When I thought about culling our photos down to a reasonable number for this post I thought it would be easy. After all it was our last day, we’d packed and only had a few hours to kill till we had to leave our wonderful room. One quick visit to one national monument. How many pictures could we take? How wrong was I?
By lunchtime we’d packed but as our plane wasn’t flying out till 2330 (11:30pm) our lovely landlady allowed us to stay till 6pm so we decided to hop on the MRT again and shoot off to see the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall.
This stop is a definite ‘Wow’. You can follow our trail on the first picture where we started at the MRT station on the lower right of the map. Turning left towards ‘the square’ the first thing to hit us was the giant CKS Theatre Hall. This impressive building is beautifully decorated as you can see under the eaves and around the walls. A few steps further in and ‘kapow’ the magnificent CKS Arches appears. I know these look impressive in the pics but have a close look under the first arch in the 6th picture. Those tiny ants are people. Now check out the scale of the arch again.
After getting knocked out by the Arches we came to the ‘Square’ and immediately saw the mirror reflection of the theatre on the far side. This impressive hall is the CKS Concert hall.
Turning right we found ourselves on the edge of a gigantic space (‘Democracy Square’) and several hundred meters away was the dominating feature of the park, Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. (Want to know more of this famous man see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiang_Kai-shek). This building looked huge from a distance then as we got closer it seemed to grow. Huge is an understatement. The mainland Chinese will probably have me shot for saying this but Tiananmen Square in Beijing has only size over this place. Otherwise CKS Memorial Hall along with it’s theatre and concert halls and those magnificent arches and the gardens complex eats it alive. Again look closely at the 4th picture after the arches photo at the people in the giant doorway to get a perspective on the scale of it.
In the Hall there are ceremonial guards presumably protecting the statue of CKS and several galleries and displays. The hall is used for several purposes but mostly is devoted to CKS.
After we’d had a look through the hall (and had a feed) we left the CKS Hall via the Northern (left side on the map) and wandered across the front of the hall to the gardens on the south (right) side. I don’t know how they constantly do it but the Chinese have a knack for making the most beautiful, enchanting gardens on this planet and this garden (mirrored on the north side too) is no exception. Though the rain was tumbling down we strolled along winding paths, past ponds and fountains to the main (south) lake. All through Taiwan we’ve seen some pretty big ‘goldfish’ and these were on par with previous specimens. Some of the Koi were well over 75cms long but one stood out from the rest. Notice the striking ‘Arctic White’ koi amongst the others. With its long flowing tail it was glorious. Following a few pictures on and around the bridge we carried on sighting squirrels and a myriad of bird life. Within a few steps we were back at the MRT station and headed to Nanjing Sanmin MRT and our room.
Our friend Holly stopped by to say goodbye and at the pre-arranged time of 6:30pm our shuttle car collected us for delivery at the airport which is over an hour away from the CBD. We grabbed a quick bite at the airport. Well, actually it was a great meal but who’s counting? Then AirAsia jammed us into their flying sardine can for the flight back home to Penang.
I will try to do a summary of Taipei soon for anyone considering visiting. So watch out for the next exciting chapter. Same Bat-time. Same Bat-Channel.
Cheers
Garry