Longshan Temple
My plan today was to tick off a few sight-seeing items for Taipei, starting with visiting Longshan Temple. I travelled to the temple on my motorbike, and parked in a rather interesting underground carpark that was specifically for motorbikes with small spaces to fit many bikes. At the temple I mostly walked around admiring the interesting designs and patterns that made up the temple. There were many people there taking part in religious activities and placing food offerings in a certain section of the temple.
Shenkeng Old Street
After visiting the temple, my plan was to go look at Thousand Island Lake which was a bit far outside Taipei. On the way, I decided to visit Shenkeng old street, which was filled with many red brick buildings that had markets and stores under them. I found it quite interesting to walk around and was able to eat some kind of pork blood and tofu hotpot with a pork salad which was quite delicious.
Thousand Island Lake
Riding to the lake was quite amazing. I was riding across highways, through national parks with narrow roads that meandered up and down mountains. The vegetation and humidity gave me a feeling of being in a rainforest. When I arrived at the lake, I was quite surprised by the size, and how picturesque it was. It wasn’t clear to me where the main ‘viewing’ area was, but I was able to explore around a little and take in the views of the lake and surrounding farms. This place was probably the highlight of the day for me, especially the ride to the lake.
On the way back, I could see the weather was starting to turn. Once I got on the other side of the mountains, I could see nothing but grey clouds over Taipei, and many lightning strike’s happening across the horizon in front of where I was riding to. I quickly stopped at my nearest 7-Eleven to purchase a poncho to try stay dry, but it did not help much. It was absolutely bucketing rain as I rode back into Taipei, and the thunder/lightning was so frequent and loud, it felt like any moment it was going to strike within 100 metres of me. By the time I made it back to my hotel I was so saturated, although thankfully the rain stopped and suddenly it was sunny again. This was convenient as it allowed me to dry off before walking back into the hotel. The sudden change of weather reminded me of the weather patterns we have back home in Melbourne.
Shopping in Taipei 101
Later in the day, I decided to go do some shopping in the Taipei 101 shopping centre where I browsed the many different shops, they have dreaming about all the things I could buy if I was rich. I purchased myself a new leather belt, and another hotpot for dinner in the food court. I also had a conversation with a local man and his wife who noticing a foreign face approached me. We mostly chatted about life in Taiwan compared to in Australia, and he said if I ever came back to Taiwan that he would show me around.