FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF TAIWAN TAIPEI
hello everyone here from Taiwan our first time here and we're in the capital of Taipei a bit of a breeze going on right now definitely cooler than southeast Asia yeah but only over 30 degrees Yeah so we're actually happy to be here and now I think it's around 16 degrees Celsius so it's very very good not that cold but it's good yeah it is it is winter so I think it only gets like this cold really pretty quiet right now because it's still early we're staying in that building here probably show it later on in the video and this area that we're staying in is called shiman I think that's how you pronounce it is this why you saw the majority of the accommodations yeah I think it's the most touristy part in type in Taipei and you guys are going to see why so and the street that we're on is mainly just like Cinemas so you got a cinema here and there's some other Cinemas down there so you'll see these anime looking images everywhere I think some of these are video games others are films can't really work it out I think that's from Japan right but I guess they they like it here as well in in Taipei well in Taiwan [Music] thank you so this is one of the main roads we're gonna film here at night at some point because it looks a lot better all these boards and screens that you're seeing are all litting up so yeah you can't really see how good it is right now so you can see all these boards going down there this will be all full of light I'm actually surprised by how quiet it is yeah it's like a totally different place when it gets darker because it gets so busy and with all the lights like I said it looks different so even this road here all these are lights so they look cool at night really is pretty dead right now though at this time what time is it anyway uh 10 30. 10 30 A.M yeah so it's not the time to come I guess yeah a lot of the stores seem shut right now too [Music] thank you before we continue with our day we're going to talk about the sponsor of this video which is 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any series or films that we want with just one single account you can connect to unlimited devices which means you can use it to keep your family safe online too click on the link in the video description which has the discount code jumping places to get 83 off and three months for free and that also includes a 30-day money-back guarantee so that back there is the presidential office building we're walking on the other side and it looks like they're preparing for an event so that's where the the president works I don't think it's a place you can visit anyway just look from the outside yeah there's something going on though you got army trucks red carpets coming out as well so we've worked out what the event is already because they have these Paraguay Flags so going all the way down this road this Paraguay and Taiwan Flags so the president of Paraguay is visiting today I think so regarding entry requirements to Taiwan it was kind of confusing online because we knew we know that Taiwan had a strict lockdown that I think only opened up quite recently but there are pretty much no requirements you don't have to be vaccinated you don't have to show any documentation the only thing they ask of you is that when you arrive you've got a testing kit some covid kits at the at the airport for free and you just test yourself like a self-monitoring period for over a week so like the day you arrive you test and then a few days later and then if you clear you're fine but you can always go out obviously if you do the first test and you got kovid you're not really expected to go out traveling around right but uh nobody's checking up on you you don't have to give the results to anyone so yeah that's the only thing you have to do right now [Music] [Music] so we've now arrived at one of the main attractions here in Taipei which is the famous Liberty Square the squares within and look at this for a impressive entrance this is a Liberty Square Archway one of the gates gigantic it probably looks cool in the in the video but from here I think it looks bigger it sounds like that yeah it's always like that because when I saw a picture of this I thought it was way smaller in person things always look way bigger even compared to our video here with the GoPro so we're gonna head inside now so there's four main things to see here obviously the gate that we just showed then you have the national Concert Hall and then on the other side in a similar style is the theater I don't know if you can enter these two and back there is a Memorial Hall so the square was constructed in the 1970s but it actually has the name the Liberty Square because there was lots of pro-democracy demonstrations here in the 80s and 90s which eventually led to the country being a democracy before the 90s it just had a one-party rule [Music] [Music] yeah foreign Memorial Hall not sure if I pronounced that correctly absolutely massive it's even bigger than the gate back there it looks like it's taller anyway so he was the ruler of the Republic of China that eventually ruled Taiwan after the Chinese Civil War wow beautiful Square from up there yeah the the Garden area is so well kept it's actually a big Garden area yeah so big that it's hard to even capture the whole thing even on a GoPro so this is where all the people are at in here ah the soldiers back there isn't there yeah [Applause] so underneath the Memorial Hall there's actually this exhibit like a museum and check the square out here this whole picture imagine how many people there must be in the Square and then around they just got other stuff some old pictures I guess the history of Taiwan group photo with classmates of Tokyo oh that sounds cool old cars here [Music] thank you so a good thing about coming at this time of the year is that it's cherry blossom season late February March so they have them all over all around the gardens we did see a few in Thailand already in the mountainous regions man that's a pro camera the sniper so this spot's even nicer now follow the trees way more than the pot that we're at before that's why everyone's around here one thing that you're probably noticing is that there isn't really many Western tourists here we barely see any westerners probably not seen about five or six all day so it is mainly uh locals or people from other Asian countries nearby oh look at that one that one's full super pink beautiful can you see all the little birds little yellow birds oh man they're so tiny tiny little birds be able to film it close they're too fast yeah they're flying around too quickly got the wedding photo shoot going on good place for a wedding photo [Music] [Applause] thank you [Music] so we now walk into our next stop it's about 35 minutes away but yeah we like walking around just to see how the place is it's actually very green so there's these trees pretty much absolutely everywhere in this area and you see these Gates here so this is from when there would have been like a historical wall I guess going around the city so we've already passed a bunch of them that's from the 1800s still really in good condition and from what we've seen so far during our week here everything seems super clean you barely see any litter at all do you that's a cute little dog yeah everything is very clean and everything works fine I mean the the subway is very good I think we're gonna get the subway uh later on yeah we will do yeah the city is very nice we actually like here we were not expecting it to be so so nice I think yeah it's pretty quiet as well I think the people the people are very quiet so even when you're in busy areas still it's not that loud people just don't seem to be that loud around here so pretty nice calm Vibe and very organized like Carol said now we've come into what seems to be probably more of a older neighborhood by the look to the building too pretty worn out less nature around this area as well so it seems that we're now in a block called Bo pilio historical blog blog and more information about it but it seems to be it's just a historical area yeah that's what it says on Google Maps yeah yeah so that's pretty much the area that I just mentioned where I said everything looks a bit older we'll see if there's like a sign or something oh this bar looks interesting and anyway maybe we can go down there yeah there's a sign there too the Chinese style lanterns oh that must have been how the area was 1898 ancient map with manga old place I guess it's all this area here then this part so this district is called Wan Hua supposed to be one of the biggest trading hubs in the old days and this was just one of the main streets at the time isn't too much to see to be honest there's like a little Museum the majority of this stuff was in Chinese though and nothing really looks that old I don't know it doesn't look like hundreds and hundreds of years old do not climb looks a bit older yeah this area yeah maybe that's some of the original Rock yes I think it's all just being restored pretty much so this area looks pretty cool a bit more movement going on here lots of restaurants seems like it's pretty much all restaurants we're going to be eating pretty soon have to find a good place with dumplings [Music] foreign [Music] so the reason that we came down here was to visit this temple one of the most famous ones here longshan temple one of the oldest too and I think all these decorations are from the Lantern Festival see all the lanterns on the outside we just missed that so we missed the festival but at least they have all the decorations here so that's pretty cool to see so this was built in 1738 although it has been restored since looks it looks real yeah the koi fish so we've been to quite a lot of tawish temples lately especially in Southeast Asia from the Chinese settlers there but this is looking like one of the most impressive ones those are some of the coolest lanterns we've seen yeah amazing very very cool yeah once again you get those like warriors on them that we've seen in many Taoist temples I said taoisto is also a Buddhist temple so it's a mix so it's like a Courtyard area I think the main Temple is just in the middle out soon a lot to see here though [Music] thank you [Music] so the sign back there says that during the World War the U.S bombed this place by accident because they were their allies at the time but apparently the Buddha statue within it remained but all the other structure was destroyed completely so even the fellas here look completely different to anything that we've seen before loads of carvings everywhere in the rock every single pillar is like that the birds the flowers so this is a main temple Hall here [Music] so we're now looking for a good place to have some of the Taiwanese food I think this is more of just a market area there's some street food here yeah this area here looks like a proper Market little indoor one we got here usually every country we go to there's some sort of food that we've never seen before yeah I don't think there's any places to eat here though it's just more to grab food to cook at home you're looking online for a place yeah that's something we haven't mentioned here in Taiwan the language barrier yeah it's pretty tough yeah and like Carol said we've been to a lot of restaurants where they don't have anything in English and the people also don't speak English so we've had to leave a few times so the Quest for dumplings continues we found a place that Carol found on Google Maps but they only had mixed which is like with shrimp stuff like that and we have an allergy so couldn't go there they didn't have any plain ones this area here has loads of food but no dumplings the area that we're staying in has loads of stores with dumplings everywhere but we can't seem to find it around here yeah I guess just keep walking down it seems to be more like toys and clothes now loads of people around there though oh dumplings were like the thing that they had in every single restaurant but apparently not yeah just because we want to eat it we can not find anywhere with it [Music] so we had the kind to give up we just couldn't find a place we even asked people if there was like dumpling places around and they said no so I don't know if it's just this area that we're in but we did find these kind of dumplings for Carol is it cabbage yeah cabbage and in here in this restaurant there's only a vegetarian options so I'm eating Chris is not and later on we're gonna have to go to a restaurant so that Chris can eat yeah that's not something that we do often how much was this yeah 60 60 okay nice very good just pure cabbage there's some spices inside like I don't know what but it's very tasty yeah they gave the sauce as well I'm not sure what that is probably spicy feel good I'm addicted to dumplings so good news for me we found this food court here with loads of different places so we thought one must have dumplings and we finally found this one here it has dumplings and what we've been using lately is the app of Google translator so you can take a picture of the menu up there which is all in Chinese and it will translate it to you in English so there we can see like steam pork dumplings vegetable dumplings sorry we had waited that's for 160 and the other ones are 110 I think so Carol ended up getting this soup which we have no idea what it is really on the translator it said Millet soup yeah yeah sure there and then I ordered it I have no idea what it is I can't even smell anything really she didn't like it it's like forage oh yeah yeah so like nothing no taste for it so the pork dumplings have arrived extra steamy we could see them cooking it I think they just do it with steam yeah juicy inside I think there's some spring onions in there okay I can taste it cabbage a lot of them are mixed with cabbage so good though that's why we're hunting dumplings down because they're so delicious yeah we've been eating dumplings a lot here but we just can't get over it yeah so steam box number two has arrived the beef ones so I've never had the beef ones only the pork ones before I I like the pork ones more The Taste I actually prefer beef when I'm eating it pure but in The Dumpling sport just tastes better I think I think it is pork it's like the most common one that's probably why what we've seen so far yeah it seems to be a lot of places just serve the fourth ones [Music] laughs [Music] [Music] so we've now come to a place called Elephant Mountain we ended up getting a uber because we're going to run out of time it gets dark in about an hour and 40 minutes so the Uber was 13 US Dollars and it was about 25 minutes to get here and this is a trail from what I read it's like 30 minutes and you get some good viewpoints apparently quite a lot of people here so it's like it's a popular thing to do so we've only just started but it is extra tiring because it's just non-stop steps step step steps there's like no flat parts so far it's already got some views from up here so it's quite a few different Lookouts and trails some dirt trails too so you just gotta choose which one you want to come to what's the place that we're going xinjiang or something like that sorry we're just ready though yeah I'll write down [Music] foreign [Music] that's so close to the city center you have nature options like this and mountains where you can do some trekking on Google Maps it actually shows the tracking symbol all around and I didn't know that uh Taiwan was such an area for hikers but there's hikes absolutely everywhere I think maybe next week the best things to do here yeah we're just waiting for the permit to be approved yeah need a permit for it ah cool so the Lookout Point that we chose doesn't have anyone I think this one is called firework Lookout Point Wow way better city views from here so when we drove fast this seemed like the business area Like a downtown business area majority of the buildings still like condos and apartments but yeah it just just seemed like more of a business district and that's the tallest building in Taiwan I think it's called Taipei 101 Observatory not sure how high it is but way higher than anything else around as you can see [Music] thank you [Music] all right so I think our last spot is going to be this mount shangshan three minutes only they're showing us up yeah yeah they're running the trail oh check out these big rocks or borders oh man steep so this is the Shang Shan Peak nothing crazy only 184 meters that's the photo spot right there with the love part I think the fire firework view is the best yeah that's the best one that we've visited yeah and for some reason nobody went to that one foreign [Music] so this is the accommodation that we've been staying at it's 45 a night and that seems to be more on the cheap end compared to other places because it has a kitchen well I say it has a kitchen but it's just this pretty much so there's not even a sink area we have to use the bathroom sink but they have this little portable electronic thing to cook on so yeah we can at least use that to cook it's definitely not a kitchen just because they have this they say it's a kitchen and then we've got a pretty big TV on this one that we never really use the internet seems to be a bit in and out a bit dodgy it's not like a constant signal for some reason and we've been using the AC a lot mainly for the heat so that's it this area got the sofa too and then through here it's just one big open bathroom it's also a washing machine in here in the bathroom so we've been able to use that as well that's come in handy so we still have more videos to come from Taiwan we have about two weeks here overall excluding the week that we've just had where we've been working here mainly and we're planning on visiting some cool places some different places so looking forward to that if you like this one just drop a like as usual to support us subscribe see more videos like this follow us on Instagram and Facebook and we'll see you in the next one [Music] thank you
2023-03-19 08:41
