Melody and Jordan Travel Memories: Taiwan Adventure Journal

So this is Jordan's first time delving into the lengthy writing process of our Taiwan, so spare me if these entries aren't as well written as Melody's :P

Day 6, aka Jan 22, was the day we went to the mythical Taipei 101. Please note that this is also Chinese New Year's Eve.

The first thing to know about Taipei and a lot of Asia in general, is that Chinese New Year is not a big street party. It's a time when people get time off work to go home and take care of their family, see relatives they haven't seen in a while, and generally eat a lot of food. That said, all that family time means that a lot of food stalls and attractions are actually not open. For this reason, we had to leave the morning comfort of our Taipei hotel room to get our breakfast for the first of 3 or 4 days where the city was very quiet in many different areas.

This particular morning, we got some Chinese baking and some noodles for breakfast.

This is how dead the malls are on CNY Eve

Buying Chinese pastries

So now that breakfast is out of the way, we move on to our main event of the day, which is going up to the top of Taipei 101. It's an iconic, 509m tall structure, which, upon its completion, held records for tallest antenna, tallest roof, tallest occupied floor, and fastest elevator. It is also home to a tuned mass damper which is designed to keep the building steady in the presence of winds or tectonic shifting. It's a giant ball made from many steel plates stacked together, and weighs nearly 730 tons. Quite an amazing piece of technology to read about!

Ticket to ride the fast elevator! About $12.5CAD

One of the infamous "damper babies"

View from the top

Not to scale

The damper!

Another damper baby

Please note that Melody treated us to lunch in the Taipei 101 foodcourt. Pretty baller food there.

In the same day we also went to the XingTian Tao Temple. As a relatively new Taoist, I was confused to learn that there are different forms of Taoism. There are philosophical schools of Taoism, but also religious practicing schools where the concepts of multiple gods is present.