On the Taipei Trip (3)

The last day we were in Taipei, was actually pretty much unavoidable. LOL. We stayed on longer for one more day because the flight ticket the day before was too expensive, going up to 2k as compared to just 1k on the last day. And so, we had our last day reserved for visiting the few most famous attractions in and around the city.

We woke up early in the morning so that we could spend the morning in the National Palace Museum in the suburban of Taipei city. We took the MRT and headed up North before taking another transfer bus to the museum. It was exactly as grand as how it was depicted in the photos that I saw before. We purchased our discounted tickets of NTW80 with the Youth Travel Card that we applied earlier, and we took a free audio guide for the special exhibition of Emperor Yongzhen.

It was amazing to see how all these artefacts were preserved for the past few decades and still remain so beautiful. The paintings and the official records as well as some of the calligraphy written by the emperor himself were all so captivating. I especially loved the clothes including that of the pearl necklace that he wore. It seemed all so unreal to believe it's actually real. The audio guide was very useful indeed. We had a great history class on the Chinese history particularly during the ruling of Emperor Yongzhen.

However, due to the lack of sleep probably, I was very sleepy after about 1 hour of audio guide. Hence my friend and I decided to leave the group and walk on our own. The museum is huge. There are a lot of permenant displays from the pre-historic era, as well as artefacts from all the different dynasties in China. We finally came to this small room where it was very crowded. Apparently the two most valuable displays were displayed in here. The meat-shaped jade and the white cabbage jade, as how I see it, somehow attracted so many wows from the visitors. They're very beautiful no doubt, but I just didn't see what's so special about the cabbage. Maybe the fact that there are only 6 in the world made it so precious. 3 are stored in Taipei, 2 in Beijing and 1 in Hongkong if I'm not mistaken. But if that were the case, the sniffing bottle that Yongzhen used in the shape of a cylinder would've been more precious isn't it, since it's the only one in the world! LOLs.

Anyhow, we didn't manage to go through all the 500 odds displays one by one where we just swiftly walked through all the display rooms in the end as it was already passed noon time. We headed back downtown to the Sun-yat-sen Memorial Hall. If you're asking me, I probably wouldn't be able to tell you who Sun-yat-sen was and who Chiang-kai-shiek was. I couldn't possibly differentiate them both as I thought the later was the first president only to know that the former was actually the person whom I thought he was! Anyways, the memorial hall was indeed a big building displaying some belongings of the name bearer himself. But that was about it as we were actually looking forward to the visit of the tallest tower in the world.

Taipei 101 rocks. Cross my heart.

Entrance fee was NTW350 with the discount from the Youth Travel Card. We got to enter both the indoor and the outdoor observatory deck. View of the entire Taipei city lied before our eyes. When we arrived, it was about 430pm in the afternoon, just in time to see the city in the day light. We stayed through the sun set and enjoyed the night view of Taipei city from the observatory deck. It gets crowded as the day drew later into the night. But I myself thought it was well worth the money indeed. I totally loved it there. And to go out in the outdoor observatory deck at the 91st floor was absolutely breathtaking, in a way that the wind was so strong I nearly got blown off my feet! LOL. I would love to go up there again. :D

We called it a night finally at yet again, Shilin night market. It was our last night in Taipei, and we were all broke to the bone. I set aside NTW500 for the taxi fare and the remaining amount I have in my wallet were actually NTW200! That could barely get me some snacks in the night market, but I guessed that was it. I had the humungous chicken chop and a milk tea. We finally headed back to the hotel to collect our luggages and head straight to the airport for the night before we board our 8am flight.