Visiting Taiwan - Touchdown in Taipei

I almost backed out of seeing Taipei. My editing sideline stopped sending documents which threw me off my budget. With a little help from some angels, I was finally able to scrape something up to enjoy the trip with some friends from ABS-CBN and my sister.

The main agenda of the trip was to visit the Hello Kitty Hotel in Kaoshiung and of course the Hello Kitty Sweets Cafe in Taipei. However, the schedule changed because of a typhoon! Our Cebu Pacific flight arrived in Taiwan at around 12:30am, a bit earlier than expected. It was a shakey landing because of the typhoon and the taxi we rode to Taipei was zooming through the empty streets. Probably scared to get caught in the deluge.

The airport was being renovated, we sort of found it just so-so. Boy band Farenheit was this season's celebrity ambassadors for Taiwan. Some years ago it was F4. :)



















We stayed at Keyman's Hotel (No.1, Huaining St. , Zhongzheng District, Taipei ), near the Taipei Main Station. It was a decent hotel. We had to transfer rooms 3x though because of late bookings and complications because of the storm but their staff was friendly and patient with us. Here's the first room we stayed in, it fit 7 people all in all. We watched the weather news on the big flat screen TV.

My sister and I didn't eat dinner so we were hungry when we got to the hotel. Since everything was closed due to the storm, we just dropped by the friendly Family Mart next door. We bought an egg salad, Hello Kitty cupcakes (of course), a not-so-yummy bun, a bottle of Minute Maid Pomelo and mineral water. We didn't notice bottled water was free at the hotel.

We were all hoping the storm would just pass or disappear quietly but it was a real big one. A few hours later we woke up and we knew, our schedule for the day will have to be redone. The view outside our hotel at around 10AM. It was pretty dreary and windy day. So what did we do on our first day in Taiwan? Will tell you in my next post :)