So very conveniently, my dear friend Laura found herself with a job in the Philippines this summer.  And lucky for me, many flights to the Philippines have a layover in Taipei!  Obviously we had to have a wondrous reunion!

Unfortunately she didn’t have time to explore the sights of the south, but we were able to see a good amount of Taipei.

There was, of course, and on request, another visit to the Hello Kitty Cafe. (You’d think they’d know me by name now!). And then the oh-so-popular Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial, still sweet though.  We also went to a fairly large nightmarket with sweet shopping and food stalls alllll over the place, a great vegetarian buffet, a famous dumpling place, and a few hip, classy, and normally (for us) unaffordable bars.

We were also able to do stuff that I hadn’t been able to do yet in Taipei, such as visit some temples:

and go on one of the most intense hikes ever!  This is probably because the majority of the hike were stairs up a mountain.  Phew…and I thought it was hot and sweaty on level ground!

We laughed, we cried, we slept.  We went to visit some hot springs, which are surprisingly not very refreshing after the winter months. We stayed in one of Taipei’s best hostels ever called The Camel’s Oasis (stay there–you’ll be doing yourself a favor!), met a fun Malaysian guy, and basically had a very low-stress, high-fun weekend.  It was all-in-all a very good way to wrap up the year.