Taipei Taiwan Tour – Taipei 101 and Beautiful Village of Chiufen (Jiufen) Visit

Taipei Taiwan Tour – Taipei 101 and Beautiful Village of Chiufen (Jiufen) Visit

welcome back everyone to our 9month ultimate World Cruise adventure and today we go from one of the most amazing modern engineering Marvels to an ancient Gold Mining City Welcome To Living Phase [Music] 2 hi I’m Mike and I’m Nancy and we’re empty nesters striving to live life to the fullest and we’re living that full life going all the way around the world on Royal Caribbean’s 9-month ultimate World cruise on serenade of the sea we sure we’re halfway around the world right now we’re in a taipe Taiwan and we’ve got a busy day today uh Royal Caribbean is giving us one of what they call their Royal escapes now just to backtrack a little bit before the world Cruise ever started they let us know that as a gift to us kind of a surprise yeah a surprise they were giving the full world Cruisers four um additional excursions that they call escapes and this happened to be one of them this is the second now the first one was uh when we went to a winery in movo Uruguay all right so go back and if you can take a look at that that was an amazing one so we’re really excited about this one we know this is going to be a good one too but we got up we uh got out of the the ship and onto a bus the weather was a little bit sporty though yeah I was a little kind of watching I was like okay we’re going to the tallest building in the world type A 101 or or it was the tallest building for a while yeah and I was a little worried is it going to be full of clouds are we going to be able to see out um but as we drove and got more away from the port and into town which is about a 30 minute drive 30 to 40 minute drive um things really did clear up a little bit did it did yep so that was good well we when we arrived there it was still cloudy but we could see clear to the top of it which you can see here and it looks like it looks like a bamboo shoot that was how they they built it was to look like a bam Sho bamboo shoot which uh represents good luck it also represents strength so that was uh part of their design yeah absolutely so we uh they got us all together got us into the elevators um which by the way the elevators here in taipe 101 um were for actually quite some time the fastest ones in the world they go 38 miles an hour and we got all the way up to the 89th floor yeah the 88th floor in 38 seconds um and yeah you’re I think I had to clear my ears four times on the way up uh it was it was quite a ride we get up there and uh once we got off it was really nice they had a um traditional Taiwanese music [Music] playing they had um small little canipes or little little snacks for us yeah finger foods um and a beautiful of course right lots of beverages too lots of tea was there but yes that was that was very pretty too we had a nice Overlook of of the city from there and it was just just beautiful and I loved seeing how all the the layers of the mountains I I found that to be really interesting to just just kind of one layer after the next after the next and thought that was so pretty but that was really only the beginning cuz then we went from the 88th to the 89th floor and up there they had all all kinds of I guess I’ll say station set up so they a good way to describe it yeah so like like they had one where we got to participate in a puppet show they showed us a traditional Taiwanese puppet show and they let us run the puppets yeah little little hand puppets yeah that was it was really [Music] cute hi thank you how are you good thank you I haven’t seen you in a while I know hope everything is going good oh was he they had um places where you could take pictures with different uh symbols of Taiwan um they had you got a picture with uh baby damper which maybe we should explain the damper right okay I’ll and being the engineer that you are I will let you describe that so so to keep the building from swaying because this is a very very tall building and tall buildings have a natural sway to them and this is probably the worst place in the world you could build the tallest skyscraper in the world um it they have typhoons they have hurricanes the soil is not very good so there is a natural um there’s going to be a natural uh events that are going to happen that’s going to cause this building to want to sway and to counteract that sway they have a 700 ton ball suspended from four cables uh that goes across uh seven floors and it’s right in the middle of the building and so if the building tries to sway one way the ball will pitch over and then that keeps the building from swaying it’s a damper dampens it absolute engineering Marvel it’s incredible to see and it’s such an engineering Marvel that it has become the mascot of the building and in fact Taiwan overall and it’s called Baby damper that’s this yellow uh this yellow thing um I even got some video of uh they recorded back when the strongest typhoon has hit I believe it was 2015 and the the damper was swinging over a meter uh going back and forth and counteracting and it worked perfectly just as it was supposed to do um so it really is an engineering Marvel and that’s why it’s also one of the little symbols and in fact you got a Christmas ornament right I did of uh taipe 101 and it’s got It’s got baby damper um standing there next to uh standing there next to the building so that’s I don’t think it’s really a Christmas ornament but I’m going to put a little a little hook on it I I turn a lot of things into Christmas ornament so um so we went and had more overviews overlooks of the city we got to go to a corner of the building where you can uh you know take pictures that look like it’s all the way down um then we walked down the staircase to go from 89 back to 88 and the neat thing there is there’s a little sign Mine The Gap and you look down between the staircases and it’s 90 floors straight down so that’s good that’s kind of a little neat to see that kind unnerving um but I had a great time out there seeing the city I did too that was really it was just really neat I think uh Ro Caribbean did a fabulous job so did did everyone that was involved in in the production of all of this because just just the the shows the costumes everything was just was fabulous the logistics of moving almost 700 of us through this process and getting us to the top and and and letting us all have a good experience that was uh you know hats off I mean the the logistics was really good um well then we came down from the top and in taipe 101 in the building they have a massive uh mall shopping area we walked through didn’t really stop to do any shop we just saw it but just high-end shops very high-end shops yeah and it beautiful in there in fact a couple of us commented it looked like the bagio it looked very similar to the bagio in Las Vegas yeah um we went out then caught our bus to take us back to the ship because our day is not near over yet no it’s not so now we’re going to go to this little old well we we went back to the the ship had a quick bite of lunch then got back on a bus and we’re going to this little old village called chaen that’s uh on a hillside it’s an old uh gold mining Village and this really this this is very quintessential yes yes uh we did make one stop on the way to chaen which is they called it the nose of Taiwan so it’s the northernmost point of Taiwan they took us out there got some pictures of the overlooks and the Rocks um there was a small Temple there um but yeah we really the the whole point here was to get to chaen which we then arrived to and you found out then there’s one or two stairs just a few I think if I remember right there’s 800 stairs to get to the top I France I will tell you this is more strenuous than climbing to the top of the Sydney bridge and Sydney Australia it stairs after stairs after stairs going well halfway up they did stop and they had arranged to have a traditional tea at a tea house for us which was a nice break halfway it was it was it was very similar to the tea uh service that we had done the day before right well that one we took two and a half hours to do and you kind of got to learn how to serve the tea and this one was a little more rushed I mean the lady served the tea for us and it was good the the the little um tea cakes were were good and things but uh this one only took maybe 20 minutes 30 minutes and um not again nothing wrong with it but it was really um the the one we had the day before I think was much more traditional and much more in line with what you would do with a tea ceremony right right right but this time was just to kind of give us all the experience of it and then we left and went continuing to climb to the top and you made it all the way to the top to the there’s a small um because it is a town right and there’s an elementary school all the way at the top that has kind of a gate there and we made it all the way to there and then we started working our way back down um a few things about chaen um it is it is a tourist town now it was a traditionally in the past a gold mining Village um you know and the gold mines have shut down so they have really shifted over to be more of a tourist attraction now when we say that I think sometimes saying something’s a tourist attraction can have a bad connotation for some people however I found this interesting in that 90 plus% of the people who were in chaen were Taiwanese well they were we were there on a Sunday and so Sunday is when a lot of locals come and do their shopping and so then they certainly weren’t all touristy type shops they were very local shops where people could buy their their groceries their meats or whatever it is their vegetables whatever it is that they wanted to get lot restaurants for people to eat out at and yeah yeah and so so yes we were tourists there and a lot of tourists do come there but not just cruise ship tourists or something um you know or foreign tourist it is a a place where a lot of Tai when need will come few things to learn here uh we did not really have time to stop and get local currency which was to our detriment because because these shops would only take you know Tyron currency and that’s and they would not take credit cards yes some of these little little tiny places wouldn’t wouldn’t take a credit right so no so if you didn’t have local currency and they didn’t take a credit card then of course you’re not going to buy anything and and that’s really kind of a pro tip here you know once you get outside the region of the Americas a lot of times American dollars will be taken in South America and places like that um you do need to make sure that be you from Europe or wherever you’re from you do make that stop and either exchange money or as we do stop in an ATM take out money in the local currency and there you will get the best exchange rate possible the bank to bank exchange rate so just make sure you get a little bit of local currency uh so we uh walked around the city we then walked all the way back down those stairs and that took a little bit to get back got on our bus made it back to the ship actually back to Taipei they dropped us off at the ship but we still had about 2 and 1 half hours before uh our ship was going to depart we did we did so we were going to walk around um just a little beyond the port area there’s streets and streets of shopping and food and we thought well we’ll get some dinner now at this point right there’s a night market there and again on these streets they are not taking US currency they are also not taking credit cards but we did find an ATM and we were able to get a little local currency so we found a Dumpling House which was quite good oh so good and nothing was in English and could but there were pictures so we were able to point to what you wanted and right and that’s what we found in most of the Asian countries who’ve come across so far they’re great about having pictures on their menu so where yeah so where is it’s you know you may it may only be in the local language you can at least point and say I know that’s a dumpling okay let’s let’s go with that uh and and so yeah we kind of spun the wheel and we picked two kinds of dumplings and some uh soups some soups that had dumplings in them and some noodles and we sat on the street or on this on the sidewalk in a little table and just enjoyed our meal that was really good it was excellent I enjoyed that a lot yeah we walked a few shops down and we had some uh milk tea which is kind of like a a bubble tea or a boba tea that was delicious Y and just enjoyed walking around in the evening and in in Taipei and we found a neat shop though that was a claw shop yeah yes that’s right so it was all those claw machine games and it was dozens and dozens of those and we walked through and looked at each one they had everything you could get bags of Doritos you could get Electronics you could get toys I mean all kinds of stuff in there and I guess this is a very popular thing in some of the Asian countries cl to get a bag of chips yeah okay Y and it was a full-size bag you know so um yeah that was really interesting after walking the streets we uh headed back to the ship and and honestly we had to get a little bit of rest because the next day we are heading to we are heading to isashi Japan where we are going to get some amazing Sushi it really I think is probably the best we’ve ever had right so first we want to invite you to like subscribe and turn on those notifications because not only do we have that coming up we’ll be in Dubai soon we’ve we’ve been saying we were at the largest the tallest building but it was only the tallest building that 101 for 6 years right and then the um B Khalifa was built that is still currently the tallest building and we will be visiting that in Dubai relatively soon here that’s that’s right so so sure like subscribe yep so that way you don’t miss any of our 9mon around the world Ultimate Adventure that we’re having well as always thank you very much for tuning in we hope this has been fun and educational and uh we’ll see you again soon have a great day bye-bye bye-bye now [Music]

Today our 9-month Ultimate World Cruise takes us to Taiwan were we have a very exclusive event touring Taipei 101 and follow that up with a drive out to the small and very beautiful village of Chiufen.

Ultimate World Cruise Day 111

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