...and we are back

After 6 nights away we are back in Nanjing and coming to terms with school on Monday. We feel that we saw most of what Taipei had to offer and we loved the ease of getting around the city.
Big lesson learned was that saving a few dollars by flying from Shanghai was now worth the hours of busses, taxis, trains and transit - we will fly direct from Nanjing in future ;)



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Location:Nanjing,China

Spider-Man 4D

Mia and Isla LOVED the 4D. The wind whistling past their ears, the lightening, the up and down, water spray and even the kidney jabs.  Luke couldn't handle the extreme awesomeness (too much jiggling in the fight scenes for his ouchy knee) and I survived but now understand why the motion master ride at theme parks is only a few minutes long not an hour and 50 minutes, possibly too much of a good thing....

                                 

Just checking to see if his spidie senses were tingling :-)

Chang Kai Shek memorial

       

                                                                           

         

Tamsui

We took the metro to the end of the line. Lovely walk along the water, then a ferry ride across to Bali. Some enormous ice creams and a wide assortment deep fried sea squeezels - great times!

       

                                  

        

        

                                     

Moo and I get a late night foot massage

Ahh, the mighty foot massage. Moo and I, feeling cooped up in the hotel room, skipped out for a foot massage. The art of reflexology is an amazing thing, as the massage only hurt three times with my knee, shoulder and neck, which is very accurate to how my body is feeling after a hard hotel bed ;)

Gondola

Perhaps not an ideal day to go a Gondo-ling but we had a great time and Isla had her heart set on riding the Gondola. We even got to ride tha Crystal one on the way down, very exciting.

                                 

Everything was Hello Kitty Themed :-)

And best of all we got to fulfill a new family holiday tradition - matching rain ponchos!! :-)

                               

Longshan temple

We arrived during chanting. It didn't feel right to be taking photos so I only took 2 sneaky ones. But it was a stunningly beautiful temple. 

The girls outside the main enterance.

The modern toilet cafe

Umm it wasn't as funny as I thought it would be. It just felt wrong....

Ice cream and shaved ice pile of poo served in bowl that looks like a squat toilet....

Luke had a urinal of cola, he decided against getting it in a takeaway urinal..

We sat on toilets at a table that was a basin with a glass top. Yip. Weird. We decided not have a meal. But you have to spend a min per person. Honestly does this look appetising ?

Palace museum Taipei

No one has any comments to make; there were some lovely paintings and beautiful pottery but heaps of large tour groups which made the experience a little pushy and unpleasant.

Silver lining M C Escher exhibition was on in other part of the place. Mia and isla have both been studying his work in art last term.

Sorry no photos of the inside of either place as was forbidden.

Day 2 in Taipei

Today we orientated ourselves on the metro and made our way to Taipei 101. The plan was to make it to the top of 101, but as visibility was low we decided to leave it for another day. 

We did get to tick one thing off our list - Din Tai Fung, the Michelin Star dumpling restaurant specialising in xiaolongbao. It was a 50 minute wait for a table, but ohh so delicious!

Arrived in Taiwan

Arrived in Taipei this afternoon, settled into the hotel then went for a wander of the streets. We're in a great part of town and it was fun to play spot the difference with the mainland - cleaner, orderly and strangely the traffic moved much faster, which is why everyone seemed to follow tragic rules.

Biggest challenge and headache will be mentally converting money as we go out shopping and sight seeing. I Taiwan dollar is 2 Mao so 5 TWD is 1rmb and as 5rmb is 1nzd so 25TWD is 1NZD is one big headache.

...and then there is our heat heated a$& squirting toilet?

Mia in Cambodia

I borrowed this pic off the parent portal :-)

Both girls home tonight, they will write about their trips tomorrow - I'm giving them Friday off to recover from camp and get their washing done ready to go to Taipei on Sat.

...and Mia is off to Cambodia

We knew that when we came away a few things would be different and we knew that school trips would be very different, but is still a strange thing to drop your daughter at school and send her off on a class trip to Cambodia! To top it off we will do the same thing with Isla on Saturday as she is off to Fujian Provence for a week.

 It will be a strange and quiet week at home for Sara and I.

See....normal :-)

                                

Isla Moo

So poor Moo had been under the weather for 3 days, looked like she was getting worse not better. Took her to the Doctor, who was very concerned and said she needed to be in hospital for a possible lumbar. Decided to jump on the train and take her to Shanghai. She had every test imaginable accept the lumbar as I asked to hold off on that unless absolutely essential (have had it myself and very painful). Chest X-ray results pneumonia. So IV antibiotics, over night stay and now home again. She's looking almost normal. Must say hospital in Sh was awesome, like Mercy in Dunedin and everyone spoke excellent English which is always helpful when you are a semi distraught mother :-) 

Aaah now I can breathe again....