I’m so relieved and happy that our entire trip went incredibly smoothly yesterday. With a 5 hour layover in Shanghai we went to look for an airport lounge we could hang out in for a few hours. The one that allowed us to walk in without a membership was $37 for 2 hours. They didn’t enforce the time limit so we were there the whole time which worked out great.

I would give it a 6/10 overall compared to other airport lounges that we’ve been to before considering the cost. There were noodles, congee, steamed dumplings, and steamed buns to eat. Lots of different kinds of drinks to choose from. It was also just nice to get out of the regular chaos that you might typically find in an airport.

We chatted with a guy from Chicago who was on his way home. He said that his company had him live in France and Germany for over a year and after this trip, he’ll be doing a 3 week trip in South America. I love meeting new people, their lives are so cool!

I may have mentioned this before but in Asia you take a bus from the gate to your plane on the tarmac and take the stairs to go in. I’m not sure if this is a more efficient way of doing it, just different I guess.

I was super relieved to find that our bags arrived in Taipei with no problems at all. I exchanged $60 for the local currency which is the Taiwan New Dollar, and we caught the airport bus into the city.

The hostel we’re staying at is called Meander Taipei. It came out to be around $60 a night for the two of us and the room is spacious and clean.

It took about 31 hours to get to the hostel from Minneapolis, so quite the long journey.

One of my favorite restaurants in Asia is called Hai Di Lao Hotpot. I read online that the one here in Taipei is quite popular and the wait can be up to 2 hours. Fortunately for us they close at 4am and we’re super jetlagged so we went there for dinner at 11pm. The food and service is awesome here. They give you aprons to reduce splatter, zip lock bags to put your phone in just in case it falls in the soup, and they do a lot of the cooking for you too.

All the food was very good but the highlight of the meal was ordering hand pulled noodles. A guy comes with a small bluetooth speaker and dances with a long noodle. Last time I did it they danced to Gangnam Style. This time he danced to Paris by Chainsmokers.

I felt kind of bad though, we were very impressed and enthusiastic about his little show but all the locals were just staring at their phones the whole time

So far we’ve had to catch 3 cabs instead of using the subway just because we were out so late. This forced us to reach deep into the recesses of our brains to communicate in Mandarin with our cab drivers. The last time I studied was in 2008, Joanna in 2009 so it’s been a while. It’s kind of crazy that there’s vocabulary that just came out of nowhere. I’m really looking forward to practicing Chinese and eating all the tasty food on this trip.