First Day

Well, day one in Taiwan is under my belt and I gotta say... this city is AWESOME! After my grueling long 30 hour travel day (24 of which were spent in a plane flying) I finally made it into Taipei where I was greeted by a couple NTU students to take me to my dorm. I passed up and slept for 8 hours and then woke up for my first real day in Taipei. We went to the Taiwan national museum which was a three story building near the center of town that had a bunch of normal exhibits. All of the exhibits were in mostly Mandarin so I didn't really know the significance of some things but thankfully, my new Taiwanese friends were quick to translate for me.

After the museum, we had lunch in Taipei Main Station which is basically like Union Station in Chicago. The place was not only one of the largest train stations I've seen but it also has a giant food court in it with a bunch of tiny restaurants. After lunch we went to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Square. The square was huge and reminded me somewhat of China's Red Square.

After dinner back at NTU, some of us called it a night while i went with a couple other people to the Huahsi Night Market. The market is famous for its snakes stores. That's right people, snake store. Following in Taiwan and Asia's, "weird foods" trend is a store tat serves snake soup. The make a brother like soup with chunks of snake boiled right into the soup. The snake meat tasted great but surprisingly snakes are really bony so you really have to work at it to get the meat. The soup is served with a trio of shots: snake alcohol, snake bile, and snake venom. The alcohol was nothing special, but the other two shots were really cool. THe bile tasted really sweet like sugar cane juice. The venom on the other hand I didn't try. The said it was mixed one-to-one with the anti-venom but I didn't want to take my chances since the guy across from me had an allergic reaction and couldn't feel his hands.

And all that was just my first day in Taiwan. I'm having a great time and can't wait for more. Check in tomorrow for my update about NTU and my first karaoke experience.