Taipei On a Break

Lily and I went to Taipei for a little weekend getaway. It was not technically the weekend, but it was a short trip for no real reason. We picked Taipei because it's a quick flight, a relatively inexpensive city, we don't need visas and I wanted to ride a bicycle.

Someone told me that August is the worst time to go to Taipei. That is when it is the hottest, most humid and right in the middle of typhoon season. I'm sure all of that is true. But we came from Hong Kong. There were no typhoons while we were in Taipei, but it felt slightly less humid. The temperature was probably pretty much the same.

This was my fourth trip to Taipei, and Lily's second. We have both stayed at a business hotel in Zhongzheng, which is essentially the capital and a major shopping area. I have also stayed in Xinyi, which is downtown and a major shopping area, and Zhongxiao Fuxing, which is a major shopping area in the Da'an District. It's not that we like shopping. There is more than enough of that in Hong Kong. It's that most of the hotels seem to be in the middle of shopping. That is standard operating procedure in East Asia.

This time, we stayed at the Marriott in Zhongshan. There are encyclopedia volumes I don't know about the history of Taipei, but apparently, Zhongshan used to be the main financial district. Then everything moved away to Xinyi and Songshan, and Zhongshan became a bit of a dump. Recently, they have been doing some renovating. It looks like they are trying to bring back international business with new office buildings and, of course, a large shopping mall. There is even a new Marriott Hotel.

I have stayed in too many business hotels, and they all seem pretty much the same to me. This one was no exception. It had everything you would expect from a business hotel. That must be what business people want. They are always full of amenities I don't care about. Usually when I go to a business hotel, it's either conveniently located/priced or I'm in a place where I don't want to take a risk on the local hotels. I will always choose a small boutique hotel over a Marriott or Hilton, but you have to do more research with the boutique hotels. You never really know what you are going to get until you check in. With a business hotel, you know.

Taipei probably has some great boutique hotels, but I did not feel like looking around too much for this trip. The first time I went to Taipei, I stayed at the Home Hotel. That was a quiet boutique hotel in a loud neighborhood, and the best hotel I have been to in Taipei. So far.

One of the Marriott's amenities that I did care about was the swimming pool. My apartment building has a pool, but it has been under renovation for a while, and public swimming pools are not an option around here. There are plenty of them, but once you have seen people use them as toilets, they become far less attractive. The Marriott's lap pool was not big, but it was good for swimming laps. I don't know if people are less likely to soil a swimming pool in a hotel because you get a better class of people in a place where you have to pay more or if it's simply more fashionable to shit in public pools. Either way, the Marriott's pool was clean. It was on the roof, but always protected by shade whenever we went. That is important in a city like Taipei.