Cycling Trip to Taiwan: Last Day

In the morning of the 1st, we grabbed our bike bags, slung them over our shoulders, and headed to the train station via the subway.











Here's a look at the Taiwanese bullet train, the 700T. It runs from Kaohsiung in the south to Taipei up north and has only been operating since the beginning of 2007. The ride takes about 1:45 and costs roughly USD 35/EUR 25/JPY 3000. Nice!











Look at all the legroom! I wish airline seats were like that!














It seems like just about every receipt you get in Taiwan has a lottery number printed on it. Apparently, there are regular drawings throughout the year and you can win a nice sum of money, if you are the lucky one. From what I could tell, however, most of the receipts were worth somewhere between nothing and peanuts. Thus, people didn't really care about the lottery and either threw their receipts out or tossed them into collection boxes for various charities, like this one for the Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation.












We're all packed and ready to go, back to Japan.













Here's a look at the money I had been carrying around for the past week. Check out the NT 500 bill. Yep, that's a picture of a baseball team celebrating a victory, which makes that bill officially my favorite piece of currency.











Since we had some time to kill before our flight left, and some hunger pangs in our stomach, we stopped for a bite before heading to the gate. I had some Taiwanese dumplings, and Joe treated himself to an "Angry Whopper." Grrrrrrrrrrrr!











The last order of business was to buy omiyage, or souvenirs. I took a pass on the traditional Taiwanese wedding cakes and bought some nougat candy instead. After all, I wasn't getting married and, besides, even if I were, who the heck wants to eat cake "made of the finest Phaseoli Semen"? I don't know about you, but I'll pass, thank you very much.











The first picture I posted in my blog about Taiwan was of the meal I had on the way to Taipei. So I decided to make the last picture I'm going to post in my blog about Taiwan one showing the meal that I had on the way back to Japan. The problem is, the first meal had some meaning to it (the bicycle-seat naan), but this one doesn't. Oh, well. Maybe that means that the adventure continues. I'll take that. And I'm running with it. Sayonara!