Thanks for joining me!
Well, never would I have expected that, after more than 20 years, I would be able to visit Taipei not once, but twice in 1 year. The first trip was with the Fat Furious group and we did have a ball of a time despite the weather (read all about it here). The second trip was decidedly a solo trip which I decided to undertake as I foresaw I would need a real break from my then-current job in November. So BAM – got a ticket, booked the hotel (after some help from my more “online” oriented friends) and waited for November to arrive.
I was very used to going solo, and had set very specific objectives for myself during this trip. I would say I have achieved most of them, and had to forgo some of them to save some quid or simply out of laziness.
These objectives were:
1) Visit places that we had to give a miss in Feb due to time constraints or weather
2) Visit places which would interest primarily only myself and not the rest of the group.
3) A quantification of item 2: Check out as many Taipei pubs and cafes as possible because I could tell we missed quite a few. I further refined this objective to: check out as many pubs or joints serving craft beer. (Read all about this here)
4) Heard there were also speakeasy pubs in Taipei (I was fascinated by this in Singapore) and this was an excellent time to check them out. (You can check out some of these here as well)
5) I read on google that November was the best time to go because of good weather. I promptly booked a trip in this month because I loved the crisp chill evenings of Taipei. I was rather disappointed in this objective because the weather turned out to be disappointingly similar to Singapore during the day. Some nice coldness could only be felt on like 2 nights of the entire week, and I became sort of a grumpy bear because of this.
It was overall a great relaxing trip and I found places and stuff which normal tourists would not normally do so. Not everyone reading this would agree this was the best use of their time in Taipei, (yeah there were some hangover mornings…) but this was a trip totally for me, and for once in a long time, the places I went and the stuff IO did was really a personification of my interests and preferences.
For instance, shopping was totally reduced to a minimum – except for the swift purchase of diverse beauty products for my female buddies back home (heh heh). For dinner, I eschewed those big huge restaurants and focused mainly on street food, street food and more street food. (#bigchickenchop, #beefcubes).
Without further ado, off we go! Click on the following links to check out my second SOLO Taipei trip in November 2017.
Day 1 (11 Nov 2017) – Arrival, Check in – Temples! Bus Routes! Maji Square
Day 2 (12 Nov 2017) – Wulai, City walk cum pub crawl
Day 3 (13 Nov 2017) – Shinkong, One Piece Carnival, Jazz!
Day 4 (14 Nov 2017) – Beitou, Tamsui, Museum trip, Shilin Night Market
Day 5 (15 Nov 2017) – Chill Cafe, more pubs, more Jazz
Day 6 (16 Nov 2017) – Best Beef Noodle in town, craft beer happy hour event.
Day 7 (17 Nov 2017) – Check out, departure
Disclaimers:
Let it be implied that every single night, dinner was street food with the usual complements, (beef cube, chicken chop, bubble tea, xiang chang), while walking around enjoying the sights of sound of cosmopolitan Xi Men Ding. I didn’t stay out late most nights and always took the public bus or the WORLD CLASS MRT back to my hotel.
As per normal protocol, the first half of the holiday was spent exploring, walking around, and lots of photo-taking – with the exception of 1 day of heavy rain that ruined everything. The last 2 days (instead of the usual 1) were spent simply chilling in pubs or cafes, which is way way cooler than it looks.
Wanderer's Anthology 