Taipei, Taiwan

I had the opportunity to visit Taiwan, thanks to Tessa! Her parents were born there and her grandparents live in Taipei, so growing up she would visit them every summer.  Her family has an apartment in the city that Tessa and I stayed at. I never would have thought to visit Taiwan, but it was honestly one of my favorite places in Asia.

I took these pictures from a pedestrian footbridge over this busy intersection. There's always lots of traffic, but Taipei has a very user-friendly underground MRT system; even me, who can't speak a smidgen of Chinese, could take the MRT alone no problem.

Buses are not so easy to navigate, but I took them plenty of times with Tessa, who speaks Chinese!

Bus lanes are in the middle of the street, see? Everything in Taipei is well organized.

The 101 Tower, which used to be the tallest building in the world. Tessa's family's apartment was just 3 blocks away from it. We could walk to its huge air-conditioned underground mall from her place.