Special edition of the blog today, because by next Sunday we will have been to Bangkok and returned, traveled on the brand new High Speed Rail here in Taiwan and dined, as special invited guests, with one of the world’s richest families…an interesting week!I’ll write about Bangkok next Monday, as we leave this afternoon.
I traveled on a grade 3 field trip on the newly opened bullet train here from Taipei all the way down to the south of the island along the west coast yesterday. It was a magic experience for the kids and also the adults. Cass and I have been on the shinkansen in Japan and France’s TGV, and this train was a good match for these two in terms of speed, smooth ride and luxury. I’ve included some photos of the mean front end of the train as it pulled into Hsinchu station.
On Monday night, we dined with a parent couple associated with the school. We, along with 4 other couples traveled to Neihu to their building. We were zipped up to the top floor by lots of helpers and were treated to an absolutely amazing experience. We checked out the newly built Japanese room and garden, the indoor waterfalls and the opulent living and dining rooms. We dined on a menu of hand selected meals from one of their hotel’s exclusive menus: all specially prepared onsite for us. Our host had personally selected copious amounts of his own reserve red from a chateau in France and it was top shelf. The bottles just kept opening and opening. We were served by a bevy of wait staff, secretaries and personal assistants were there to supply anything we wished for, and generally, we lived in a very rarefied world for a few hours. The hosts are on the Forbes 500 list of the richest people in the world, but are surprisingly down to earth. It was very entertaining and a real eye opener to how only a very few people live. Items on the menu were flown in exclusively for the night’s meal on one of their jets and we heard tales through the night of wealth that we could barely comprehend. At the end of the night, we were very pleased that we had experienced this, but wondered whether our hosts had ever ridden a scooter back home through pouring rain on busy Saturday night streets in a big city…maybe not (and maybe they don’t want to!). Photos: high speed train, Rodin sculptures in the office with Lewy(!), tea ceremony table of one thick piece, Japanese gardens, super meals at a super table!