Taipei Playbook: Bon Voyage — Part 1
How’s life, everyone?👋 It’s been a while since my last writing, I didn’t catch up with you again after months, I left for good and headed my way to Taipei. There were so many things that happened right after my departure. I wanted to tell you my stories about moving in, mingling, and fitting into a new environment, culture, and society.
It’s going to be fun reading for you. No more to wait, let’s go!!🏃♀️💨
The story begins with the time I arrived in Taipei. The moment when I finally realized “This is not a joke anymore, it is real, Taipei baby!😳” I remember I was stoned when I finally made my way from the airport to Taipei, got into the wrong MRT, and got lost at the Main Station.
After the whole smooth immigration process and successfully collecting my luggage, I walked around the airport while trying to explore and figure out what should I do next. Well, my flight was scheduled to land at 5.30 A.M. However due to the delay, I landed around 7.00 A.M. The first thing I bought was a prepaid transportation card called Easy Card and a cereal drink, for my breakfast, at 7–11. After a quick breakfast, I immediately went to the MRT airport line and waited for the MRT to Taipei Main Station. There are two kinds of MRT airport lines, blue and purple lines. Actually, I had to take the purple MRT (the airport line that was kind of a direct line from the airport to the main station, rarely stopping at small stations). Still, instead of the purple line, I wrongly got into the blue one (a regular MRT that has more stops at every station), which took a longer time to arrive at the main station and was more crowded. Hehe.. 🫠
Because I took the blue line, that means the passengers were not specifically only from the airport. For the first 15 minutes, I was fine with everything, then after that, I started questioning myself: “Where am I?”, “Why does it feel so different than what I am used to?”, “The view is lovely but… it’s just very different”, and many other overthinking questions, while my one hand sticking with my phone open on Google Maps just to make sure that I am on the correct way to the destination🤳.
Those experiences and feelings started to make me feel anxious about what was going to happen later, what was going to happen in my life for the next two years here. The first-ever person I met was my student volunteer who was super helpful. She picked me up and helped me with many things such as checking in to my hotel, finalizing all the administration stuff, and even teaching me how to use all the public transportation here: MRT, bus, and U-bike.
When I arrived, I had to do 7 days of self-initiated preventions, thus I spent my first 7 days in one of the hotels in Taipei, and here is Taipei 101 view from my hotel.
During my first 7 days, many unexpected things happened. A day after my arrival, I had to attend a campus tour, which I thought would be a boring one, but turned out…
Well, that day was kind of a rainy and gloomy day at the end of the winter season in Taipei. The activity started in the morning, strolling around campus, we were grouped in small groups. I met other international students, they were from the US, Japan, and other countries.
To be honest, the activity did not take too long, we finished the tour at noon, and ended up having lunch together at one of the Japanese ramen restaurants in 公館 (Gongguan). Later we had a random idea to explore Taipei, and one of us brought up the idea to go to Tamsui, where it actually takes around an hour to get there by MRT.
At once, we agreed to have a random, a little bit reckless trip to Tamsui. A disclaimer to this story: On that day, Taipei (Gongguan) was not really cold and we were just wearing casual-thin-winter clothes.
After arriving in Tamsui, the wind was wild, I even bought a thick jacket because I couldn’t even hold the cold breeze there. Even though that was freezing, we still enjoyed the trip. We tried to play a game, bought a popular cake, and strolled around.
There is one interesting story after my trip to Tamsui. After spending time in Tamsui, we went back and continued strolling around Taipei, however, it was still around Taipei 101.
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After spending time there and actually that was quite late at night, we then decided to go back to the hotel. After all of us separated our way (because we stayed in different places), here, my “personal adventure” began.
Since that was my second day in Taipei, I was still not familiar with the environment and the road, so depending on my Google Maps to lead my way to my hotel was the one and only option I had. Because I was still in the area around Taipei 101, and my hotel was also in that area, I was pretty confident that I could make it without any problem and decided to walk to my hotel.
The road was beautiful because at that time was still winter and the Chinese New Year vibes were still on, thus there were so many decorations and for sure I took many pictures and videos during my walk.
I continued taking pictures and videos, enjoying Taipei’s night view, and actually didn’t recognize my phone’s battery level until it… suddenly died. At that time I was like “What the hell?🙂”.
The problems were:
- I didn’t remember the way from my position to my hotel, because Google Maps was and always be part of my life and I was giving all my trust in it at that time. 🙏
- I didn’t have a power bank.
- I didn’t bring my charger.
That was my second time getting lost in Taipei after the Main Station. 🫠
Even though that was a completely messy situation, my survival mode led me and it came out some solutions:
- Go to a random way, and ask for help from the securities or someone with a uniform. — I tried this and ended up they didn’t understand what I was saying. It was kind of frustrating and embarrassing moment at the same time 😅
- Because my first solution didn’t work, then moved to my second solution which has the highest success possibility: Continue my walk, find the nearest convenience store, ask if it’s possible to charge my phone, wait for some minutes there, and then continue my walk to my hotel. — Well, to be honest, that was really hard to find a convenience store in that area. After around 10–15 minutes of walking, I found one, a small one. However, they rejected me and said that it was not possible to charge my phone there. Damn.
- Trying to find someplace that has an “English” name on it, hoping that they are willing to help strangers. — I don’t know how but I found a place that offered an English Course for kids, without any further ado, I tried to ask for help. Well, I didn’t expect much from them and my intuition was right, they said they couldn’t help me and I even couldn’t charge my phone there and asked me to go to the nearest convenience store (well I already did it madam 🫠🥲).
- The last option, the very last option that I had. Ask for help from a random stranger. I went back to the previous convenience store (because that was the only one I saw), and chose one of the customers that had a quite “good-person appearance”.
Well for the surprise, my last option worked. A guy, who I believed was in his early 30s, who was wearing a black pea coat, long black trousers, and shiny black oxford shoes, turned out to be my life savior. While he was buying Americano from the store, I tried to approach him politely, explaining my situation, and asking where I could charge my phone, at any place, no need for a free charging spot.
His response was out of my expectation. After asking me where my hotel was, he told me that he was willing to accompany me to walk and lead the way by using Google Maps.
He said that he was going to go back home by MRT after working, and he said that my hotel was close to the MRT exit where he was going to go. After we arrived at one of the intersections, where I could clearly see my hotel from there, we separated our way, and for sure I thanked him for helping me.
Well, a hardworking and kindhearted man helped me without any hesitation. Whoever you are, wherever you are working now, may others help you whenever you need it. Salute 🫡
Long story short, days after, the semester started and I was very excited about it. I took several courses, in total that was 14 credits. During the whole semester, I learned many new things, and the most important things are that I met many good people and ate many good foods!!
One of the culture shocks I had was I wasn’t used to the local foods, thus having Chinese food every day needed a pretty serious effort until I enjoyed eating it. I realized that this challenge was not as challenging as other students who are studying outside of Asia. Well, at least rice is a staple food here.
Another highlight of Taipei or Taiwan in general is its Night Market. Therefore I will make another post about food, the night market, and adventures that I had with my friends on the continued part of this story, Taipei Playbook: Taipei’s Magic — Part 2.
Thank you everyone for reading my story wholeheartedly. Well, see you in the next post 😉
