After a nice simple light breakfast at the hotel, we walked to the Main MRT terminal ( their BART) and travelled for 6 stops to Taipei City Hall ---all for $.60 pretty cheap would be like from Fruitvale to Fremont.
Oh, yes most of the rest of the group took at tour of North Taiwan (extra cost)
Tons of Scooters here, everyone wears helmet and scoot repair/ maintenance garages are almost every other shop with mom & pop eating stalls in between.
Were very impressed with the number of OPENED and clean BATHROOMS at the MRT Terminals.
Also, passenger platforms had sliding glass or plexiglass doors to prevent folks from falling off the platform very cool
Taipei 101 Shopping Mall, Pretty BIG with tons of high-end stores like at the Civic Plaza in Las Vegas. It has the same design as SF Shopping Center but about 3 times as many stores.
Didn't take the trip to the top though...
Left and got back on MRT to go to Guang Hua Digital Plaza.
Geek that I am found the whole area very interesting... a bunch of little stores handling brand name computers, especially PC notebooks in the streets around the Plaza....Even an Apple Authorized reseller.
The Plaza is a 6 story building all the name brand vendors in booths with their many notebooks of course NO MACS on first floor with some eating places... Sort of like a PC fair.
Second floor and up to 5th floor, the selling vendors with booths and prices...a lot of samo samo so reminded me of the early days of PC World in San Francisco but much more organized with permanent booths...kind of like the Golden Triangle area in Hong Kong. Also clean bathrooms...
Bottomline got a nice medium size optical USB mouse to use with the Netbook at a small booth (not at Guang Hua Plaza) in a walkthrough alleyway to a scooter repair shop separated by an automatic glass sliding door for $5 US.tax included...Mom found out it was automatic when she pushed the door. She was impressed with the Computer seller/ owner a younger guy that was an engineer and spoke pretty good English...
At Guang Hua got 4 rechargeable SONY CycleEnergy AA batteries for $8 after comparing prices on the 3 floors...if you needed batteries, these guys all have them...
Looked at iPAD covers/ stands....very few. Pricing better if ordered via Internet.
They did have a dock for $1000 NT or about $33. Don't think it's that good a deal...
Only 1 vendor had any Android tablets and he had just gotten it in,,,price was OK but above what I was willing to pay>$200
Came back to our hotel area and walked around the various interesting shops here....lots of hardware stores, mom & pop eating places, scooter repair stores. clothing stores, luggage stores...
BTW, it was Houston weather, muggy, humid off & on scattered rain and we walked a LOT from the MRT stations to/from 101 Taipei, to Guang Hua (shortest 2 blocks), and to/from hotel.
