TRAVEL

You’ll Never Guess Why I Had A Hard Time Enjoying Myself in Taiwan

It was very tough.

I really tried to put on my best face, but I was so tired. (photo provided by Linda Ng)

Like all of my red-eye long haul flights, my trip to Taiwan started at 1:20am EST from Toronto Pearson Airport. Usually by this time, I’m already dreaming in LaLa Land. I thought that this trip would not be as tiring, because we are flying direct to Taiwan and staying there for about 5 days. If we went straight to Malaysia, we’d have to do a connection in Taiwan, get to Kuala Lumpur and then go to Ipoh. That would add on many more hours of travel time.

The flight was not delayed and we were in the air in no time. Here goes the 14 hour flight to Taipei. I’m usually able to sleep a little bit on long haul flights and this was no exception. I thought I was doing good on energy and sleep. The hours went by and in due course, we landed in Taipei. We arrived at around 5:00am, Taipei time. We were so early, there was nothing open at the airport. Everything was very quiet. Our friend picked us up and we were on our way into the city.

In my mind, I thought we would drop off our luggage, take a shower, and have a relaxing day.

Breakfast bun. (photo provided by Linda Ng)

Hmm. Little did I know. The day was packed with activities! I’ll write separate stories about my experiences, but here’s what we managed to do on the very first day.

• Breakfast at a cute little restaurant
• Teresa Teng’s Memorial Park
• Yeoliu Geopark (Lunch)
• Shifen Waterfall and Tourist Area
• Dinner at Bai Jia Ban

By lunch, I was already quite exhausted. I didn’t expect the very first day to be filled. I mean, it was great that I got to see and do so many things but my body really wasn’t into it. My steps tracker told me I did over 10,000 steps. My legs and feet were hurting. I’m usually ok with that many steps on a normal day, but not really after a 14 hour flight.

I Really Had A Hard Time Enjoying Everything