Show 370 Tuesday 8 May

Watch today's show at YouTube.

Going to Canada 2007
Day 1: Kutchan to Taipei

On the way to the airport we stopped to film a piano.
If you've ever been from New Chitose airport to Niseko by bus, you've probably visited these toilets. There's a piano playing by itself right by the doors going into the toilets.

We left the car at a place near the airport.
It only cost 7000 yen to park it there for 6 months. So cheap!

We got on the plane OK. Every time I travel I think I have everything sorted but a new problem presents itself.
This time I found there was a new law that means you can't take bottles with more than 100 mils of liquid inside them onto the plane. This would have been handy to know before we checked our bags in. Oh well, they were nice and let us check in the bottles separately.
The immigration officer told me to take care because it was hot in Taiwan.
I found two mistakes on the sign near at the boarding gate.
There was no window where we were sitting. Bummer.

We hope to make your flight more comfortable and enjoyable. Please call (?) us at any time should you require assistance. Thank you.

As usual, the in flight magazines were full of silly things like this bracelet which “continually emits negative ions found in forests”.

We flew China Airlines. The food was pretty good. And the passenger next to me was cool.
The flight took about 4 hours. When we landed they said the temperature was 45 degrees outside. Wow.

We changed some money and then took a bus from the airport to Taipei Main Station.
It cost 125 dollars each and took about an hour.

I had thought of couch surfing in Taipei but I couldn't find anywhere to stay in time -
so I ended up booking a hostel called Happy Family.

It's really cheap - only 650 dollars a night.
The condition of the place pretty much reflects the price.
But it's not that bad and the owner is friendly.

After dumping our bags, we went out to look for food.

Taipei looks pretty similar to Japan. With some differences of course.
People drive on the right side of the road and there are a lot of motorbikes or
scooters. And they don't stop when pedestrians are crossing which really
freaked me out at first. The little green man walks which is cute.

We found a great place eat. The food was in plastic bags but it was really good.
There seems to be a lot of people studying English in Taipei.

We had a bit of trouble communicating at the restaurant so after dinner we decided to go and buy a phrase book.

Then we walked around for a while trying to find a bar but we couldn't find anything and we were pretty tired anyway so we called it a night and went back to happy family.

Links

Happy Family

music

artist: Jampy
album: Rain
tracks: Funky Duck Goes West, Rain, Beautiful Eyes
from: Napoli, Italy
album at Jamendo
artist at Jamendo
artist site