throughout Taipei and a bad start in KL

It's been a little while since my last entry here but the reason is not that I didn't do anything or that I'm lazy (although sometimes ...). I was suddenly and unexpectedly occupied with other objections ...

Thursday night I arrived in Kuala Lumpur (KL). I managed to find my way from the airport which is about 50km outside of the city to my hostel with a bright full moon watching over me. I was really looking forward to exploring KL the next day.
Thus, on the next morning (actually I got up late, so it was already around noon) I looked around the city center and in the afternoon I went to a huge shopping mall (MidValley) further south. When I decided to go back to my hostel a few hours later, a large crowd was waiting at the train station.

Finally the train arrived, everybody was pushing inside and a minute later my wallet was gone - stolen right out of the pocket of my trousers.
Within less than 24 hours in Malaysia I had no money, no credit card, no ID (except for my passport) and I realized that I was trapped inside the subway system.

After I quickly went through the stages of shock, disbelief, anger and acceptance I called my father to block my bank account. At the exit gate of the subway I convinced the security guy that I had no ticket and that I was by no means able to buy a new one and went straight to the police.
With no money at all and no way to get some, your options become suddenly very limited.

The police officer was friendly but considered it more or less useless that I told him about the theft of my wallet. I made a report anyways and asked him at the end for a little money so that I could take the subway back to my hostel.

I didn't sleep very well that night but I was lucky to find a Western Union bank the following morning that was open although it was Saturday. My Dad sent me some money and I eased up when the woman at the counter kindly handed me over the bank notes.

Now that I'm relieved of the burden of having to carry my wallet around, I can start (with some delay) to experience the more enjoyable aspects of Kuala Lumpur ...




But before that, I want to add some info about the rest of my time in Taipei:

Throughout Taipei
I was pretty lucky with regards to the weather. Only on one day it started raining heavily. At that time I happened to be a little bit outside of Taipei in the mountain area where I visited some temples and shrines (all very close to each other) dedicated to deities of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism.

view over rainy Taipei from 'the mountain with the highest spirituality in the world'
(at least that's what the sign post next to me said)

Zhi-nan temple and also 'China Center of Taoism'

Taoist altar at Zhi-nan temple

steep curved steps to the entrance of the Buddhist temple

tiny palm tree in the botanical garden of Taipei

lotus flower (botanical garden)

Core Pacific Living Mall

crossroads on the Roosevelt Bdv. nearby my hostel

Shilin night market

somewhere in Shilin

lion guardian at the entrance to the Palace Museum

I got off the airconditioned bus, walked along this path for about 200m in the blazing sun and when I got to the entrance of the museum I was a sweaty mess.

One morning, I was just eating my breakfast in a small park, I suddenly got company ...

he was as much surprised to see me as I was to him when he came around the corner.

On my last day in Taipei I went to the Museum of Drinking Water. Because the name itself sounded funny and I was curious if I could gain some special insight in how to drink from my water bottle.

But as I discovered to my disappointment, there was no information about drinking, gulping, sipping or slurping water ... just pipes and water pumps. The most exciting thing in the whole area was a red water hydrant on display in the sculpture park outside the museum.
As my boredom grew larger with every single piece of water engineering equipment, some kids playing in a water fountain caught my attention. They seemed to have lots of fun and I would have joind them immediately but I guess the limit for admittance to the 'water party' was somewhere below the age of 8.

pipes with different radii ... breathtaking

it seemed that in order to jolly the tourist along they put some funny signs up at the museum ...

... I watched out and lucky me - there was nobody around to hit me.

One of my favourite places in whole Taipei was the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial area. It was just too nice to spend some evening-hours there ... reading, eating or listening to my mp3-player.

the National Theater on my last evening in Taipei

the truely impressive Chiang Kai-Shek memorial hall in the light of day...

... and with an nearly full moon

Taipei zoo

entrance ... the Taiwanese girl is really scratching the back of the stone monkey

Flamingos

By far the most exciting animals in the whole zoo where a group of Formosan Macaques. I almost forgot the time while watching them and had to hurry up afterwards in order to see the rest of the zoo.
But they were just too funny. If I wouldn't know better I would say they have a great sense for subtle humor. And they give fantastic parodies of human behavior.

some macaques lining up on top of the rock

One of the older macaques was an incredibly gifted comedian. Unfortunately I didn't a picture of him swinging his legs over the trunk but it was hilarious ...


He seemed a little bit bored and watched the others jumping around and fighting for some bananas for a while.
I bet he was thinking to himself: 'what a bunch of stupid monkeys!'and then turned away from the spectacle ...

If anybody needs a proof that humans evolved from apes ... take a look at these comical buddies. They show not only traces of human behavior, they are ...

... exactly like us!

I will restrict this entry to pictures of our relatives. But I was not so lucky with the other ones after I visited the macaques.

The gorillas were sleeping and the only active one changed from rubbing his back on the wall to laying on the ground and watching the sky.

And the orangutan refused defiantly to look at me. I sat on his tree trunk with his back towards me when I arrived, then hopped to the other side and again turned his back on me as if I was not worth to get a glance at his front.
Maybe he was just bored of all the silly humans staring at him while he was dreaming of yummy bananas.

side-face of an orangutan

Taipei 101

.. the landmark of Taipei. The Taipei 101 (the name derives from its 101 stories) is the world's tallest building - at least until September 2009 when the Burj Dubai will be completed - and with its distinctive bamboo-shape it is visible from far away throughout the whole city.

Sun Yat-Sen Memorial with the Taipei 101 in the back ...

... and looking down on the Memorial from almost 400m above on top of the Taipei 101.

The tourist-cramped elevator accelerates to about 60km/h and takes you up to the 89th floor in less than 40 seconds. With regards to the engineering aspects of the building, what is also fascinating about it is the stabilizer - a tuned mass damper. It is an over-sized steel pendulum that weighs about 660tons and hangs down from the 92th to the 88th floor. It can move up to 1.5m and thus compensate for movements in the building caused by strong winds.
Besides that ... the view from the outside observatory on the 91th floor(392m above ground) is absolutely stunning.

the Taipei 101 resembles a bamboo stick with intersections every 8 floors

view South over Taipei

view North

The admission fee to the observation floor is a little bit expensive but because of the excellent weather the outdoor deck on the 91th floor was also open and so I spent quite some time walking around the tower and looking at the city beneath from every perspective.
It wasn't long until sunset and I was right about expecting a wonderful spectacle of colors on the almost clear sky.

looking west as the sun begins to settle down

The intensity of the light and the colors in the sky changed with the sun playing hide and seek behind the clouds on the horizon. It would come out for a few moments between two stripes of clouds only to vanish again some minutes later.

I tried to get the most out of my old camera and catch the mood of those moments. Take a look ...

pitch-black night on the horizon but Taipei stays restless

Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial

One of the most impressive places in Taipei is surely the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial area. Behind a huge entrance gate is a broad path leading to the temple-like Memorial Hall of Taiwan's first president and most important historical figure.
On both sides of the gate are located the National Theater and the National Concert Hall respectively.The two buildings are almost identical and beautifully lit at night.

I spent a whole afternoon first looking around the memorial museum in the base under the hall and then sitting on the steps while the sun was going down. It was really beautiful watching the sky turning red over the entrance gate.

National Theater

rooftop of the National Concert Hall

Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall

larger-than-life-size bronze statue of Chiang Kai-Shek

huge entrance gate to the Memorial area at sunset

After it was already dark I went down to the gate and set on one of its foundations. Next to me was a young girl playing inwardly on her guitar but she left before I had the guts to ask her to join me for a drink.

the entrance gate with the Theater on the left and the Concert Hall on the right

National Concert Hall lit up at night

Taipei - first impressions

I left Korea on the 29th and despite saying goodbye to my friends I was looking forward to traveling Southeast Asia for about one month.
My first destination is Taiwan. The flight was scheduled to take off at noon and when I arrived around 9:30 with Nameun,Jinhun and Seungyeon, who kindly brought me to the airport, the young man at the check-in had a nice surprise for me. I was upgraded to the business class (because I was good-looking, he explained :) ).
Flying is always a pleasure for me but if the flight attendants politely call you 'Sir' when asking if you would possibly like more red wine to your steak then you know that you no longer belong to the 'common people'.

The business class was half empty, so I had two seats on my own and so much space for my feet that I could have started dancing with one of the flight attendants. ;)
I enjoyed my medium-steak and than read the New York Times while sipping an excellent dark coffee. But for everybody who is getting jealous now: the flight took only little more than two hours and after that the special treatment was over.
When I got my luggage back at the airport in Taipei a dog (a dachshund) trained on drugs eagerly inspected my backpack ... twice.

island off the west coast of Korea where the Incheon International airport is located

high, high in the sky

Steak Tenderloin with Californian red wine - by far the best meal I ever had on a flight

I made my way from the airport through half of Taipei to my hostel without major problems. My only enemy was a ticketing machine in a subway station that embarrassed me.It returned about 20 coins after I purchased my ticket with a large banknote and I almost fell over with my backpack when I tried to put all the coins in my wallet.
Despite of the nice flight I was pretty tired and therefore went to bed earlier than usual after briefly exploring the neighborhood of my hostel.

The next day I started out with Longshan temple, Taipei's most important Buddhist temple. It is somehow similar to Korean temples with regards to style and structure of the wooden buildings but as a whole more ostentatious.
There were lots of people although it didn't seem that some sort of special celebration was going on.

entrance door to Longshan temple

main building (right) and golden pots for incense sticks

praying worshipers and a Buddhist monk

table where the presents are laid out

golden dragon fountain inside Longshan temple

After Longshan temple I thought I can as well turn the day into a religious one and so I headed for the Temple of Confucius in the northern part of Taipei.
In contrast to the Buddhist temple this one was almost empty and if the sun would have been a little more gentle I could have spent some time contemplating in the silent environment of the temple. But I was sweating with every move I made and the sun mercilessly burned down on my head.
And I unfortunately discovered that at night with the sun going down, that doesn't mean that the temperatures would change much. So the only chance to stop sweating at any time of the day is to seek refuge in one of the well air-conditioned shopping malls, stores, office buildings or the subway.

me in the Temple of Confucius

At night I took a look at one of Taipei's night markets that get really busy after dusk. The Shida night market is located just a short walk from my hostel and thus I joined the crowds and drifted through the small alleys.

Shida night market