Taiwan Days 11 and 12

The priority of these two days was to work on one of the last things for obtaining my citizenship – getting my passport !

The truth is, I already have a Taiwanese passport, but it’s a special passport for people that don’t actually have citizenship. I was basically applying for a ‘citizenship passport’.

DAY 11:
In any case, since I had been at my Airbnb for over a week, I wanted to do some cleaning. I spent the morning cleaning and doing laundry, and after that, I headed off to the Bureau of Consular Affairs, not aware of what awaited me there. Here is a photo I took on the way there:

And what awaited me there? Having to wait a total of about 3 hours to get my passport application submitted. There were 2 long lines to get through, the 2nd being the longer of the two. This is a line of the first line I took:

Finally around 5:00 when I was able to submit my passport application, I walked as quickly as I could to the Chiang Kai Shek memorial area because it was close by and because I thought the whole area closed at 6:00 pm, but found out it was just the memorial hall that closed at 6:00pm. The grounds itself seem open all the time, like a park, and other buildings in that area have different closing times depending on events/dining options.

Here are all the photos I took from that area:

In the theatre first floor, there was also this really delicious froyo place I stopped by that had USD-equivalent pricing, about $6 for a bowl:

After I walked around the memorial grounds, I decided to just stay home the rest of the day and work a bit on my research paper for my summer class. I was so tired from waiting around all day at the government office, so I did not head out to a night market that day. Here are some other photos from that day:

DAY 12:
The biggest priorities of this day were to retrieve my passport in the afternoon and also have lunch with some family. That gave me some time in the morning, and I wanted to st art visiting some museums. I decided to visit the National history museum, which is right next to the beautiful botanical gardens. It was too hot to walk around the beautiful gardens, but I got some photos at least. Here are the photos I took from the gardens and from the museum:

Oh also before I went to the gardens, I finally ordered breakfast at like one of those mom and pop shops. I was very proud at myself, and realize I also ordered too much food:

After I looked through the museum, I actually waited around inside for a bit to escape the heat, as it was a 30 minute total journey (between walking and taking the metro) to meet up with family.

Here are some photos I took on the way to the restaurant:

Here is some of the food we ate:

After lunch, I headed back to the bureau of consular affairs to retrieve my passport, and was relieved to retrieve it because I thought they would reject it because of my passport photo but it was okay just as I had thought !:

After obtaining my citizenship passport, I headed back to the Airbnb because I felt like I needed to lie down. I also thought about what to do for the rest of the day, and decided I would try to find another smaller night market to visit. I decided on the Le Hua nightmarket. Here are the photos I took on the way there and of the nightmarket: