Taipei Taiwan 3/30/24

Taipei, Taiwan

Greetings and nī hāo ma? We are in for another full day today as we arrive in the port of Keelung, about 16 miles or 24 kilometers from Taipei. more rural like quaint Juipen, or Shifen where you can hike and see the “Niagara Falls” of Taipei. I’m hoping the views from Taipei 101, one of the world’s tallest buildings and an engineering marvel, are excellent that day. Historians may want to visit the Chiang Kai Shek Memorial or the amazing National Palace Museum. For a glimpse into Taiwan’s spiritual culture, you can plan to see some of the many Buddhist or Taoist temples, such as Longshan Temple. 

On our way to Taipei, we experienced a very severe "swerve".  Mickey looked outside our cabin and saw another ship frighteningly close to ours.  A few minutes after, the captain came on and said that they had to take evasive action as a ferry boat cut across our path - the ferry boat was NOT supposed to be in that lane.  Quick thinking of our crew saved what could have been a horrible disaster.  Nice going, Captain Shel!

In our destination talk, we were told there were 5 must see's in Taiwan - Taipei 101, the National Palace Museum, Chang Kai Shek memorial, Juipen (or Chiuffen), and Keelung Night Market.  Getting to all 5 would be a huge challenge - we made 3!  Tapai 101, Juipen, and Keelung Night Market.  A very long day, but extremely rewarding.  We started out at Taipei 101 - one of the world's tallest buildings and an engineering marvel.  While it was not a 100% clear day, it still afforded us great views of the city - unlike Victoria Peak in Hong Kong!  This was a special event sponsored by Royal Caribbean that was specific to full world cruisers.  All of the "special" events for us have been spectacular and this one continued the tradition.  The two observation deck floors were reserved for our group, so no fighting the crowds for us.

Some facts about the Tower:

 Taipei 101 is a skyscraper in Taipei, Taiwan, it's the former tallest building in the world, holding that honor for 5 years since 2004, only surpassed by the current tallest building Burj Khalifa in 2009.

· Taipei 101 stands 1667 feet tall, and was the first building to break half kilometer mark

· As of 2018, Taipei 101 is still the tallest building built in an earthquake zone, the tower is located just 200 meters (660 feet) away from a major fault line, the structure of the tower was designed to resist an earthquake of 9 on the Richter scale.

· There's an outdoor round observatory square on the 91st floor of the building, at 392m above the ground, it's now the third highest open-air observation deck in the world.

· The design of Taipei 101 is heavily affected by Chinese culture, style, lucky numbers. The main portion of the building is composed of 8 same modules that flare outward, each module has 8 floors and stacked on the top of another lower module, the number 8 is considered a lucky number in Chinese culture, it represents prosperity and good fortune, and the unique form of the tower was inspired by the form of the pagodas in ancient China. And number 4 is considered unlucky in Chinese culture, as the pronunciation of this number is similar to the word death in Chinese, and for this reason there's no 44th floor in the tower, the lost floor is replaced by level 43, with the level 42A replacing actual level 43 to compensate for the skipped floor number.

· Since Taipei 101 is built in an earthquake zone and also subject to typhoon winds, a tuned mass damper is suspended from 91st to 87th floor of the tower. The tuned mass damper is simply a steel pendulum hung with several ropes, the pendulum will swing in the opposite direction of the sway of the building which caused by strong winds or earthquakes, by this way the sway of the building is reduced, making the building more resistant to such kinds of natural disasters.  It is one of the few buildings that you can see this engineering marvel.

Some of the artwork on display featuring the tower...

This certainly came in handy as Taipei experienced a pretty severe earthquake two days after our departure.

Here is a video that was taken at the time an earthquake hit....

These colorful dancers and musicians entertained us in the lobby as we waited for our elevator ride to the top floors.  These elevators are not normally used for the public, but Royal was able to get the authorities to accommodate us for smoother entrance to our event.

And the on to the main event...we had a morning brunch laid out for us as we enjoyed the views of this fabulous city.  Again, impeccably clean, no homeless, and traffic was busy but it moved quite well, as it did in Hong Kong.  Again, we need to figure out what they are doing right!!!

A view from the top...

We moved to the next floor up and were thoroughly entranced by the venue and the entertainment that was provided to our group.  The dancers were incredible, the costuming magnificent.  If you look at the pictures of the dolls that were on display, you will see the dancers are those characters.  The flowers, photo ops, the views, the music- absolutely a delight.  Could have spent the entire day watching these performers. 

And when we finished at the top of the tower, you exited through a 5-story mall that was incredible - all high-end stores, Cartier, Dior, Prada, etc. etc. etc.  So, we wandered around there for a while, then had to snap a pic in front of the Love sign while we were waiting for the bus to take us back to the ship.  And that was just the morning...check out Chiufen and Keelung Night Market blog to see what we did for the rest of the day...another 15,000+ stepper day for us.  

And that's a wrap...for the morning.  Check out Chiufen and Keelung Night Market blog.