Hello from Taipai, Taiwan. We're here for two more days, and I'm sort of getting the hang of the city after three and a half days. 

Today involved plan Bs, Cs, and possibly Ds. I'm glad for fairly pervasive wifi here- which I discovered today is even more easily found than I had thought- and for TripAdvisor City Guide, which has a full city map with gps locating when there wasn't wifi. And for remarkably inexpensive transit- the metro and buses are typically $0.50 USD a trip.

Today's plan A was: rent a bicycle, and assuming traffic doesn't want to kill me, follow the linear parks along the river, cross and climb the hill to the National Palace Museum, with a few side-trips to the Aboriginal Museum and possibly the War Memorial.

Bike acquisition: successful. There's an app for that, listing multiple dozens of "youbike" parking lots and how many free bikes there were. I had to walk a bit to the closest one with any free, but that was fine. Renting the bike was great- first 30 minutes free, and you either use your transit card and phone-number to create an account, or for a one-time rental, give them your credit-card. Cheap- after 30 minutes, $10TWD per half-hour ($0.33USD). 

That's my bike. Built like a tank, 3 speeds, not great on hills. The big question was traffic- I was a bit worried, given all the scooters, but my first ride convinced me it wasn't going to be a problem. Everyone gave me lots of room, and there was even some of the safety-in-numbers on streets where cars were in a minority. 

My first problem: I couldn't figure out how to get to the waterfront without going into an automobile tunnel. So I punted and followed the streets until I got to a bridge, and crossed it.

I found the war memorial ("Martyrs Shrine") eventually, and saw the hourly changing-of-the-guards ceremony, which was quite involved, taking over 10 minutes for 5 guards to transit the huge courtyard between the front guardhouse and the huge temple dedicated to the war dead; 5 minutes of ceremonial swapping two guards into place at the temple, then another 10 minutes as the guards marched back down to the gate, and swapped the two gate guards. The scale of the place was meant to impress, and it did. The temple is huge; the wall-of-names written on wood plaques reminded me a bit of the Vietnam memorial in DC in scope, though you can't get any closer than 100 feet or so. I didn't see a note of how many war dead Taiwan has; wikipedia says between 1.8 and 3.5 million casualties including civilians, in the as-of-yet unfinished war between Communist China and the Republic of China AKA Taiwan. I really don't know the history. The story told on the signs was eyebrow-raisingly heroic. Rivalling any other war memorial I've seen, certainly. 

Then I cycled off, after taking use of their free wifi to discover that 1) the route I had wanted to take was another car tunnel; 2) google said there was a walking routing that was more or less direct; 3) there was no convenient way to do this on train without backtracking almost to our hotel.

Long story short: the walking route was over a mountain. Battle-tank bicycle did not have tank-treads and I wasn't going to carry it up many flights of stairs. So I backtracked and used the youbike app to figure out where to drop the bicycle (good bye tank-bike!) and switch to metro. I discovered the "secret" to free wifi at the train station, got bus routing that made sense, and went onward to the National Palace Museum!

But first I took what I thought was going to be a quick look at the "Museum of Formosan Aborigines," basically across the street from the palace museum. That was really cool. Since Taiwan is an island, I expected the story to be similar to the Hawaiian islands, but the cultures involved seem more diverse. There are 500,000 members of some dozen or 15 aboriginal nations in Taiwan- recognized as deserving treaty rights, like in Canada, but an apparently less horrific genocidal relation with the settling cultures, at least as this museum describes the history.  The museum went into lots of ethnography and archeology, going back 15,000 years to the oldest known culture which occupied the whole island and died out completely in the last ice age, then successive rounds of cultures arriving and settling different portions of the island, with many established by the time the Dutch and Chinese came along in the 16th century. It was a lot to absorb, and I wish there were more English-language materials, because all of the video narration was Chinese-only. I may spend a bit of time tomorrow looking into what other Aboriginal sites there are to see here. (I also wonder why the mainland Chinese hadn't settled here much earlier than the Dutch? I will try and figure out that mystery later.)

By the time I left, I only had an hour for the national palace museum, which I knew was huge, so I decided to punt so I could be sure to make it down to dan's conference hotel in good time to meet up with him for a concert as part of his conference. ...Hah. 

Now an "expert" on the bus system, I managed to overshoot my stop when it was earlier than google maps said. We immediately went onto a bridge over the river. The bus driver was apologetic, but there was nothing he could do but get me to the first stop on the other side. Google maps said it would be 30 minutes to get back across. So I hailed a cab- making the fourth mode of transit today.

I would have still been on time, except the cab driver made a wrong turn. We didn't have any language in common but he made it clear it was his fault when he reset the meter. In the end he got me to the hotel before the concert started- and Dan was waiting for me in the lobby of the rather amazingly opulent hotel. I will take photos tomorrow, as we have a banquet dinner.

After the concert we had a late dinner with one of dan's colleagues, at the same night-market I photographed last night. Verdict: tasty dumplings, really tasty "Taiwanese pizza", tasty fried soft shell crab, so-so clam omelette, and quite awful fermented tofu, which was expected (it's even called "stinky tofu") but it's a dish you're supposed to try, so we did. 

I feel like I learned a lot today, and tomorrow will get me back to the Palace Museum nice and early before the tourist hordes descend. And possibly a hot springs and sauna in the afternoon, if things line up well.