Free Day!

I think it can be pretty obvious that one of the main things we were all looking forward to for today was the chance to sleep in. Since checkout was not until noon, we could all take our time in getting up and packing (since we would be moving to Taichung that night). It was nice to be able to have a morning where there was absolutely no rush.

Chang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall

Once everyone was up and packed though, this is where we split up. There were three main groups. The first was going to the zoo and a movie, the second was going to the movies and Taipei 101, and the last group (which I was in) was going to visit the Chang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall and then just planned on relaxing. My group consisted of Dani, Chris, Andy, Ray, and Dr. Laurence. We decided to meet up with one of the girls from NTNU named Anne as well. Since none of us wanted to move too much today, we decided to stay at the hotel until we had to check out and then go to the memorial. This got us to the memorial at about 12:30ish. After meeting up with Anne, it was time to do some exploring. The outside of the memorial was very pretty. The building was impressive and the landscape itself was well taken care of. At the center of what seemed to be like a courtyard, you could see an archway, two buildings, and the building that had the memorial to Chang Kai-Shek himself. This was what we decided to visit first. This turned out to be a good idea because we pretty much walked in right when they were starting the changing of the guards. The entire thing took probably about 10 minutes and was pretty intense. It was impressive to see the guards do all the rifle flips and steps and never once move their heads or look anywhere but straight ahead. I watched one guard for quite awhile and I'm pretty sure I never saw him blink either. So far, being able to see this was one of my favorite parts of the trip.

Changing of the guards

After the changing of the guard, we headed downstairs and looked at some historical objects of Chang Kai-Shek's. They had a lot of medals, pictures, books, and even two of his cars that were open to the public. Reading some of the inscriptions and reading the history was actually quite interesting. However, once we got done looking around, it was definitely time for lunch. Anne led us to a nice little restaurant nearby. The food there was quite tasty, but I found out there I'm not a fan of bubble tea. During lunch I commented that, if we passed an electronics store, I wanted to stop in because my headphones had broke and I wanted to replace them. Anne told us about this street and mall-type building that is literally dedicated to electronics. Everyone was okay with seeing this so we set that as our next destination.

Part of the outside of Chang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall

Turns out, Anne was not exaggerating. The name of the area was the "Digital District" and it lived up to its name. Every store had all sorts of electronics. The mall itself was five floors of a bunch of different stores that had everything from amps, to video games, to computer parts, all the way to  DVDs. This area literally had everyone you could think of. It did not take me that long at all to find a good pair of headphones (reasonably priced as well), but I really enjoyed exploring the area. Once we had pretty much seen everything though, we decided to go to this little coffee place by the train station called Barista Coffee. We knew this would be our last stop before it was time to head back to the hotel to meet with the rest of the group, but we wanted a chance to just sit down and relax. This part actually turned out quite fun since we all just started sharing a bunch of different stories from our childhood and our thoughts on the trip so far. Sadly though, the time got later and we had to say goodbye to Anne and head back to the hotel for the last time.

The rest of the day became as hectic as the rest of the trip has been. After meeting everyone back at the hotel, we all grabbed our luggage, went to the train station, and rode it to Taipei Main Station. This is where we had to get off to get onto the High Speed Rail (or HSR). The HSR was actually quite a bit of fun. The ride was so smooth, the only way I could tell that we were even moving that fast was when we would pass another HSR train going in the opposite direction. It would literally be like a second and the other train would just flash by. Thankfully, once we got to the station at Taichung, the rest of the trip was easy. All we had to do, was go out front, grab a taxi, and head to the next hotel. This hotel is in Tunghai University. The rooms are not as nice as the last hotel, but everything is still very comfortable and, worst comes to worst, we'd only be here until the 23rd (which is when we fly to Japan). While there is a night market close by our hotel, everyone was pretty tired and we all decided to head to bed to prepare for whatever the following day would bring us.