transport services, and it's a far cry from the London Underground that's for certain.
I noticed yesterday when I was on board that there is a special area which is reserved for women and children at night - this 'safe zone' apparently has extra-security cameras and is also attended to by a guard which I think is an interesting touch. Quite why men, or foreign tourists like me don't need to be 'safe' I'm not sure!
I was headed back on board the metro today in order to make my way to Taipei Zoo. "Another zoo?" I hear you say. Yes another one - it seems I can never have enough animal encounters.
As it happens Taipei Zoo is one of the most famous ones in the world, and for some reason it sticks in my head as somewhere I've always wanted to visit although I don't really have a clear cut reason why. It has a good reputation and I figured that like Shanghai Zoo there would probably be an opportunity to see some more animals native to this region of the world.
Going on Tuesday morning certainly seemed to have its benefits, as I figured that the atmosphere would be slightly different than to when I travelled to Shanghai Zoo on Saturday.....
The Zoo is at the end of the line which I boarded yesterday at Songshan Airport. I think it's Line 1, but I'm not entirely sure - on the map it's the brown line.
Just while we're on the subject of maps, I usually carry a metro map around religiously with me wherever I go just to make sure I know exactly which stop I am supposed to be getting off at, but today I was confident enough that I wouldn't go the wrong way that I didn't even consider taking it out of my bag at any point.
Part of the reason for that is that there aren't nearly as many lines as there are on the tube in London or the metro in Busan, and also the names are relatively easy for me to remember which direction I need to be going in.
I'm pretty much directly in the middle of two stops, so I went to the one that I got off at yesterday in order to find my 'hotel', and looked to see how much it would cost me to get to the zoo. I haven't mentioned too much about the Taiwan currency as yet so here's my little introduction for you.
Taiwan uses the Dollar, not the US one though, the Taiwanese Dollar, and £1 is equivalent to about $46TW. Things seem relatively reasonably priced as far as I've been able to tell; for example, yesterday my dinner was $120 which my maths tells me works out to be about £2.60. Can't really say much fairer than that.
The price of a metro ticket depends on where you are going, but like in Shanghai, they are very reasonably priced. There's a map above each ticket machine which tells you how much it costs to get to each stop, and then you just tap the correct button on the screen and are issued with a token.
To get to the zoo is cost $35 which is a bargain considering it was probably about fifteen stops away - another reason why people in Britain need to be more outraged by the prices that we pay for everything!
I had to make one change in order to get to the zoo, so I travelled two stops to change at a stop called Najing Fuxing before going in the opposite direction to the one I'd arrived at the airport from in order to go to the very last stop on Line 1 which is Taipei Zoo.
Sorry to keep banging on about the metro, but I think it might be my favourite method of transport so far - partly because of how quiet it is! I don't know how people in Taipei get around, but it certainly doesn't seem like they use the metro very often! The carriages aren't that big on trains travelling the Line 1 route - they probably have about six carriages and then maybe twenty seats per carriage, but on the way to the zoo I could have taken up an entire row and there still would have been spaces!
I spent a lot of time looking out of the window, as I generally do on the metro, and in the distance you could still see Taipei 101 standing out like a sore thumb in the middle of the city - a very impressive sore thumb though.
The area around the zoo was very green, and from the metro station which stops at the zoo you can get something called the 'Maokong Gondola' which is a cable car that takes you up into the mountains.
There is a stop at either end of the zoo and then a further two stops before it terminates at Maokong Station, and whilst I was walking round today I saw both of the stops that it makes close by.
I went and grabbed a drink from the 'Zoo Mart' which actually turned out to be a Family Mart just with a zoo theme, and surprisingly it wasn't overly priced as everything cost the same as it would do in the same convenience store in the street - we really do have a lot to learn when it comes to visitor attractions in the west.
Whilst I was there, a very kind lady at the information centre called me over to give me a map in English and pointed me in the right direction to get started.
There was a large portion of the zoo which is currently under construction, but it is being added to rather than refurbished which meant that I didn't miss out on anything. Like any good zoo, the one in Taipei is rather confusing, and you have that feeling of constantly needing to check the map in order to make sure that you don't miss anything out.
I started off by going into a section which was called 'Formoshan' which, as I learned, are animals which are native to Taiwan, and have been since Aboriginals first settled on the island.
There was a good selection of animals including rock macaques, sikas and wild boars.
Also within the same area was an insect-arium which I'm not usually a huge fan of, but I found to be really interesting.
There were certain sections in there which were free-flying areas for butterflies, and as strange as it is to have them gliding dangerously close to you at all times, it was at the same time fascinating to see then float around from leaf-to-leaf, almost as if there were no humans there at all. It was quite interesting to see how the zoo had set it up so rather than having the usual nets or chains up to prevent the butterflies getting out that all that was stopping them was an air conditioning unit which I presume they know probably means that there is much cooler air in that direction which they aren't going to appreciate. There were several different varieties and I did my best to capture pictures of as many as possible:
It's very rare that butterflies capture that much attention from me as I am generally more concerned by them flying around my face or even landing on me and having to check in the mirror at the end to make sure that I don't have any passengers. The butterfly part of it was in four or five sections that were interlinked with other areas where you could look at the usual kinds of insects that you find in this part of the world.
The only thing that the construction did get in the way of was meaning that there wasn't direct access from the Formosan area straight to the next section of the zoo meaning that you had to take quite a long walk in order to get to the Asian Tropical Rainforest section..
There was a rainforest house on the way where there were some mock-ups of how they look in the wilds of South America and where abouts you'd find each one of the animals existing in the wild.
When I eventually got the the Tropical Rainforest zone there were quite a large number of animals there, split up into separate areas, and the great thing about it not being that busy is that you didn't have to fight for a spot to get to the front and look at them - there was plenty of room for everyone. Some of the animals were more interesting than others, for example, one of my usual favourites the orang-utan was clearly feeling pretty shy as it was hiding in the rocks where as the tiger was pacing backwards and forwards (probably figuring a way that he could get out and eat all the people staring):
Next was the Desert Animal section which was tied in with the Australia Animal Area where there were things like camels and kangaroos - I don't think that any time I've been to the zoo that I have actually seen kangaroos which have been awake! Of all animals they have the least excuse for being too hot.
The African Animals Area was quite a large section which had things like lions, giraffes and chimpanzees in it:
This was probably one of the most interesting parts, mostly because of how many animals there were, but also because they were all very active. It's always a shame when you go to the zoo and the animals are either hiding, because it's too hot for them, or sleeping, because that's what they do at that point of the day.
I got to the Temperate Zone next which basically seemed to be a section of animals which didn't fit in anywhere else. They had penguins in there, and I'm not entirely sure you'd describe them as being temperate! I think for the first time in a zoo, or at least the first time for a while, they had king penguins as well as Humboldt Penguins that you usually see everywhere else. Being a big fan of them, I'd be happy to see any species!
I was now at the end of the path for the zoo and had to make my way back in order to see the rest of the animals that the path's detour had taken me on. First was an Amphibian and Reptile House which was filled with snakes, frogs and other slimy creatures:
The last section I reached was the Bird Zone which, as the name suggests featured plenty of, well, birds.
It wasn't like usual though, where you see the birds in cages, the whole thing was just a walk in aviary where there were plenty of flamingos, ibis and pelicans:
Coming back towards the entrance in a rather large area of its own was the zoos main attraction which is the Giant Panda house. There were places outside which seemed to indicate that it can get quite busy on a regular weekend as there were barriers and queuing times, but fortunately enough there was enough space for probably everyone at once to be looking in there today.
Sadly it wasn't quite as thrilling as the panda I saw in Shanghai the other day as it was rather inconsiderately asleep.
It's funny how whenever you catch animals sleeping in the zoo they always seem to be sleeping at some kind of strange angles that means you can't even get a good photo of them - so even though I don't have any proof, I can honestly tell you that I did see my second panda of all time today!
The last little bit before the exit was the Koala house which made up for the fact that I'd missed them in Bangkok as their area was under renovation. There were quite a few of the furry little critters on eucalyptus trees which has been set up in little sections and it was good to finish off by seeing an animal that was actually awake - I would say active, but that would be lying!
After what was probably a very warm two hour trip visiting the zoo I decided to head back towards my room for the afternoon.
Staying in Taipei for the rest of the week means that I don't have to rush around things, and also provides me with an ideal opportunity to make sure that I am fully sorted for the last couple of phases for my trip. Headed back to China again over the weekend I need to make sure that I have everything in place to make sure I can secure another 72-hour visa free stay, and then from there I am going to Japan which will probably take plenty of arranging as I am staying in a number of different cities.
I also figured that heading back to my room would be a good way to stay out of the rain in case it came bucketing down, which naturally it didn't. I felt a couple of drops on my arm during two points of the day and thought "Here we go....", but it never developed into more than that, something which I am actually very glad about. I still think that my coat will be making every journey with me this week however!
On my way back I stopped off at Taipei Arena instead of going back to my actual stop as I fancied a little walk.
I noticed that there was a huge queue of people which I thought was very odd considering it was about 4.30pm, but as I got closer to the front I realised that there was obviously some big event going on that they were waiting for.
Looking at the posters around I couldn't see anything, but as I got closer the doors I saw some people with signs and some very brightly coloured clothing. What I then discovered was that apparently Katy Perry is gracing the Taipei Arena with her presence tonight, and these people were clearly looking to get to the front of the standing section!
As it served me so successfully last night I went back to the Living Mall in order to get some dinner - maybe I should have gone back to the arena to see if they had any spare seats!
Butterfly
Mariah Carey (1997)
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