Day 22 - Taipei Interlude

Back in Taipei it was time for something that I had been waiting this whole trip to do - visit Yuan Zai! She is a baby giant panda who was unveiled to the public on January 6th, and since less than 20,000 people a day get to visit her, I had been waiting until the initial craziness died down a bit and until I could take Sonny on a weekday. We woke up early and headed to the zoo, but we still ended up with the 12:40-12:50 timeslot. Its not the best, as she sleeps most of the day and is most active around 11 and 4.





We headed out on the train to see if we could catch a glimpse of a baby panda playing. Doesn't Sonny look super excited?

There, thats better! He got me back for this by sticking the camera in my face.

When we got to the zoo, we had to wait for a bit until our turn to see the panda, so we went to see the native Formosan animal exhibit.

Deer with spots

Monkeys! I saw the backside of two of these from the bus on the way to Alishan

 This is the juvenile formosan black bear. He is older than Yuan Zai but still pretty cute.

Big big bug hunting goldfish

Can you spot the bug?

Then it was time to go and line up for the panda. The tickets said to arrive 10 minutes early, but when we got there they were nearly 30 minutes behind for some reason. We speculated that something must have happened to cause the delay and they worked quickly and seemed to be getting back on track, using multiple lines for different time slots and policemen with megaphones.They take quite seriously the total number of visitors thing and if you miss your time slot you get stuck off to the side, waiting until someone else misses their's.

The line. It was insanity.

Tuan tuan, the father was in a separate enclosure outside. He was munching on bamboo when we first walked by, but by the time we got our shot to go see him up close he was napping.

And finally, it was time to see the baby! We paraded into the panda house, and zig-zagged through the queue system they use, and when we arrived at the front we saw...her little white sleeping butt. Sigh. Oh well :) You get approximately ten seconds to see her, as they are pushing the line along, but I'm glad I got a quick peek of her little snoring rear. I recommend you go back up and watch the videos of her awake and actually being cute

Mommy Yuan Yuan on the left and the tiny ball ofd white fuzz is the star of the show, except she seems to have missed her cue

After we left we got our picture by the cardboard cutouts instead. We then grabbed a bubble tea and left the zoo because our next destination was calling, the Maokong gondola!

Maokong a hilly/low mountainous area to the south of Taipei. It has long been a place where oolong - particularly Iron Goddess oolong was grown, and is now full of teahouses where people come to drink tea and enjoy the views. Quite excitingly, the easiest way to reach the area is by gondola, a full 4 km ride. Even more excitingly, the gondola is considered part of the MRT system and its very cheap to ride!

Once we reached the top we walked along the road, visiting the Tea Growing Information Center, and getting directions to the tea house we wanted to try after learning all about roasting tea. We walked quite a long way to get to our tea house, and when we got there, it was closed! Disappointed, and not seeing another option we liked well enough to spend the money on, we headed back down to pick up Sonny's repaired laptop, then head to dinner with the colleagues. Dinner was a hot pot buffet, which was fancier than we normally eat, with long tables full of things to add to the hot pot. It looked very nice, but to be honest we prefer our cheap hole-in-the-wall hotpot. Plus, even with all my stomach-expanding training, I can't eat enough at buffet to make it worthwhile. At least we got to talk to the colleagues, and meet Silver Nitrate's wife. After dinner we went back to the apartment for sleep as we would be waking up early to head to Hualien, our base for Taroko Gorge.