Taipei, Taiwan

Our flight to Taiwan wasn’t until 3:30pm so we had a relaxing morning. We checked out, left our bags at the hotel and then headed out in search of the Makishi Public Market. ‘Search’ as in followed Google maps walking directions through the covered arcade.

The market covers two floors. The 1st floor is a wet market with mostly fish mongers; upstairs are restaurants. The fish was super fresh - there was absolutely no smell at all! Heather was suitably impressed. We browsed around, I took a bunch of pics. We weren’t hungry when we arrived but after seeing all the food we figured we’d have lunch and then head to the airport.

Chose a sushi place and ordered tuna, Okinawan soba and oolong tea, trying to stay within our remaining yen. There was a mix up with our tuna order and we got a full sashimi boat. We did some quick math and figured we’d still be okay, although we had to skip the Okinawan donuts. The soba and sashimi were excellent (the tuna in Payao was still the best though).

I took a few more pics of the fishies on our way out. Heather was checking out the large clams when suddenly one started spouting water with an arc like a drinking fountain, landing right on Heather’s shoe. Hopefully she won’t have smelly sneakers tomorrow :)

Got back to the hotel, cleaned up and took a taxi to the airport. Getting through immigration was easy, just a passport scan. Had some Blue Seal ice cream in departures (the last Okinawan food on our list), bought a tshirt too.

We flew on Starlux, a Taiwanese airline, on a brand new plane. It’s only 80 minutes from Okinawa to Taipei. They served a sandwich but we were still full from our lunch.

It took us 90 minutes to get through immigration in Taipei, longer than our flight. Our luggage looked lonely drifting around the carousel. I guess most of the other passengers on our flight were Taiwanese (their immigration line was much shorter).

Another 90 minutes later through rush hour traffic we finally reached our hotel, in the Da’an District in central Taipei. They were just finishing their happy hour, so we had a drink to celebrate my 100th country :)

For those who don’t know the backstory, in 1997 Gerry and I took the route of the Transmongolian. On the Irkutsk-Ulaanbaatar leg we met a Brit named James. His goal was to get to 100 countries in his lifetime (this was before the internet when getting to 100 was a big deal). Anyways Gerry and I adopted the goal and then spent many a night debating what counted as a country, and what counted as visiting. Twenty six years later, I finally made it :)

We were somehow tired after a day of just sitting around in airports, airplanes and taxis, so just called it a night after the drinks.