Overflown

The Museum of Fine Art is on the flightpath for Taipei's domestic airport, which means every couple of minutes another plane flies over. They must be rather proud of this, because in the entrance hall of the museum is an installation consisting of some very loud speakers that blare the sound of a plane flying overhead, while a shadow of a plane is projected across the ceiling. This is fun the first few times, but I imagine the museum staff could be quite aggravated.

Asleep off the job

I rather feel we wasted our first day in Taiwan. We arrived so early at Hong Kong airport that Cathay moved us onto an earlier flight, and were in our hotel in the middle of Taipei at 1 o'clock. The day was ours to make the most of. So we went to sleep.

Sleep deprivation, Taiwan style

It probably wasn't such a good idea to go to the cinema at 11:30 last night, but these late-night film trips seem to be a staple of our visits to Taipei, and since Taiwan is good enough to screen movies really, really late (audiences were still coming in as we left at 1:30) it seems rude not to.

Hungover in Taipei

Unwisely, instead of staying in bed all evening and reading trashy novels, I stayed in bed until 5:30, when I finished The Serialist, which was not only terrible but referenced its own terribleness, as if knowing that it was trash made up for it being trash. It didn't. A compost heap that can speak and tell you it's a compost heap is still a mound of decaying organic material, and despite the recommendations on the cover and the fairly snide pastiche of Stephanie Meyers' Twilight novels (which seem an easy target these days), it didn't fill me with any sense of joy, excitement or interest.

I suppose this was a good thing, because it ensured that I went out to enjoy Taipei's nightlife.

Running in Taipei

I was at a loose end when I got to Taipei, so after getting in a strange man's car and being charged about 500 NTD over the odds to be driven from the airport to my hotel, I spent the afternoon not sure what to do, and conscious that I had the ActionAsia race the next day and didn't want to wear myself out running to and from between different tourist attractions.

Taipei 101 and tour groups

If you're travelling to Taipei and you fancy a relaxing jaunt to the top of Taipei 101 (at the time of writing the second tallest building in the world), and you really don't like crowds, I would suggest you don't get up with the lark, because it seems half the Chinese people in the world have joined a tour group and all want to go up there with you.

Also, I wouldn't leave it to be the last thing you ever do in the day, because the other half of all the Chinese people in the world have left it until 9pm to head up there.

Clash of the Titans

In Taipei for the weekend, what better way to sample the local culture than to spend half an hour playing geriatric arcade games, then watching Sam Worthington in Clash of the Titans, in 3D?