Taiwan: Keelung Day 1

I'm officially 15 hours ahead of everyone now, which means I'm posting from the future.  I'll let you guys know whats up, especially if the world is coming to an end.  The plane ride to Taipei went by quickly considering I was able to sleep for most of the time.  So far, I don't feel the jet lag, since I had a red eye flight and was able to sleep.  My brother and I arrived in the morning the 'next' day, so our rhythm isn't too much out of wack.

When first arriving at the airport, I didn't quite feel like I was in a completely different country and culture.  I did not have a window seat and the airport itself was very user friendly.  On the way to our home in Keelung, I began to notice just how different this place really is.  The surrounding environment is lush and green, almost like something out of Jurassic Park.  The weather was incredibly muggy, even though it wasn't hot I felt like I was in a sauna due to the high humidity.  The buildings, I noticed, are significantly different than what I'm used to.  There are huge complexes raised everywhere.  Things just appear to have sprung out of the ground when needed, with no pattern or unity among buildings.  It was a beautiful sight.

Just standing on a street corner in the morning made me realize just how different this place is.  There are much more scooters than cars on the road and the amount of users on the road surpasses that of New York.  There is an incredible amount of people living in a small place.  While US cities feel somewhat cold and highly individualistic, Taiwan felt more like a living, breathing creature.  There were many intricate parts, from the scooters sharing the road with the buses (and no one follows any traffic laws here) to people crossing the street to greet vendors.   People have specialized jobs here.  Someone excels at procuring a certain type of fish while another is an expert at crafting goods.

I spent some time in downtown Keelung, there are hundreds of scooters on every block.  I got a glimpse of the harbor, the haunted house and also the fruit and seafood vendors who shared a space with parked scooters on the sidewalk.  Later that day, we went up to the gold museum, where we were able to get a spectacular view of the harbor, huge temples and the lush mountains.

In the same area was Jiou Fen, a famous vendor area located on narrow streets in the mountain.  The first thing I noticed was the smell.  Rarely have I gone to a place and was able to catch the scent of so many different flavors of food.  It was an attack on my senses, one that I would welcome any day.  Some smells were great, others were scary, but it added to the incredible experience of being there.

The day went on and we were tired, but we made it to the Keelung night market to pick up some food.  We didn't spend too much time here, but I'd love to come back another night.  It was just getting dark, which made for an amazing view.  When US cities get dark, everyone goes home and gets ready for work the next day.  But here, the evening breeds a whole new life.  Everything is incredibly social here.

At times I felt like I was living in Blade Runner or the anime Tekkon Kinkreet.  This was just the first day and it was already more than I imagined.  And its incredible to think my family originated from this country.  What a beautiful thing it is to see what the world looks like when I've been living in America for so long.

UPDATE: for some reason the links to larger versions of the posted pics above are not showing up.  So here are the direct links:

http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q5/Pdl2thmdl/prettyview.jpg

http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q5/Pdl2thmdl/keelung-downtown-nighttime.jpg

http://i132.photobucket.com/albums/q5/Pdl2thmdl/jioufen.jpg