East on Ma On Shan - a Stroll alongside the Ocean

Not having a plan at all was the plan for March 4th. I, having finished a midterm, was ready to leave the campus and set out to explore! We met up with Chris, and left for our adventure readily. 

Jordan: Hopefully we can knock off 2 stations today...maybe 3 if we're ambitious!
Me: I don't think we should get ahead of ourselves, I think 2 is ambitious enough!

Our goal for our 4 months here in Hong Kong is to visit every MTR station. There are 84 MTR stations in total; we have completed 25. Our progress isn't too bad so far, but we have to take in mind that we will become busy as finals are progressing nearer...but anyway, we still are trying our best!

   

Mountain!

We transit to Choi Hung MTR station, transfer 2 times and soon enough, we were at our destination - Wu Kai Sha (烏溪沙), situated in the Northeastern area of the New Territories. The station is the East-most station along the Ma On Shan (馬鞍山) line, and from our little research we did the night before, we were aware that it was by the water. We also found out that there is a mountain nearby to be hiked - the Ma On Shan mountain, which one of the top 10 highest peaks in Hong Kong!

Taiwan Adventure Journal - Day 7!

Day 7, aka Jan 23, was our first day of the Chinese New Year. Our first day in the year of the Dragon. As mentioned in other posts, Taipei practically becomes a ghost town when CNY rolls in. People travel and go on vacation, visit family, and generally take a break from their daily grind for about week or so. The city being nearly empty, is a good time to sight see any of the open venues for pictures, but isn't as good for shopping and markets, as many of them are closed.
On this day we went to Sun Yat Sen memorial hall and took a look around. 

It was a cool, overcast day. Taipei 101 loomed in the distance, spire occluded by the clouds overhead. The general lack of crowds and the low hanging mist created the feeling of a quiet morning that endured throughout much of the day. 

We walked around Sen's Memorial hall and then moved on to the notably bigger Chiang Kay Shek Memorial square. The large square is bordered by a gate on one side and three large, traditionally decorated buildings on remaining sides. One of which is the National Theatre, National Music Hall on another side, and finally the memorial hall, which lies to the South-East side.

Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall

Taiwan Adventure Journal - Day 3!

Day 3, Jan 19th, was probably one of our sunniest and warmest days. We chose this lovely sunny day to go to the Taiwan Exhibition buildings and see area that was setup to showcase Taiwan to the international community. It's a nice open area that has some gardens for walking around and has plenty of families with children and tourists. The whole setup is a park with these different green areas and some cafes and the exhibition buildings are grouped in one area. The admission into the expo buildings is quite reasonable (about 60-150 TWD depending on the show) and showcase some pretty nifty technology as well. Each of the buildings has some neat and different architecture and the combination of that and the green space makes for some lovely photography. The three expos we watched were the Taipei Pavilion, Future Pavilion, and the Pavilion of Dreams.

Taiwan Adventure Journal - Day 1!

Hello everyone!

Today is Jordan and my third day in Taiwan...it has been absolutely amazing!!

The first stage of our adventure was the plane ride to Asia! I must say that I was really nervous for it, because I get motion sickness easily and the more I fly, the more I dislike it :S But it was overall a pretty good flight! We stayed up, watched a few documentaries (well, I watched while Jordan snoozed hehe), ate lots of food, and watched more stuff. The plane ride was definitely more comfortable than my regular flights on Air Canada from Toronto to Vancouver and back.

We had a little kerfluffle after our landing in Hong Kong. It turns out that our flight from HK to Taipei was cancelled (noooo). The service people from Dragonair, the flight company we booked with, didn't explain why, but people told us that it was probably because there weren't enough people on the flight. So we ended up being very frustrated and tired, standing in front of the Dragonair service desk, trying to get a flight. We ended up getting a flight out of HK an hour and a half later than our original flight, which wasn't too too bad, and we got 2 meal vouchers out of it. So that marked our first meal in Asia!

My uncle and dad picked us up from the airport in Taiwan. It was pretty late (around 1 o'clock) by the time we met up with them. We basically checked into our hotel, got some stuff organized and went to bed. Our hotel is called the 'Friends Yo Tong Hotel' (友統大飯店), which is situated on the busiest road in Taipei. One amazing thing is that right beside us is a 24 hour conveyor belt sushi place, called Sushi Express! Om nom nom. That is actually where my dad took us the next day! We had some pretty funky, yummy stuff and each place cost approx $1 Canadian.