Category: Taiwan

至善園 (Garden of Perfected Benevolence)
台北市士林區至善路二段221號
221 Zhishan Rd., Sec. 2, Shilin, Taipei, 11143 Taiwan

——————–
After visiting National Palace Museum, do not forget to drop by 至善園 (Garden of Perfected Benevolence).  You don’t have to pay the entrance fee if you still have your ticket to the National Palace Museum (at the same day of course).  Otherwise, you’d have to pay 20NT as entrance fee.

Before you enter the garden, you will be able to see the site map by the entrance. Here are the attractions that we saw during our 15 minute visit 😛

Here is a video of the Dragon Pond. You’ll be able to see a lot of fishes and ducks swimming in the pond. The intertwining dragons in the pond symbolizes the omnipotence and magical benevolence of the Dragon..

The Pine Wind Pavilion has two floors. If you go up the second floor, you will be able to have a view of this beautiful garden. One interesting thing to note is the wooden pillars are carved with phoenixes and dragons.

The West Bridge Pavillon stands by the water. It has a bridge that connects opposite sides of the shore.

Chang Chi of the Eastern Han Dynasty wrote by a pond and washed his brush by it.  This is where the Brush Washing Pond is named after.

If you happen to be visiting during rainy season, you won’t see any flowers. We were in such a hurry that we were not able to visit the whole area. I would really loved to have visited when flowers were in season.

Other pictures here.

國立故宮博物院 (National Palace Museum)
台北市士林區至善路二段221號
221 Zhishan Rd., Sec. 2, Shilin, Taipei, 11143 Taiwan
886 (02) 2881-2021

——————–
One of the most important museums in the world, 國立故宮博物院 (National Palace Museum) can be seen by paying just 160NT.

If you love art and history, the National Palace Museum has such rich collection that it may take you the whole day to truly appreciate it. 

The museum is continuously being renovated and upgraded. The collection is always expanded. It now has over 650,000 pieces of the finest collection of Chinese art and culture from the middle Neolithic Age up until the Ch’ing Dynasty.

國立故宮博物院 (National Palace Museum) collection of antiques, books, caligraphy, historical documents and painting are displayed throughout three floors of the building.

Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures. Sorry, I don’t have anything to show you through, so you have to visit Taipei and go to 國立故宮博物院 (National Palace Museum) to know what I’ve seen. Their policy did gave me time to really appreciate the wonderful historical collection that they have that goes way back to 6200-2070 BCE.

Here are the exhibitions during the time we visited (09/15/2009):

• Compassion & Wisdom: Religious Sculptural Arts
• Rare Books & Documents Gallery
• Special Exhibition Galleries
• Arts from the Qing Imperial Collection
• Splendors of Qing Furniture
• Transitions & Convergences
• Prototypes of Modern Styles
• The New Era of Ornamentation
• Painting & Calligraphy Galleries
• The Contest of Craft: Ming Dynasty’s Jia-Jing to Chong-Zhen
• Treasures from an Age of Prosperity: The Reigns of Emperors Kang-xi, Yong-zheng & Qian-long
• Toward Modernity: Late Qing Dynasty
• The Mystery of Bronzes
• Classical Civilization: The Bronze Age
• Dazzling Gems of the Collection: Famous Pieces form the Qing Dynasty Palaces
• The Neolithic Age: The Beginning of Civilization
• From Classic to Tradition: Qin & Han Dynasties

The museum has free tour guides in English every 10 am and 3 pm. If guests prefer to tour at their own pace, they can pay 200NT for an English headphone guide.

This is me & my mom outside the museum (the only place we can take pictures hehehe :P)

Rest of the pictures here.

饒河街觀光夜市 (Raohe St. Night Market)
Raohe Street near Songshan Railway Station

——————–
For my aunt’s last minute shopping, we went to 饒河街觀光夜市 (Raohe St. Night Market).

饒河街觀光夜市 (Raohe St. Night Market) was the very 1st night market in Taiwan.  It was established 1987 when the street was reconstructed.

The street is 600 meters long so you can imagine how many hours we stayed at the place.  After a few hours, we even stopped over a massage place!  hahaha that’s how tiring it was 😛

The Owl is the night market’s mascot because street vendors only work at night. That’s basically when owls are active right? If you look closely, you could see the logo on the entrance of the place.

As expected, like with all the night markets in Taiwan, you would see lots of people (lots! lots!), food (snaks galore!) & shops (shop the night away) It will take you hours just to be able browse through all of them!

饒河街觀光夜市 (Raohe St. Night Market) was where I bought a luggage 🙂

Here are the rest of the pictures.

台北市動物園 (Taipei Zoo)
No. 30, Sec. 2, Xinguang Rd., Wenshan District, Taipei 11656, Taiwan
886 (02) 29382300 ext. 630

——————–
Whenever I travel, I always look for a famous zoo of the place.  This is why we made sure that Taipei Zoo is part of our itinerary.

I find it so cool that we can even use our Taipei Metro ticket to enter the place.  Entrance fee is at 60NT while children between 6-12 years of age, students, military & police officers & low-income families can get in at 30NT.

We just rode the Taipei Metro and while we walked towards the entrance, I noticed that the floor has marks of footprints from animals (similar to what hollywood has on their streets wherein hollywood stars have their names printed on the streets).

Since we have limited time due to a plan to go to some other places that day (& my aunt only wanted to see the panda), we were only able to visit some parts of the zoo.  Still, I enjoyed my stay at Taipei Zoo!  I wish we had more time though..

Here are the display areas we visited:

• Panda House

me wearing the panda hat at the souvenir store.

This is the best area that the zoo has since ofcourse Panda is the most popular animal in China.  We lined up just to be able to see 2 cute pandas and have limited time to look and take pictures of them coz obviously there are lots of people waiting for their turn.

The 1st panda is sleeping!!! And he really didn’t care that hundreds of people lined up to see him! hahaha I took a video of him sleeping until the end of my turn, he was still sleeping.  Cuteness!

The 2nd panda is eating!!! Total cuteness, he was munching on the grass like he was enjoying it soooo much!  You better see this 🙂

• Koala House

• Amphibian & Reptile House

• African Animal Area

One thing that I love about Taiwan is their Taipei Rapid Transit System.  It’s just super impressive!

If I live there, I probably won’t even think of buying a car since it’s so accessible (unless you want to go out after midnight).

Taipei Rapid Transit System otherwise called as 台北捷運 (Taipei Metro) is a rapid transport system that serves a large part of Taipei.  It’s very efficient and technology is advanced and environment-friendly too.  The usual 3-hour ride can just be somewhere you can reach for only an hour with Taipei Metro.

I also saw how disciplined the people there are when I rode the Taipei Metro.  Here are just some observations why I said so:

• they patiently line up while waiting for the train.
• they wait for people to go down the train before going in.
• when the train comes, they don’t push people around in order to get in, they follow the line patiently.
• they voluntarily give up their seats for pregnant women, parents w/ kids, old people.  I even saw a person giving up seat for a young foreigner who brought lots of things.  I’m pretty sure that foreigner have this mindset that ‘geez Taiwan is such a great place!’.
• since people are not allowed to eat, drink, spit, smoke in the train, the train is pretty neat.

People waiting in the train.  See the lines on the floor?  It’s a guide to where we should line up to wait.  It’s not directly on the door so people going down will not have a hard time leaving the train.  On the ceiling, you’ll see a sign, it shows how much time before the train arrives.

You’ll see from inside the train the current destination, next destination & also the previous destination.  It keeps you informed so you won’t get lost.  Maps are also on some parts of the trains 🙂

The dark blue seats are made for elders, pregnant women, parents w/ small kids/babies.  Even if there are no more seats available and people are already standing up.  You won’t see people seating down there unless they are elders, pregnant women, parents w/ kids.  Impressive!

Far end section of the train where handicapped people can ride & also people with bikes.  Hey, you can bring your bikes on the train!  Cool isn’t it?

Escalators in the station.  Do you notice that the people just stayed on the right side? It’s courtesy for people who are rushing.  You go to the left if you wanna go ahead and climb up the escalator as fast as you can.

Taipei Metro operates everyday from 6AM to 12 Midnight.  Peak hours are 7-9AM & 5-7:30PM.

There are 3 types of tickets for Taipei Metro (Take note: you can even use the card for buses!):

• IC Single-Journey Ticket – for passengers taking one-way trips
• EasyCard – for passengers taking multiple trips.  Ticket price is 500NT (100NT deposit & 400NT usable balance).  You can recharge your card through the information centers in the station and also through the automatic recharging machines.
• One-day Pass – unlimited travel of one-day use.  Ticket price is 200NT (50NT deposit & 150NT usable balance).  We can refund the deposit within 3 days of the activation date.