Naruwan!

After 4 days of tiring self-planned travel, i'm back to reality ;) and "Boy, am I glad to be back :D" Everything went alright along the trip, and we managed to go to most of the places that we planned to go.

Upfront, Taipei's culture is very similar to that of Sg's. Deep down, their culture and urban landscape are highly influenced by the Japanese (who CKS had insisted on returning good for evil and maintained a good r/s with despite the horror they had done to the Chinese).

Everywhere I went, I'm surrounded by the latest Hari fashion, or the smell of Stinky Tofu. It's a rare sound when you hear sprouts of English, and rare sight when you see Caucasians. That brings us to my fav spot - Tien Mu. Maybe after being overwhelmed by a large number of Chinese and Mandarin speaking folks for such a long time, I welcomed a westernised landscape and environment. It is in Tien Mu where I found food and urban landscape and brands to my liking. Sad to say, brands in Taipei are exorbitantly priced. Everytime I'm attracted by a piece of branded item, I will do a subconscious comparison to something similar in Sg and find it ridiculously priced - even after a 30% discount :-S

Taiwan is a developing country at large. You can find many timber factories and industrial buildings spewing smoke in the suburbs. Banks, commercial buildings, large shopping malls peppered only the Taipei City Hall and Main Station region. Shin Kong, the much hyped about integrated mall in Taipei (you can find them in almost every district), is not as great as they seemed on picture. The fashion you find in them are as lowly and "exciting" as what you can find in our neighbouring country across the Causeway, and the price 4 times higher. I found Taipei 101 to be my fav shopping mall - it's stream-line interior design stands out from the elaborate Shin Kong that fails to impress.

As for the people and culture, they are definitely not as "westernised" as they seemed on the infamous Taiwanese variety shows - unless of course you are talking about the occasional "Don't phunk with my heart" blasting from their shops' stereo. 80% of them can't speak English for nuts, while the remaining 20% try to understand what you are saying, before telling you "Sorry, I don't know what's a "supermarket" :p". Anyhow, we managed to get by - by tweaking our Mandarin accent and style to suit theirs. Yet, out of 10 peeps who meet us, 9 will try to speak to us in Cantonese (which really baffled us both). Even the Birkies shop owner thought we were from HK 8- - Kimono said it must have been my fair skin that led them to think that way :p while I think it could be the way I speak Mandarin ;) - or it could be both...hehe.

To wrap it up on a short note, Taiwanese are no cosmopolites. And they are the only Chinese in the world at this moment who have been, can and will embrace the Japanese and their culture - with warmth and grace ;)