I Want To See It!

In no particular order- and I'm sure loads more ideas will pop up once we're actually in the country- but as of now, the MUST DO list reads as follows:

1. Night Markets (Shilin Night Market/Ximending/Snake Alley)- Alright, so I kind of only want to hit up Snake Alley for the purpose of taking photos, but in the image above you can see a delicious looking assortment of snake soup, snake oil pills, and shots of liquor with snake bile, snake blood, snake sperm, snake venom, and snake urine. Hungry? Shilin Night Market is said to be the most popular and largest market in Taipei (and you know I love my shopping and my foods), while Ximending is where all those trendy hipster kids (like me!) buy the latest Japanese fashions (oooh the sizes might actually fit!).

2. Taipei Zoo- Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I love zoos! The Taipei Zoo is the largest in Asia and they've got all the goods: lions, tigers, pandas, giraffes, rhinos, ostriches, and the list goes on. There's over 12,000 birds there... and I'm a bird man. Aviary cages give me the sillies.



3. Hot Springs- Taiwan has one of the highest concentrations of hot springs (more than 100). Must do some research to find some co-ed springs because I've read that most of them separate the men from the ladies and you have to be all naked and stuff. If Taiwan is anything like Korea, there would way too much pointing involved for this to be fun.



4. Kaohsiung- We kind of wanted to live in Kaohsiung originally, so we did a lot of research on the area. It's in the south of Taiwan and a few of the places I really want to visit include the Love River, the Dream Mall (the second largest mall in Asia), and Monkey Mountain: A hiking trail where a bunch of monkeys freely walk about in their natural habitat. Word is you should bring extra snacks for the monkeys or else they'll steal the food you plan to eat. Cool!



5. Modern Toilet Restaurant- You sit on toilets and eat out of toilets. What more could you want?



6. Kenting Beach- Renowed as Taiwan's best beach, with warm waters and coral cliffs and caves. If you're on an island, it sounds like a plan to head to the beach!



7. Taipei 101- The world's tallest building, it stands 101 floors tall and contains a shopping mall and probably the freakiest elevator ride ever. The fireworks display they put on for New Years looks amazing and is said to cost over a million dollars.



8. Taroko Gorge- an impressive 19-km-long marble canyon (the world's largest). In a single afternoon you can travel from rugged coastal cliffs through a maze of subtropical forested canyons to high elevation subalpine coniferous forests. In about 20 kilometers the landscape rises from sea level to some of the tallest peaks in Taiwan at over 3800 meters. Thank you, Wikipedia!



9. Alishan- Rich forests, lots of hiking, 49 tunnels, 77 bridges, everything is covered in moss from the humidity.. it just looks awesome. And if we're feeling lazy, there's a railway that goes through it.



10. The Hello Kitty Hospital/Ferris Wheel/Cafe- The Asian fascination with Hello Kitty might seem like a little bit of a stereotype, but if the Koreans can be obsessed with bald men slapping their own forheads, why can't the Taiwanese have their fun with a cartoon cat? I keep trying to convince Mel to get all pregnented so she can give birth in Taipei's Hello Kitty Maternity Hospital but she's not being very open to the plan. Shamon, Mel!



Two weeks left! So exciting!