The hostel served free breakfast starting at 8:30 am. We woke up before 8 am for the free breakfast and we realized the food was mostly gone after half an hour. We met a new friend; her name is Ashley and she has been backpacking across Asia.

First Stop: Elephant Mountain

Today is Catey’s day to plan and since she loves hiking, our day was packed with hiking adventures. We took the subway to our first location, which was Elephant Mountain. When we walked up towards the hiking trail, we split up into two groups: one taking the easy but slower trail and the other taking the much more challenging but faster trail. Brittany and I weren’t quite fit for the steep hill that Catey and Ashley were going to climb.

In the end, we met up and hiked up together because Catey realized the trail goes towards different directions.

​Before hiking back down, we met an old lady resting on a quiet hill. She was playing some old Chinese music on her radio while reading. We had a fun conversation with her and we found out she was from Indonesia. Her husband is Taiwanese, which is why is currently working here. Her children are back in Indonesia. She cut up a pomegranate and offered us some. This was one of the highlights of the day.

We also stopped by this temple to get a reading. Are we superstitious or what?

​​Next stop: Lunch at Aquatic Addictions

Ashley has been in Taipei for some time so she recommended us to visit Aquatic Addiction for lunch. It was a huge fish market with a supermarket of Japanese sushi, sashimi, and lunch boxes.

Next stop: Yangmingshan National Park

After lunch, the four of us went to our next location: Yangmingshan National Park. We tried to find a hot spring to bath in but we missed our stop so we decided to do it another day.

​Next stop: Raohe Night Market

After, we traveled back to the hostel because we planned on going to the Raohe Night Market for dinner with Ashley, who was meeting up with a friend there.

We went to Shilin Night Market last night so going to another night market and seeing all the delicious food was a new experience. Raohe is more of a food market while Shilin sold souvenirs and had games in addition to food stands.

​We saw a line forming so we lined up to see what was going on. We didn’t regret it one bit!

Last stop: Barcode

After dinner, we decided to go to a club to experience the Taipei’s nightlife. I personally am not a big fan of clubbing but I am a fan of new experiences. Compared to Shanghai’s clubs, this Taipei club was less crowded, reeked less of smoke, and had quite good drinks.