March 4

3-4: Today we were in Taiwan. It is a beautiful island - very mountainous. Our guide said there were 24 mountains over 3000 meters - however tall that is! When we came into the harbor this morning the tug boats were spraying water in welcome - it was kind of neat. Our tour this morning was nice in spite of our guide who was AWFUL!!! First we drove from Keeling - a working port - to Taipei - a drive of about half an hour. Went through a lot of tunnels. We drove through downtown Taipei where the signs were mainly in both English and Chinese. There were a lot of wide boulevards and then you would pass these very narrow streets. Most of the people seem to ride motorcycles - there were even large parking lots marked off with spaces just for motorcycles! We saw the 101 building - picture included - that our guide said was the tallest in the world. Supposed to look like bamboo which it does - kind of. It is certainly taller than anything else in Taipei! Then we went to the Chiang Kai Shek memorial which was beautiful. We got there in time to see the changing of the guards. The grounds were fantastic - beautiful gardens and wonderful buildings - the buildings are theaters for the symphony, etc. Then we went to the National Palace Museum which holds all the artifacts that the people were able to carry out of Mainland China in 1949 when the Communists took over. Our guide kept calling Beijing Peking - like the whole revolution had never taken place. She said the treasures left in the museum in China were the ones that were too large to carry. We saw pottery dating to 600 BC and beautiful ivory carvings - some of which took 3 generations to carve. And wonderful painted and glazed pottery from the Ming dynasty which ended in the late 1200s! We got back to the ship and noticed a huge statue on top of the hill across the port from us - picture included. We are not sure what it is a statue of - not Buddha - too thin - and not Confucius - no beard - but it is huge and certainly overlooks the harbor. Also included in the pictures is a stop sign - can you read it?