National Palace Museum,Taipei Zoo, and Maokong

On Tuesday, I decided the head downtown to sign up for another half marathon. I am running the Fubon Taipei Half Marathon on December 18th. It was much easier to do in person, compared to having multiple people translate a tiny document for me.

Afterwards, I went to the National Palace Museum. It’s home to the largest collection of chinese art and historical artifacts in the world. I strolled throughout the museum for the better part of three hours and then headed home.

At the entrance to the NPM

The National Palace Museum

Garden outside the museum

On the  weekend, a group of us decided to visit Taipei Zoo. It was only 60 NT ($2) to get in, which is insane considering the quality. The zoo itself is laid out quite nice and has a good mixture of animals. We spent a few hours there and headed out as the sun was setting.

Flamingos

Posing for the Formosan Black Bear

Funny monkeys

Da group

Upon leaving, we walked a block down the road and took the gondola up to Maokong for some food and tea. We finished the day by sitting outside at a large stone table sipping Oolong tea for the better part of 2 hours before departing back to Chungli.

Paul had the tea procedure under control without any help from Katie

Mmmm, hot oolong on one of the first chilly nights in Taiwan

And some other exciting news is:

We finally managed to book our tickets for Chinese New Year in January. Asia Air had declined all of our credit cards for over two weeks for no reason, but the other night one finally went through.

I will be venturing away from this lovely island for the first time to go to Malaysia with four awesome friends: Scott, Paul, Rachel and Katie. We are still working out the logistics once we get there, but the plan is to go trekking through one of the oldest rain-forests in the world for at least a few days, if not for the entire week. Can’t wait!