Taipei for a weekend

I was lucky enough to spend last weekend in Taipei, Taiwan during the lantern festival. For

those of you who don’t know, it’s one of the most beautiful festivals in the world.

Unfortunately for me though, I missed it. Yup. I missed one of the most beautiful festivals in the world, while I was in the same city during the same weekend. Due to lack of research, I didn’t know this was only a one night thing. The festival lasts a couple weeks, so I figured, I’ll just go on the Friday or Saturday night! No problemo!! Nope. I realized only after booking my flight that it was only happening on the Thursday night.. Since I have class on Thursdays, I booked my flight in the late afternoon. Long story short, I arrived in Taipei too late to make it to the festival. **FACE PALM**

Luckily for some of my exchange friends, they went one day earlier than me so they got some amazing pictures and videos!

Despite this, my time in Taipei was still very nice. I was able to practice my Mandarin, I saw beautiful places, such as Yangmingshan National Park, which had amazing flowers and cherry trees and it was very foggy which made for cool pictures. We visited Shan Kai Shek Memorial and saw the change of guards which was very cool. We went to a night market, where I tried soo many kinds of food, one that stuck out was a peanuts and ice cream wrap, which was very weird but good!!

We also hiked up elephant mountain which has a perfect view of the whole city, including Taipei 101 tower, which is among the largest skyscrapers in the world and also has the fastest elevator in the world!

I really enjoyed the city, people were so nice, at one point we were in the MTR practicing counting from 1 to 10 in Mandarin and some ladies started helping us and so I started practicing more of what I learnt with them and they were super impressed with me even though I basically only told them “I am Canadian and I have a mom, dad, and two brothers.” It felt great though because I haven’t really been able to practice my Mandarin in Hong Kong at all since everyone speaks Cantonese.

Another cool thing about the city is that it has a Japanese side to it. You can see the obsession with video games and animation and the style of clothing in the stores… it was very cool.

I think the best and most memorable part of this short trip was actually… our last night…. at the club. XD

You don’t understand. This night, was insane. I have never lived anything like it. The people in Taipei party like crazy. It’s amazing. Girls had to pay 400 NT$ to get in and guys 700 NT$, which is not very much (15-20 euros), considering it was open bar. Most of the clubs in Taipei have this fee and are open bar. It’s actually very cool, we enjoyed it a lot!

I don’t want to take too long to explain this night, but I feel like I have to. Because it was actually the best night of my entire exchange so far.

So we arrive at the club around 10:30, because over there you need to go SUPER early, and I mean SUPER early, like we were too late to go to the bar we initially wanted to go to, so we had to go to a different one. So we go to this different one, (which to be honest I don’t remember the name of it hahaha) and it was EMPTY. Literally there was more employees there than people. And there were SO many employees! Just standing there, and it was so weird!!

They asked for our passport and they scanned our pictures and needed to know where we were staying (hostel address etc). We were like what the f*ck is wrong with these people?? Also, girls got in free if they wore a backless dress!! Seriously?? Yeah.

Because it was open bar, the way it worked was they gave us a ticket, which we could then exchange for a drink at the bar, which we then could not lose our glass because our glass was essentially our ticket to get another drink. And there was literally a queue to wait in to get drinks, you couldn’t just walk up to the bar. Even when it was empty, there were security guards pointing you to the back of the empty queue, and you had to go through it to get another drink. So weird. But it ALLLLL made sense after midnight, when the bar got PACKED!!!

It got packed SOO fast, it was crazy. It felt like one moment we were just us in the bar, and the next we were in a crowd of people. The queue for drinks was actually amazing because it went by so fast and you didn’t have to try to get the bartenders attention.

Okay so your probably still wondering, okay so why was this the best night of your exchange so far. Well let me explain. So there was a stage infront of where the DJs were set up, and one of us had the brilliant idea of going up on this stage. So a couple of us went, and just were dancing and singing innocently, nothing outrageous. Since it was our last night in Taipei, we kept saying who cares what people think, were leaving tomorrow and were in Taiwan ! We will never see these people again!

But what happened after was crazy! There was a huge dance floor FULL of people facing the stage and people were going insane. I really don’t understand why, because thinking about it now, we probably looked like IDIOTS! Maybe they don’t see westerners often or something, but people were LOVING us. Like, loving us so much that they would reach for our hands like if we were famous! LOL… it was hilarious. We were making the party go crazy, it felt that way at least. I don’t know how to explain. It sounds ridiculous, because it is. I even made the crowd do the wave at some point. Like what?????? It was actually messed up.

Also, I have to mention that there was a teddy bear mascot that was dancing in the crowd at some point, yes, a teddy bear mascot. AND there were actual go-go dancers that took our place on the stage at some point that did a routine, which during this time, we were all like “OMG…. THIS IS SO EMBARRASSING” because those girls actually knew how to dance and looked so good! We definitely looked handicapped compared to them! But for some reason when they were done we went back on stage hahahaha….

Such a weird night, and I don’t know if I’ll ever have such a crazy experience. It was too good. We felt like actual rockstars. People kept taking pictures with us too.

So yeah our time in Taipei ended with a bang. I had to wake up at 7am the next morning to catch my flight, which caused a two day hangover. So worth it though.

I definitely recommend checking out Taipei not only for their insane night life but for everything the city has to offer, it was truly an amazing experience!