In the beggining of this month (June) I went to Formosa (as the Portuguese called Taiwan when they arrived there centuries ago, and still today Taiwan is also known by this name) for a few days, to join my friend-brother Alberto, who was there or work (as I did before in Thailand, Jakarta etc). And once again it was more than worth it. Especially because of our wonderful hosts: Greg and Rex.
Greg is the brother of Reiser, a common Taiwanese friend Alberto and I have in Hong Kong. They were just amazing, taking us everywhere, day and night, and I had heard about the Taiwanese hospitality, and it was not only confirmed, I was even surprised (it was even better than I thought) and it just made me feel like home, people were a little like in Brazil, very nice and smiling all the time. Besides, Taipei reminds me a little of Sao Paulo (it is pretty grey and ugly in a sense) but again like Sao Paulo you go and dig in and find amazing places and people. Another surprise was that the city looks more like Tokyo than like China. I had this impression since I first saw the city, and later they confirmed that they have a lot of Japanese influence (I did not know). So I define Taipei as a mix of Sao Paulo and Tokyo.
We visited the National Palace Museum, which has one of the main collections of Chinese art in the world, it is impressive, and also the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall, where it was interesting to find out more on how Taiwan and China were divided during the Chinese revolution (things that we definitely do not learn at school in Latin America, lol). And of course I went to the top of 101, the tallest building on Earth.
Click here to see my Taiwan pictures, and others:
www.flickr.com/photos/gibin/sets
Greg is the brother of Reiser, a common Taiwanese friend Alberto and I have in Hong Kong. They were just amazing, taking us everywhere, day and night, and I had heard about the Taiwanese hospitality, and it was not only confirmed, I was even surprised (it was even better than I thought) and it just made me feel like home, people were a little like in Brazil, very nice and smiling all the time. Besides, Taipei reminds me a little of Sao Paulo (it is pretty grey and ugly in a sense) but again like Sao Paulo you go and dig in and find amazing places and people. Another surprise was that the city looks more like Tokyo than like China. I had this impression since I first saw the city, and later they confirmed that they have a lot of Japanese influence (I did not know). So I define Taipei as a mix of Sao Paulo and Tokyo.
We visited the National Palace Museum, which has one of the main collections of Chinese art in the world, it is impressive, and also the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall, where it was interesting to find out more on how Taiwan and China were divided during the Chinese revolution (things that we definitely do not learn at school in Latin America, lol). And of course I went to the top of 101, the tallest building on Earth.
Click here to see my Taiwan pictures, and others:
www.flickr.com/photos/gibin/sets
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