Taipei 101
Jun 29th, 2006 by Yue
I arrived in Taipei this afternoon. To get to Taipei from China you have to go through Macau or Hong Kong, which turns a two hour trip to an all day affair. There are rumors that by 2008 there will be direct flights to the mainland China. That would be great since there are so many business travelers between China and Taiwan now.
To my surprise, Taipei is incredibly hot and humid, pretty much like a sauna. One of my customers picked me up at the airport. His English name is “Sting” - just like the rock star.
Its been seven years since I’ve been in Taipei. Back then I was working for Smallworld (now part of GE) and spent several weeks in the city working on a big power project. I actually got to know the city pretty well, so driving around today, I could see lots of new development has happened in the intervening years.
The most famous project is Taipei 101 - the tallest building in the world (for now at least). As the name suggests, the building has 101 floors and stands 508 meters high. It supposedly has the world’s fastest elevators. Finding Taipei101 is easy - you can see it from miles away since aren’t many other tall buildings in Taipei (just like the Petronas towers in Kuala Lumpur). The building is meant to invoke feelings of a classic Chinese Pagoda - and in fact does.
Of course we had to go to the top of building. The view is unbeatable - all of Taipei folds out beneath your feet.