I did not see a white rabbit in a waistcoat with a pocket watch. The cake I ate did not make me grow taller. The many milk tea drinks I imbibed did not shrink me (they were all delicious, though). However, my tour guides were just about as confusing as the grinning Cheshire cat and I did have one heck of a grand adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I went to Taiwan by myself for a solo vacation before seeing my family in the Philippines. It may not sound like such a big deal to some but for me it was like diving head first into a mysterious hole in the ground not knowing what you would find at the bottom. It was my first time traveling solo to a foreign country since I went to Hong Kong to take the NCLEX 15 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I only (barely) know how to say one sentence in Mandarin: Do you speak English? I was counting on Google Translate to keep me from making any heinous and potentially arrest-able blunders for the four days I was there. Thankfully, I am good at reading signs and following written instructions. I’m a nurse by profession after all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I did a lot of research and pre-booked my tours before flying in. I marked all the interesting sights I planned on visiting on my Google Maps. I did virtual street tours online, read every blog I could and watched every Taipei episode of every travel show I could find. In the end, when I finally got there, I still felt unprepared. I suppose that’s what makes it an adventure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Come and follow along with me as I recall that time I fell down the metaphorical rabbit hole into a most excellent adventure. Meet the characters I met. See the things I saw. Come along now, we mustn’t be late.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An INTJ’s first time traveling solo and co-mingling with strangers and eating strange food<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[94,92,19,18,95],"class_list":["post-16","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-prologue","tag-solo-travel","tag-taipei","tag-taiwan","tag-trip-planning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecheshiretrail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecheshiretrail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecheshiretrail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecheshiretrail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecheshiretrail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thecheshiretrail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41,"href":"https:\/\/thecheshiretrail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16\/revisions\/41"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecheshiretrail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecheshiretrail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecheshiretrail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecheshiretrail.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}