The championship was over but we stayed an extra day to do some sight seeing.
The typhoon was still with us as we moved back to our old stomping ground at the YMCA hotel. It rained heavily whilst we were unloading and one of Chau’s many cases was inadvertedly left on the bus.
After putting away our luggage we headed to Taipei 101, the tallest building in Asia. Our liasons, Julie and Mandy, took us to Taipei Main Station to catch a train to our destination. The Taipei MRT (Metropolitan Rapid Transit) is so impressive. The stations are enormous, the trains are clean and run on time, and best of all it’s very cheap to travel on. It costs about NT20 (less than 80 cents) per person for the 10 minutes trip. After another 10 minutes walk, we reached our destination.
To get to the observatory deck we went on the fastest passenger elevator in the world. It took a mere 37 seconds to reach the 89th floor. We spent about an hour there. It was quite an overcast day so the visibility wasn’t great.
We spent the rest of the afternoon window shopping in the mall located inside the building. Some of us spent a couple of hours in a particular shop getting every part of our bodies massaged by these incredible gadgets.
That night we were treated to a meal at Sky Lark restaurant by Mr Tony Chao, our number one supporter in Taipei. Tony’s son is one of Chau’s players at Ringwood Raptors and Tony was at the stadium for most of our matches cheering us on.
After dinner we all headed to ShiLin night market except for Chau and Tony who were headed to the bus depot to pick up the strayed suitcase. Needless to say Karl bought more stuff from the market. The man is a shopaholic!
We slept well that night.
We had an early start the next morning to arrive at the National Museum. After a train then a bus trip we arrived at the museum for a 90 minutes tour. We learnt about the different dynasties in China’s long history and saw some incredible works of art.
After a quick lunch where Xanthe, Katie and Kat devoured nearly 20 dumplings each we headed to Danshui where the river meets the sea. We had a great time looking in all the gift shops and sampled the second best calamari we have ever had. Some of us went for these ridiculously long cones of icecream. Some couldn’t eat it fast enough so the local dogs had a field day eating up the melted blobs on the ground.
So it was back to the YMCA Hotel and the food mall near by for our last dinner in Taiwan. Our bus arrived at 7pm to take us to the airport. We had such a great time in Taiwan and it was sad to say good bye to our liasons and Tony who farewelled us at the airport.
Our flight back was full, probably because all the cancellations in the previous couple of days because of the typhoon.
When arrived at Sydney airport at around 10.45am. We spent what seemed like an eternity in the queue through Quarantine. Our Queensland folks missed their 12pm flight and had to catch the 3.30pm flight. And our Victorian folks just barely made it to the 12.15pm flight to Melbourne.
We had a great time in Taiwan. We learnt a lot in our stay there. We learnt about the country, its people and culture. But most of all we learnt about international volleyball as most of us had never been exposed to this level of standards. The following video is a collection of thoughts of every member of the team on the difference between international volleyball and the volleyball we play at home.
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