Taipei Has Blown Us Away! Incredible Day in Taiwan (Xiemending Night Life, Taipei 101, Din Tai Fung)

Ah, that is not a way out. If you're new around here, you're thinking, great, her favorite drink's water. More toys that we don't need. 60 kilometers an hour. What? In a Lyft? Officially at the highest point. Good morning from Taiwan. I thought that would look very creative, that intro with the I love Taiwan behind me. Don't know if it worked or not. Anyway, welcome back to another video. I hope you're all doing well. You join me this morning from a fairly quiet, for this area, Ximending. We've come out again early before the crowds sort of start picking up. I say we, I mean me and you, because Remy's asleep in bed. Coda's watching Toy Story 4 in the hotel room, and George is getting some editing done. So I thought, instead of sitting in a dark hotel room waiting for Remy to wake up, bless him, I would bring you guys out this morning for a little bit of an explore before we head out and do today's main activity, which is very exciting. We are going all the way up to Taipei 101 to hopefully get some incredible views. We've actually got a really clear day today, so hopefully it's a great day that we've chosen to do it. And we're gonna head up there a bit later on. It opens at 11, so we've got a little while until it opens. And I thought, yeah, come out for a little bit of an explore. I'm actually gonna go back to Don Don Donki, because it's so good in there. And last time we were in there, I could look a little bit, but I couldn't sort of take my time because we were with the kids. And parents know when you're traveling with kids, the priority is obviously keeping them safe, keeping them entertained. It's not for like slowly browsing around the skincare section of a shop at this part of our lives anyway, and that's okay. But having the time to sneak out and do this now is like filling my heart a little bit, because actually today is our last day in Taiwan, which makes me so sad, because honestly, this place has blown me away. I have fond memories of our first trip here back in 2018, but nothing like this. And it's really actually quite, come as a bit of a shock this time, because when we planned the trip, we planned loads of different places to go to in Asia. Taiwan was one of them. We had a good flight here. It made sense sort of coming in, coming out with the places we're going before and after this. And it was sort of another one on the list of where we wanted to go. But honestly, this has been a highlight for me of this whole trip. I have absolutely loved it here. Both of us were saying last night how sad we are to be leaving. And yeah, it's just come as a bit of a surprise to us how much we've enjoyed this trip. Not that we were expecting to not enjoy it, but it's exceeded how much we thought we'd love it. And I don't know, maybe it's the area we've stayed in this time, or the stuff we've decided to do on the itinerary, but it just feels extra special. And yeah, we wanted to go into a bit more of that in today's video, because if you're coming here, maybe we can help you plan your trip a little bit. But anyway, without further ado, I will get more onto that later. For now, we're heading into happiness for all from Japan. Let's go. Okay, time check. We're gonna see how long I am in here, okay? I'm taking a note of the time now, and we'll see what time we end up leaving. One hour later, we are back into the real world. What an amazing shop. I mainly got my three things I went in for and got out with. Skincare stuff, some really nice Japanese skincare. I bought something there the other day, and I've really enjoyed using it for the last few days, so I've gone back to get another one, because I know I'm not gonna have it in England, and it's just worth it. I got some Pokemons for Codes, because he's currently obsessed with Pokemon, and it makes me so happy seeing him. Like, he's saying all the phrases from like the Pokemon movies and stuff, and it's just so cute. So I got him some Pokemon, because I can't resist. And lastly, some snacks. So I'm gonna do a little bit of a haul when we get back to the room, and then we're gonna get in a taxi and head over to Taipei 101. But honestly, the difference between coming out this time of day and coming out in the evening is like wild. It's absolutely insane. This is calm and peaceful and quiet, and as much as I love the chaos of later, it is a lot of fun. It is quite overwhelming. One of the most overstimulating streets I've ever been on. I think I'm starting to know my way around a little bit. You say that, and now I'm just, no, I do know. I'm gonna be confident. I'm not gonna look at my phone. I'm not gonna look on Google Maps. I think I know the way back to the hotel from here. But yeah, I can't believe how different it is. Like, I know the phrase is, it's as different as night and day. Literally is that. Crazy, but honestly, how late things open is kind of crazy. Like, the main shops still aren't open, and a lot of them don't open until like midday. There was a coffee shop George wanted to go to the other day. My hair is in my mouth. There was a coffee shop George wanted to go to the other day, and we had to like hang around until midday for his coffee, which is just so late. It's super late, and I assume they open late as well into the evening. I wouldn't know. I'm normally asleep by then. But honestly, it's like super late, in my opinion, for a big city like this. There's enough people out and about now that would go shopping, but they just don't. They just don't open until later, and it's, I mean, it allows it to be a lot more calm in the daytime, I suppose. So if you are heading to Taipei, I'd recommend coming to see it this time of day as well, and sort of getting your bearings and looking around. There's still a lot of street vendors, and you can have some street food. There's a few places that are open, but definitely also see it at night, because the chaos of the evening here is something quite special, I would say. Okay, heading back to the hotel. Ah, that is not a way out. Back up. I could have not grabbed one of these again. I don't know if I'm going to have a chance to get another one on our trip. So good. The best milk bubble milk tea I've ever had. Brown sugar. Make the pearls themselves there. You may have seen it in the vlog the other day. Was it yesterday? The day before yesterday, I think. And then they get like a dinosaur flamethrower and roast the brown sugar on top, and it's so delicious. So I grabbed my opportunity, even though it was a bit of a queue. It moved very quickly. This might be one of my favorite drinks ever, actually. I am a big fan of coffee. I do love a glass of water, as boring as that sounds. I don't know, I find water great. If you're new around here, you're thinking, great, her favorite drink's water. This is going to be a fun channel to subscribe to. I promise you, I am fun. I just like water. But this is getting up there with one of my favorite drinks ever. Mm-mm-mm. Okay, Lucy is back in the room. She's just feeding Remy, and she's told me, she wants me to go through this bag of all these things she bought and tell you what they are, which is going to be impossible for me because I'm going to have no idea what, do you mean the snacks as well? And the beauty stuff? The beauty stuff. Okay, right, let's start with this. This is A. So this is a makeup utensil that you use to draw on your face. So basically what you can do is you can add tears, you can add eyebrows and eyelashes by the looks of it. So that's that. Ah, this. Now I know what this is. This is a dog grooming brush. I'm not sure why she got it because we don't have a dog. Oh, it's a flexible shampoo brush. So it actually has built-in shampoo. You no longer have to wash your hair. You just grab this every day, once a day, pull it through, cleans your hair at the same time. Shampoo brush. Okay, she bought some of these. I don't know what they are. They look yummy. Vanilla kind of biscuity things. More toys that we don't need. We don't need this. Ooh, these kind of little like chocolate mochi balls. Wow, you went crazy on snacks. They look very yummy. I am actually. Josh spends all day walking around the hotel room looking for snacks. I do spend all day looking for snacks. Another toy. Okay. What is this? Ah, of course. This is, maybe you don't want to show this on camera. This is Cream for Lucy's, you know. Yeah. The issue that she had that we didn't say on camera. No, it's not. It's face cream. So that's prescribed. Should clear up in a few days. These are yum. Bath salts. Because we have so many baths in these hotel rooms. We actually, in this hotel room, we do have a bath. What is this? No idea. Eye bag cream, I think. That was a funny one, because there was a lady next to me also taking a photo on Google Translate. Oh, really? But mine was better than hers, and I actually translated it. Oh, did you help her? Yeah. Ooh, and a nice Kyoto lemonade. What's the accent? Kyoto. It's kind of, I like to do an Italian accent when I say sort of Japanese words. Okay, good. Good, well done. Well done. Okay, just jumped in our Uber, and actually really good lighting for the vlog, because this is an Uber. It's the app that we use to book cars. And we're in a Tesla Model 3, which is cool. Definitely, when we first visited Taiwan and Taipei, I don't think Teslas were even maybe in the country. This was 2018. I could be completely wrong. I'm getting my timelines all wrong. I remember when they came to our small town in England, we started seeing Teslas. Obviously, they're everywhere now. But quite cool that this is an Uber comfort. Quite cool that Teslas are like common Ubers here. You sound like a dinosaur saying that. Do I? Is that just normal? Is it? I'm still like, ooh, Tesla. Think about where we are in the world. Like, there's so much technology here. Oh, 100%. Like, if anywhere's going to have them. They have electric cars. Are they going to fly next? Explain to me how an electric car works. No, but I don't know. Maybe that is me. Maybe that's me showing my lack of knowledge. They've gone up to 40, isn't it? No, no, no, no. Maybe, is our Teslas normal Ubers? I guess in the US they are. I'm in every other country. Is it? I don't know. In the UK? I have no idea. Anyway. I don't know. Sorry. Is it not? Okay. Comment below. We've started a debate here. Coda has been my coffee buddy since 2021. Since he was born. He was... Yes, when you were... No, sorry. 2022. Getting my dates mixed up. 2022 you were born. Definitely. I definitely know that. And things have not changed. This way, this way, this way. Good boy. We found a nice little coffee. We're going to go right up to the top. We're inside the mall. I don't know if you're... I don't know how easy it is to like navigate around here, but the coffee shop looks really nice. We're going to go up, right up to the top in a minute. On the inside though, not on the outside like the Netflix guy. But this is the place. Curista Coffee. Looks pretty nice. Okay. Just waiting for the coffee. I'm not sure why, they've got a beautiful Victoria Arduino espresso machine over there. They're not using it. They're using this small, like automatic espresso machine, where they kind of just press a button and the espresso comes out. I'm like tempted to ask why they're not using the main espresso machine. Just as a coffee person, it's interesting. There's the main coffee machine. That's so weird. I've just settled that. And then for my order, I can't, maybe it's a decaf thing? For my order, they've gone onto the main espresso machine, but every other order I've seen them make, they've made it there. Interesting. Anyway, we've got our coffee. Let's try it. Curista Coffee, Taiwan, Taipei. Very nice. Slight fruity edge on that. Lovely. Yeah, nice. My thing. As we speak, we are currently out on a walk. Lucy and the kids are just over there playing in the park. I'm going to catch them up. What I had to do first was charge my phone. A huge thank you to Blue Yeti for sponsoring this part of the vlog and providing us with the Blue Yeti Elite 300, 2,400 watt powerhouse. This thing has 11 different ports and this is just the perfect accompaniment for the kind of things we do, road trips, outdoor adventures, even just days out for a couple of hours, out in the woods with no access to electricity. I now carry around, since we got the Blue Yeti, a small portable coffee machine in the back of the car at all times. So all I have to do is plug that in and we have power to our coffee machine. I brought some ground coffee with me. Oh, it smells so good. Smells better out in the fresh air here. My water goes in and whilst I'm waiting for my coffee to brew, I can charge my laptop and I can run all of this simultaneously, effortlessly, because this thing is ridiculously powerful charging. We're going to leave a link in the description to the Blue Yeti. It's easy to charge. You just plug it into the wall at home, charge it up, and this thing can last for days. 100%, just a minute ago, said 27 days. Obviously that's going to change depending on how you use it, how intensely you use it, et cetera. What a thing. It has a little bit of weight to it. It does have weight to it. It's fairly heavy, but absolutely something you can bring around with you. We can put it in the back of the car. You can also connect it to the app where you can set certain power cycles and you can wake it up on standby, things like that. Okay, my coffee is brewed and I even bought a mug with me. So I can pour this beautiful cup of coffee out in the open. Enjoy this whilst the Blue Yeti takes care of all the charging and electrical needs. So yes, if this interests you and fits in with your life or something you want to go and do, then do head down to the description, check it out. There's going to be a link there. Highly recommend this thing. There's a link in the description. Go and check it out. I'm going to enjoy the rest of my coffee and I hope you enjoy the rest of this vlog. Hoda was just climbing on here. It could have been very dangerous. I think we made a mistake maybe showing him the Netflix documentary. He's now been trying to climb everything. Coffee is very good, by the way. Does anyone need the toilet? I don't know. Hard question. In a different topic, other than needing the toilet, this is actually a really beautiful mall. It goes up so high. We're actually going to go. So the mall's kind of next door, right? Yeah, I think we go this level five. We need to go the elevator that goes up. It's like the fastest elevator. In the world. No, don't quote us on that, is it? So it goes from the fifth to the 89th floor in 37 seconds with speeds up to 60 kilometers an hour. What? In a lift? That's kind of weird. And just going directly upwards at that speed that you kind of don't even feel when you're in an elevator. Interesting. Anyway, we are so happy to be here. It's so cool. It's so luxurious, actually, and high-end. Oh, yeah. We came here, we looked outside it and took a selfie in 2018. We were young travelers and money was not available. The pockets were shallow, shall we say. So we were like, oh, maybe we'll grab it one day. But at the time, we didn't. Yes, no, no, we didn't. We literally were like, well, we need this amount of money for dinner. We were literally back then traveling day-to-day, like how much are we spending per day? The less we spent per day, the longer the trip would be in our heads. So we didn't know if we'd be able to make YouTube like full-time at that point. So we were like, if we spend money doing that, then that's like potentially four or five dinners trying different food and we love traveling for food and stuff like that. Or like even a night in a hotel or something. Yeah, we had to choose back then. We're just thinking back to the Netflix doc and just thinking that we couldn't even get up to the first bit. I couldn't jump and reach that, but how? I'm trying to work out if I could. Like it would use a lot of my strength to jump up there and then potentially like do like a pull-up and then try and, no, because you've got to basically do a muscle-up just to begin with, just to get up there. That's the worst bit, so it goes like this to begin with, but then the building goes like that. Yes, right, right. So that bit where it was pushed up, he just made it look so easy. He must be a tall guy. Gonna justify myself not being able to do it by just saying he's a little bit taller than me. Okay, we're about to go up. So we're starting on the 89th floor and then we're gonna go up to the 101st, wait. And then we're going up to the 101st floor. So we're in Taipei 101. We're going up to 101. That makes sense. 101 floors, is that why it's called that? All these years? No, it sounds like I'm joking. I'm not, I didn't, never put that together. Yeah, I know, very excited. Right, let's go. So Guinness World Record, the world's fastest passenger elevator. Hold on. Ooh, I'm ready. Whoa. Yeah, your ears are going, that is, feels so weird. There's a screen here, shows you how quickly we're going. We're already so far up. Wow. How are we going to do this lift again? That is really weird. I'm gonna go on this lift again. Yeah, we will go down. Okay, here we are. 84, 89. Thank you, sorry, thank you so much. Wow, and as soon as you walk out, you're treated to this crazy view, wow. Sorry, how did he climb on the outside of this? No, I could not be on the outside of this. I can barely be on the inside. He was actually on his window, yeah. And you're right, the windows are doing that right now. How did he climb, how would, I need to go back and watch it again properly. And not this, and the door, and we opened it and we fell down, imagine. Imagine, yeah. Imagine, imagine, we had sticky web and sticky hand, and we could probably stick to the wall and then. True. And then climb up. Yeah, we went with the sticky hands and webs. Maybe he did. Yeah, maybe he's part spider. Wow, I mean, the view here. Yeah, it's a little bit hazy, it's very hazy actually, but I mean, you can see, it's so cool. What an amazing view. We're going even higher. So it's actually pretty chilled up here. I guess they limit the numbers, it's not like a big crowded thing. Sometimes you come to these viewing places, like do you remember Burj Khalifa? Yeah, that was like. This packed so many people. Yeah, this is lovely. This is nice and chilled. Over this side quickly, you can really start to see out of the city and it's just mountains for what looks like miles and miles. But if I'd been here and he hadn't climbed it, right? I'd be like, wow, this is crazy. But knowing he's climbed it, it's making me feel like more overwhelmed by the height of it. Yeah, I know. Like it's looked up like. But with no ropes, that's the thing. Yeah, just a little view of the mountains. Really is cool, the landscape here. It's in the mountains here, darling. Wow. There's a whole like garden in the sky bit here as well. Like it's really cool what they've done up here. Okay, floor 101 in Taipei 101. Never been up here in my life. They've got like an exhibition on this thing, ferns and orchids. So it's all kind of dressed up in ferns and orchids, which is lovely actually. It's very calm up here, it's peaceful, it's quiet. There's a couple of people enjoying a drink, but that's about it. Imagine having like a party up here or something. Oh my goodness, yeah. Did you say about the exhibition? Yeah, yeah. It's really nice. And the view does not get better from up here because we are officially at the highest point. I love it up here. Oh, hang on a minute. We do have another floor. Here we go. Now you're on the top bit. Now we are at the top. Do you not feel nervous doing that, mate? That's amazing. Nope, I don't feel nervous doing this. Wow, you're gonna be the next climber of this building, aren't you? Can you imagine? I love those bridges. It's such a cool view. Actually just getting a feel for what he did. No, I know. Because we're like stepping here and he was probably like walking along this ledge. So you kind of get the same idea, really. Really similar, actually. Really, yeah. He said it was windy when he got to the top. We can probably say we kind of did it now, can't we? Wow. All the way from here. I mean, yeah, we can say that we've done something similar. Down in the food court area of the mall now. There are so, so many options here, but there was only one place we wanted to go to and that was Din Tai Fung because we love the restaurant. We go in the Philippines all the time when we're there, but this is where it originated, here in Taiwan. It's Taiwanese. So we always say, like, try the food from the place if you can, when you travel. So we wanted to try it here, definitely. It's been about an hour's wait. We've already waited around an hour. They give you one of these slips with like a number on and then you just wait in line. They call your number and you actually can order online first. So we've already put our order in. So hopefully it'll be shown to our table. The food will start to come and it'll be fine. So be prepared for a wait if you want to do this. It's very, very popular. It's a popular restaurant anywhere, all over the world, but particularly here, it seems like a busy one. Okay, we are in and we have been told to follow the robot to our table, which is hilarious. Coda's loving that, obviously. It's so cool. Look at how he's walking. I swear. See, first we get a Tesla this morning, now a robot in a restaurant. Yeah, it is very cool. It was cool. Wow, it's massive. You don't have to tip robots, right? Let me try and do my magic. We're currently mudging in some Pokemons. I'm going to try my best, okay? Ready? Put your hand on here. Say, magic, magic, Pokemon. Magic, magic, Pokemon. Lift it off. I don't know. Ah, I got it. Did it work again? Yeah. Another new one. Okay, so we've eaten here before. So we've eaten here a few times in different countries, but this is the first time trying the original Char Long Bao. So excited. And I love this sauce. I always add a bit of extra. The soup is so good. I'm messing this up. I have done this before, I promise you. It's just so good. I love it. Timeless. Wow. So the dessert ones have come. Might be a bit hot, okay? Wow. Hang on a second. It's dripping. Wow. It is a dumpling. It's a chocolate dumpling. Chocolate dumpling. It's like a really rich, dark chocolate sauce. It's so good. Okay, it's a couple of hours later now. I've actually snuck out again. I'm starting to make a habit of it. And I found a nail salon and they were about to close. They fitted me in at the end. And then I got my nails done. I overdrew them and they did an amazing job. 5.99 for a pool gel manicure, which I think is a really good price. Considering Taipei's definitely not the cheapest city in Asia we've travelled to, by any means, it's actually been quite expensive since being here. So I thought that was quite a good price. And yeah, it's great while travelling to get that done sort of on the road. And I managed to do it without Remy waking up. So that's a bonus as well. It's so nice. I was even busier coming out at this time. It's now half past nine at night. And it's the latest we've been out so far. And I think all the food stores that are going to open are open now. And it was absolutely manic. But I really love it. I've thoroughly enjoyed this trip. And I honestly think the location we're in has made it as well. You can see I'm literally in the main area now. And now I can see our hotel. So if you're coming here, cannot recommend choosing this location enough. So we've been at Westgate and it's been a really lovely stay. We've really enjoyed it. So yeah, location is everything when you travel, I think. And if you can base yourself in the area that you want to be spending the most time in, it makes all the difference. So yeah, literally. In the time I filmed that clip, I am now back at the hotel. As you can see, I'm in here. So yeah, so good. But I'm actually going to go past it slightly and just go to a couple more shops because why not? Last night here. Enjoy it while we're here. And I don't know when we're next going to be back. Yeah, loved it this time. Thank you so much for watching this video. I will end it here. So if you enjoyed it, please do hit the thumbs up. Subscribe if you're new. Comment, end of vlog, comment if you're still here watching at the end of the video. And we'll go through and count all the comments. We really appreciate you watching all of this. So my eyes are like dancing around the screen, filming this. There's so much to look at all the time here. Yeah, thanks so much for watching. And we'll see you very soon in the next video from a brand new destination. So see you then.