Taiwan... Taipei, Keelung, and Takoro Gorge.

The unexpected stop… Taiwan was a treat, although we were re-routed from Japan to Taiwan, I couldn’t complain. Taiwan has a feel that I did not expect. The people are very friendly and the city has a buzz that was unique. It felt like New York but also with a strong culture of it’s own that you knew Taiwan and its citizens were proud of their city. It was definitely a whirlwind time since they only gave us 3 days but I feel like I had a great time and it was filled with great people and fun. Taipei was like any other busy city but the pockets and different areas were very interesting… the one thing I loved about it was the MRT, their subway system, was also so neat, orderly, and easy to navigate… The day was mostly spent hanging out with other staff members, we planned it that way so that we could spend our last international port together and have one night out… so we had great food and checked out the sights such as the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial and Taipei 101, the worlds 2nd tallest building, it used to be the first but they built another one beating it’s height in Dubai. After some sightseeing we headed to the KTV, which is the acronym for all karaoke studios, similar to the Korean Karaoke Studio… we got a room to just have folks come and unwind and sing. The hard part was trying to figure out their system to play songs since everything was in Cantonese but we made it work and were able to sing all the songs we wanted. It was a memorable experience since we rallied almost all the young professionals that are on the ship and it was fun to see us just let loose and just have fun together since all the previous ports were hard to coordinate something like this because of the various demands of our jobs while at port. After KTV we grabbed some more drinks after and headed back to the hotel. The following day we headed back to Keelung, which is the port city we docked in to check out the Night Market, which was AMAZING! Mind you, the night market in Keelung, or in night markets in Taiwan are mostly for eating… shopping is available but the headline events are the small food stands everywhere… I must have eaten so much.. .from friend calamari to dumplings, to read bean cakes… I also got a JUMBO XL bubble tea which was great! It was like a big gulp but with milk tea and tapioca. After grubbing we did a little shopping, I mostly got snacks and goodies to hold me over until Hawaii… before we headed back to the ship we did roam around the port area and peeked into shops to see what other last minute items we could buy with our money before we left.