Happy New Year 2009

Wow, in world record fashion we left for the Taipei 101 fireworks display at 10:30pm, got there at 11:00pm, waited for an hour, saw the show (with a few hundred thousand other people) and got home at 12:35am. This might not seem like a big deal, but everyone was telling us we would be stuck downtown for hours after the fireworks display waiting for the subway and get home around 3:00am.

We arrived at 11:00pm and found a nice spot on the street to watch the show. It was about 5 blocks away from Taipei 101 and conveniently located in front of a McDonald's. We even enjoyed a delicious 6 piece Chicken McNuggets extra value meal while we waited.

Every minute the street filled up with more and more people. There were thousands of people around us setting off firecrackers, lighting sparklers and taking photos with their cameras and cell phones. One guy offered a sparkler to Charlene and me. What the hell, the Chinese did invent fireworks right?

At 12:00am the building went completely dark and the fireworks started. The show was short and sweet lasting about 3 minutes. Here's a pretty good picture I took:

Literally seconds after the fireworks display ended we ran to the nearest subway entrance. We were lucky and were one of the first hundred or so people to get there after the show finished. Here is a picture of everyone behind us waiting to get into the subway station to go home after the fireworks display.

We ended up getting on the subway at 12:15am and actually back inside our apartment by 12:35am. Everyone said it would take us two to three hours to get home...ha! I might not be the best in my Chinese class but I sure as hell am good with directions and getting in and out of places.

Six hours from now we are going to get on a train and ride to the east coast of Taiwan and visit Hualien for three days. For years I've heard about how beautiful the east coast of is, now I'll finally get a chance to see it.

Happy 2009!

Jim