Despite the 13 hour red-eye from Auckland (via Brisbane), we still felt energetic enough to venture out into the streets of Taipei, Taiwan during our 17 hour layover. The Taiwanese Tourism Bureau runs a great little tour that runs directly out of the Taipei Airport, and drops you directly back to the airport at the end – the best part? It’s free. The airport has storage lockers so that you can take the tour or go and explore the city yourself easily. They provide two tours that you can choose between: a morning tour of the older, cultural parts of the city and an afternoon tour of the more modern metropolitan areas. As we had plenty of time to kill, and wanted to do both (but could only choose one), we opted for the morning tour and also decided we would go and explore the city centre on our own in the afternoon.

The Taipei MRT (Mass Rapid Transit – rail system) is efficient and easy to use, and this was reinforced to us by an older Taiwanese gentleman who was sitting next to us in the train. When he heard us speaking English, he proceeded to tell us, in very broken English, that he was one of the head engineers behind the rail system and that he’d basically designed it himself. We probably would have believed anybody who told us that though.

We ventured into the bustling city centre, with Matt taking a particular interest in the technology district – shop after shop of every piece of tech you can imagine. Kind strangers gifted us an umbrella as we wandered the streets and waded the puddles that the sudden downpour had brought.

Taipei 101 was the world’s tallest building until the completion of the Burj Khalifa in 2010.