Taipei!

Taipei!

Time to leave Japan after only 2 days! =( We get to wake up again at 6am to catch the bus to take us to the train station to take us to the airport to take us to Taiwan! Whew! Now add all of that to 7 sleep deprived kids who stayed up all night singing karaoke… =P

We got back to the hotel last night at 3am! And had to leave at 6…so I personally decided to just stay awake =P 6am came….and went but we were still missing 2! Dr. Chen went and jolted them awake so they could throw all their stuff into their suitcases in one minute and jump in the taxi! Lol but we made it!

Loooooooooong day. We made it to the airport with time to spare but as we tried to check-in we had a problem! Our panda, Michelle, couldn’t go to Taiwan! She is from China and turns out she needed a special visa to get into Taiwan! I thank god it is so easy for Americans to travel! We really don’t know how easy we have it! She opted to just head home to China and cut her travels short =( We miss her!

A nice and easy 3hr flight later we make it to Taiwan and nobody lost their luggage! =D The difference between Japan and Taiwan was much more tangible then we all thought it would be! Japanese culture is very polite, but Taiwan we were accosted by people and noises! We had grown accustomed to bowing and saying excuse me (sumimasen!) but Taiwan was crowded and loud! And the people would just push by you without a second glance! A little more like America =P

I love traveling but I hate being in the process of traveling if that make sense =P I hate car rides/taxis/buses etc…trains I’m actually enjoying and I have always loved planes! But motion sickness has hindered my love of traveling… =( Turns out the airport is like 2 hours outside Taipei so we needed to take a very sketchy bus for a loooooooooooong time into the city where then we have to walk with all our luggage (I unfortunately packed wayyyyyyyyyyy too much!!!) to the hotel =( I was a little grouchy…

BUT we get to the very nice hotel =) and check in. Mikayla and I are sharing a room. We get a very big room with 2 queen sized beds while the boys all had small rooms with 1 bed and 1 cot =P Off to dinner we go!

This dinner is rather interesting…we go to Dr.Chen’s favorite themed restaurant…a toilet themed restaurant! =D It was so cool! We sat on toilets…ate on a bathtub/shower…drank from urinals…ate from toilets…and ate pooped shaped bread and ice cream! Hahaha it was awesome! Really good food too! That pretty much wrapped up our first night in Taipei! We crashed as soon as we got back so we would be nice and awake to explore Taipei the next morning!