2 Da An Parks and The Museum of Contemporary Art

On Tuesday I met Nareesa after lunch and we took the MRT to the Da An district of Taipei to visit Da An Park. I read online that Da An Park is the biggest park in the city and is considered by some to be the "Central Park" of Taipei. When we got off the MRT we checked one of the station's maps and noticed that there were 2 Da An Parks listed: Da An Park and Da An Wood Park. We walked towards Da An Park and were met with the crappiest little strip of land tucked away behind some apartment buildings and noodle shops. At least this sad excuse for a park had some teeter-totters for us to play on. After teetering and tottering, we walked towards the "Wood Park".


When we got to the "Wood Park" the sign simply read "Da An Park" and it was huge. We were obviously at the right place. Luckily, these two spots were only about 15 minutes apart. There were lots of people relaxing, reading and enjoying the nice weather.


There were some stone trails to massage your feet near the pond. Also around the pond were a bunch of people exercising and doing tai chi. Asians love public exercise, and I love watching it.


We found an ampitheater where I was able to jump on stage (where I rightfully belong).



On the other side of the amphitheater we saw this woman, who I'm assuming is famous for some reason, surrounded by paparazzi- so of course we joined in and snapped some photos too. It was nice not to be the one surrounded by cameras for a change! Anyone know who this woman is? She struck that pose and never moved once the whole time we were there. Fierce!


Then we started climbing things. We climbed trees, went on a few slides and climbed to the top of this jungle gym. I would highly recommend Da An Park to get your inner monkey out.


After we were done at the park we took the MRT to Zhongshan Station and visited the Museum of Contemporary Art. This has got to be the coolest museum I've ever visited (except maybe the Smithsonian)!! It was so fun. They are currently running the Animamix Biennial- Visual Attract and Attack exhibition. Admission was only $50NT ($1.75CAN), an amazing price for all the cool stuff we saw. You could easily spend a lot of time here. All of the exhibits were statues, videos and paintings influenced by animation, including (clockwise, above) fetal superheroes, a lion horse wearing a tux, hundreds of metal ants surrounding a staircase and a very life-like severed head.


(clockwise) fetus Hitler, fashionable people, knit milky booby milky weiner lady, a tiger and her cub. If you're wondering why I'm wearing those hot glasses- they were our admission tickets. When we went up the second floor exhibits a lady asked me for my ticket and I had to take the glasses off my face to show her. She'd thought they were my real glasses. Lookin' good, Keddy.


Many of the exhibits were interactive, which added to the fun. This room (above) was filled with probably 30 or 40 LCD touch screens, each with the same cartoon guy on the screen. When you touched the screen he did something amusing.

If you pressed "D" on the keyboard, they'd dance. If you pressed "K" they'd kiss. If you pressed "F" they did something else.

Happy, whistling head.


Another room was filled with four "flowers" and each "flower" had a soundproofed "blossom" hanging from it. Inside each blossom there was a different cartoon playing. The animators were from all over the world and did really innovative work. We spent a lot of time in this room!

Aaaaand because no trip out is complete without some awesome adventure in dining, we hit up Taipei Main Station's food court for tatziki chicken pitas. Mmmm... just looking at this picture makes me want another one, though it does take me a while to scrape out all the damn lettuce they stuff into the thing.

Another Tuesday win!