David Grajal

We visited Taiwan on the first week on June. It has been our first trip out of Korea, only two hours and a half flight from Seoul. When we arrived there we discovered a wonderful city; Taipei is the capital city of Taiwan, cozy and small city for the Asian standards. Only 4 million people living in a city surrounded by the mountains.

Video produced to remember the trip, it’s pretty cool. I promise you will not be bored

Taiwan nowadays is an important business center in Asia. This is a very international city and there are lots of Chinese, Malaysian, Japanese and Korean people working here. The city is foreigner friendly; all the signs are in Mandarin and English and the people speak pretty good English, actually a lot better than in Seoul.

Taiwan is a very interesting economic case study. The country has experienced dramatical changes in the last decades, jumping from undeveloped country status to the main manufacturer of computers and semiconductors in the world. 40 years ago there were only communist fields all around the country and a very small and dirty capital city. When they declare independence from China, the government decided to start a national effort to modernize the country.

They studied the different options and they foreseen that the faster growing industry was going to be the semiconductor one. They clearly chose the correct one because the result is an extremely fast moving, technological society where everything is designed to be efficient.

The subway system is a good example. They show proudly that it has been considered the most reliable subway in the world in the last three years and it really seems like it is. The trains stop exactly where they should and comes exactly on time, everything is in Chinese and English, the stations are extremely well designed and are very spacious to allow huge chunks of people to move easily.

The country is technological but the Taiwanese society don’t forget their past. There are still small temples all around the city. One of the most famous is the Longshan Temple, interesting because several religions (Confucianism, buddist) are living together there.

The architectonic symbol of the city is the Taipei 101 tower, currently the tallest building until the huge tower in construction in Dubai is finished. The tower has an observatory at 440 meters above the city, but it highest point is at 510 meters. It’s very elegant because it was designed to mimic bamboo appearance and it’s constructed according to the Zen principles. Actually they needed to make several Zen changes to the original plan to blend the tower better with the city and to not disrupt the energy flowing through the city. Is an incredible experience to visit the observatory, using the fastest elevator in the world and see the damper that prevents the building to correct their position reacting against the wind.

We devoted one of the days to go to the interior of the country, only an hour to the south to the famous hot springs of Wulai. This is a place where there are still aborigines living and my first time in a rain forest.

I really love this country. You can be living in one of the main megacities of the world and go for breakfast to the beach, have lunch close to the sky in the Taipei 101 tower and have dinner in the rainforest.

Everything is on hand. Cheap. And with very friendly people. I love this place!