Taipei has been a welcome change from the other Asian stops we've made on this trip. The best part is that you aren't besieged by touts and hawkers asking you to buy things and surrounding you like fresh prey if you accidentally exhibit the slightest interest in their wares.
Overall, the city is very modern and quite easy to get around with an excellent subway system. While there is still an abundance of scooters, traffic generally obeys clearly defined rules like stop lights and lane lines (sort of).
There are tons of street vendors selling all kinds of tasty food including roasted chestnuts.
While there are language difficulties, there are enough people that speak or understand a little English -- combined with our poor but improving Mandarin -- that we can get around reasonably well. And, the food in Taipei is excellent as the Taiwanese are very food obsessed.
Really, it's a lot like New York -- roasted chestnuts, crazy traffic, and people speaking a strange language that we can sometimes understand.(picture of Taipei 101, the world's tallest skyscraper, for now, taken from the front of the "New York New York" shopping mall.)
