Taoyuan, Taiwan - Part 2
May 22, 2013 These photos were taken on our return trip from Manila during a long layover in Taoyuan, Taiwan. Via had already flown home ahead of us so it was just me and Cody.

We had planned on visiting Taipeh which is about an hour's ride from Taoyuan.

But at the airport when I asked the information desk to write down our Taoyuan hotel's name and address in Chinese characters so our taxi driver can read it, we were told we can actually take the bus. Happy to save money, we went for the airport’s bus terminal instead.

At the terminal, we missed our bus by 5 minutes so we had to wait 25 minutes for the next one. Perhaps because of the rain, the bus was further delayed by another ten. In addition, the bus took an hour instead of 30 minutes by taxi to get to our hotel.

In short, we lost time. Taipeh was becoming less and less a possibility with the layover time we had left especially that we lost more time getting lost in the streets of Taoyuan looking for a place to eat. For some reason, we were both strangely craving for American food. But we walked in circles and couldn’t find one. We ended up buying hotdogs at the 7-Eleven adjacent to our hotel and taking them to our hotel room to eat.

We didn’t make it to Taipeh. The City of Taoyuan may not compare to the City of Taipeh but after finishing our hotdogs we ventured again outside and this time managed to find Taoyuan's downtown, have a blast touring its many department stores, find an electronics arcade where all the latest Asian gadgets and gizmos can be found, and, to top it all off, stumble into our holy grail – McDonald’s. After a night in Taoyuan a week ago followed by a week in Manila, McDonald’s never tasted so good.

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