Since a cyclone was headed in a straight line for the eastern coast of Taiwan, we decided to take a joy ride on the High Speed Train, modeled after Japan's bullet train. We took the taxi out to the special HST station, which has two tracks, one north, and the other south.
Joy! Our train zips quietly into the station, looking like a friendly yellow and white dolphin. It's just after 10 am, and we're about to head north, undoing our last several days of travel in a just couple of hours.
In the train, it's a lot like flying in a jet, only quieter, and with twice as much space. A scrolling readout displays station names and status messages, alternately in Chinese and English. Everything is sleek and wonderful. My GPS shows a top speed of just over 180 miles an hour.
Well, it's about 3:30 in the afternoon, and we've checked into our hotel in Taipei, cancelled our trip to Taroko Gorge (Typhoon, and 30 cm of rain there in the last 24 hours), had some extraordinary beef noodles, and taken the metro and bus, and are having a nice espresso back at the National Museum. It's raining, but when the door to the museum's cafe (shown here) slides open, warm air rushes in, belying the cold and misty looking rain.
It's too rainy to take the camera out, but we had a good finish to the day, including a trip to NOVA, a multi-story non-stop computer fair, where hardware of every description is for sale from dozens of vendors. Since my own Skype headset was starting to fail, I bought a bluetooth headset and dongle for a total of NT $1500, or US $45.
It's too rainy to take the camera out, but we had a good finish to the day, including a trip to NOVA, a multi-story non-stop computer fair, where hardware of every description is for sale from dozens of vendors. Since my own Skype headset was starting to fail, I bought a bluetooth headset and dongle for a total of NT $1500, or US $45.
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