which was absolutely enormous!! It was 12 floors high and had a food court in the basement with all sorts of food from all over the world! And the around the corner at the bottom of the inside part was a massive aquarium with all sorts of weird and wonderful sea creatures in!! There was also a Santa’s grotto, which seemed to be Ian’s favourite part!!!! We were quite surprised by how much Christmassy stuff was in evidence - we hadn’t been sure how many people in Taiwan would celebrate it, but apparently quite a few did! We took the lift up to the twelfth floor, which was quite a ride as it was a glass lift. This floor contained swanky restaurants which were pretty pricey, but had some ace views over the city. It was seriously windy at the top - you felt like you could almost feel the building swaying! We ventured outside briefly and it was like being in a wind tunnel, and really quite cold - so we didn’t stay out for long!!! A few floors down was one of the only English bookshops in Taipei, and

we found a guidebook on Japan which we’d been looking for for quite some time. We headed back to Jerry’s and had a pleasant evening getting acquainted over a bottle or two of red wine!

The next morning we were treated to a breakfast of croissants and cheese - and proper cheese as well! No more laughing cow for us!! We’d had quite a lie in that morning, as we were eating breakfast Jerry came home for his lunch break!! I think the early mornings and the illnesses we’d had had caught up with us!! We went with Jerry to his office - the Taipei branch of Aria Technology. Jerry had fixed up a couple of old bikes for us, as that was apparently the best way to get around the local area, and although we were initially a little unsure of ourselves, we soon got into the swing of things!! We needed to use the internet to look into places to go in Taiwan and do a little research on Japan, and there