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i'm back from my four day trip to taipei, taiwan. a very nice city to visit, and i'd recommend it to anyone interested in visiting a chinese city.

• the people are really friendly, nice, and orderly. pretty different than visiting the big cities on the mainland. people on the street looked happy, and they were down to earth interacting with them.
• the city is more run down than i had imagined. as in, lots of crumbling sidewalks and older buildings. technology and infrastructure wise it's rather modern but it doesn't have a million lit billboards and animated displays to distract you. when i took the bus to the outskirts, parts reminded me of how hong kong and shanghai looked like 30, 40 years ago. i guess what i'm saying is that it's no tokyo. :p
• street food culture is awesome. lots of carts, stands, hole in the wall joints, and of course the tons of night markets serving all sorts of foods, snacks, and desserts. there are also plenty of hip and fancy restaurants to choose from as well.
• i love the stationary and book stores. many are mulit-level and they carry many cute accessories and things.
• MILLIONS OF SCOOTERS! it feels like there are swarms of them, and they don't hesitate to ride on the sidewalk and pedestrian roads so you have to always be on the lookout for fear of them running you over. most are skilled riders since they'll weave out of your way but if you aren't used to it, it is quite scary. man, woman child, even dog (children and dogs as passengers with adult riders) are on scooters and you see all them lined the streets everywhere. vespas are rare, but i did spot a few on the streets. it's mostly dominated by many similar chinese models.
• take-out sushi places are rather decent and inexpensive (around 50cents USD for a piece). i certainly wish i had the option to just pick up a few pieces of sushi as a snack for less than few bucks. but then again, i'd also wish for the amount of family marts and 7 elevens actually stocked with yummy prepared and packaged asian snacks and drinks.
• the country is also really easy to navigate by in english. there are enough people with a decent command of english; and their metro (bus, subway, train) lines all have easy to read maps and english directions. also most street and road signs have english on them. while hong kong is definitely the easiest to get around as a visitor/expat in my opinion, taiwan i'd probably say taipei also ranks pretty well in that regard.

i'd love to visit the city again in the future, and to be honest i have more of an inclination to go back to taiwan than south korea. while i left seoul with intentions of visiting again, there are many things i missed and actually want to come back to taiwan for.