July 14

For Tianna and James’ first day in Taiwan we decided to visit the Daan Park, the weekend Jade Market, and a few temples. It turned out to be a ton of walking. We had already visited the Daan park a few times as a family and the Jade market last weekend, but the children loved doing it again with their aunt and cousin. After that we caught a bus to the other side of the city for our first temple. It was a pretty small one and much less cool than the guidebook made it sound. We probably only spent 5 minutes there and then walked to the Red House. The Red House was originally built by the Japanese as a public market around 1900. But then, as the KMT took control back, it was turned into a political building and then theater. Chaing Kai-Shek used to make some of his announcements to the people from the windows of the building while the people gathered in the open square in front of the building. There wasn’t much to see there either, but it was on our way to our next stop – a martial arts store. This was just a small store, but the kids were in heaven as we visited it. They had tons of swords, nun-chucks, staffs, gloves, and anything else martial arts that you could imagine. Julia ended up buying a pair of nun-chucks so she would have her own and I got a pair for Asher once he gets bigger (we have actually caught him already using them a couple of times), and I got a metal pair (I still have a wooden pair from my mission). The nun-chucks were only $5 here, so we decided that we should stock up. Christian and Elliott went in together and got a pair of sais. They are awesome. There is not much playing they can really do with those, but they love just holding them. We then made our way to one more temple – the Longshan temple. The Longshan temple is the busiest temple in the Taipei area and it was really crowded when we got there. The outside of the temple had some cool statues and fountains. In the inside there were hundreds of people singing a prayer together, which was cool to watch. We walked around a bit to soak it all in. Right by the temple was another famous night market – Snake Alley. This one is known for its weird food and got its name because several of the vendors sell snake meat. When I was on my mission this night market was prohibited for the missionaries since it was a known area for prostitution and things like that. At the end of my mission I did go with my parents. We didn’t see any of the bad things at the time, but we did get to see people handling the snakes and it was a pretty lively market. Over the past 20 years though the market seems like it really died down. All of the shops looked really old (not in a cool old way, but like they were stuck in the early 90s old) and it looked like they hardly ever got any business. We walked up and down the market, but didn’t end up seeing any food to eat. Instead, we went back to our apartment and found some food around there.

A brief stop at the park.



At the first temple.







The red brick house.



At the second temple. This one is probably the most famous in Northern Taiwan. It was definitely the most crowded of all the temples that we visited during our trip.












The entrance to Snake Alley.