#ninxianightmarket

[thenolaexpat]

003: Taipei

(Warning: Long read)

Ya’ll...Taipei is poppin!

I already said this, but let me say this again: I LOVE TAIWAN.

Osaka was my #1 after visiting last year. Taipei took the title!

It is so easy to get around there and that is a HUGE deal to my directionally-challenged behind! It’s safe. It’s clean. Everything is organized. It’s more inexpensive than most places. The food is so freaking good! The men are nice to look at. People seem chill. And almost every shop I passed was playing old school KPOP.

I mean, compared to living in Korea right now, Taipei is like a dream--but the grass is always greener so I know living in Taipei would probably be a complete different story.

Anyways, we stayed at Changhua Hotel in the Datong District, which was close to everything we wanted to see. Nanjing Night Market was literally a block away from our hotel. We visited all the need to see markets: Jade Market, Shilin Night Market and Ningxia Night Market.

We climbed Elephant Mountain.

We saw the gorgeous temples.

Ate all the street foods. 

And the famed foods!

Like there’s literally so much we fit into 6 days that I can’t remember it all off hand (thank God for instagram): shopping in Ximending, chilling at this dope af cafe called Vicious Circle, Hitting up Modern Toilet...

Y’know honestly, I might have to do individual posts about my favorite hotspots that we visited.

We even went clubbing at Babe18 in Taipei. Even though the club scene seems rather structured and clubs are open at weird times like Wednesday night (honestly a little strange from what I’m used to), I had fun! We paid 300 TWD --normally free for women before 11:30 but we were late--and got unlimited drinks for the WHOLE night (you have to keep your glass though and queue up) *also I started saying “queue up” instead of “line up” recently because I’m surrounded by British-English speaking friends* 

The music was a decent mix of hip-hop, pop, edm and even kpop! And leaving the club was the best part. Anyone that’s ever clubbed in Hongdae knows the LITERAL HELL it is to get a taxi! Taipei on the other hand had taxis lined up and we were escorted to a cab, where one of the cab company guys told the taxi where we were going and promptly sent us safely home! LAWD. 

The best part of the whole trip was my budget was only about $300 USD. YES! I spent 6 days in Taiwan with only a budget of $300 USD and had THE TIME OF MY LIFE!

I already want to go back to Taiwan! It was a DREAM!

~the nola expat