After a very nice China Airlines flight on which I could stretch over four economy seats, I arrived at Taipei Taoyuan airport on Monday. Immigration was extremely easy and fast, taking less than ten minutes. Transport into town also was very easy. There’s a bus (number 1819) leaving frequently. You have to buy a ticket first at the counter next to the bus stop. It took less than an hour downtown. I got off at Taipei main station and changed to the subway.
The subway is very convenient. As you can see, people are very disciplined when it comes to lining up to get onto the train. The access to the rails is covered by a glass wall with doors that open only when the train has arrived. The frequency is around three minutes. On the left you can see a woman with her mouth covered, this is also a very frequent sight in Taipei. I haven’t yet figured out why.
Scooters are also quite abundant in Taipei. Traffic is “dynamic”: If you cross the street as a pedestrian, scooters will move towards you with quite some speed, but expect you to continue moving forward. It works as long as you don’t do anything unexpected like nervously stopping or trying to walk back. A similar concept works on spaces shared between pedestrians and bicycles.
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Later, I went food-hunting, which is not a difficult task in Taipei. Food is everywhere, and it’s really good. I live close to Gongguan Night Market and walked around a little.
Apparently the “Veggie” in “Veggie Burger” refers to the leaf of lettuce on top of the beef or chicken 
. I couldn’t decide where to go and was also a bit reluctant to get something on my own because I didn’t quite know the protocol (which I learned today). I ended up grabbing some salad, bananas, an extremely sweet almond milk, and some kind of passion fruit juice with jelly at 7/11.
I’ll soon write about the dormitory and the campus. Also, hopefully the photos will get better once I take them with the DSLR instead of the smartphone camera.
