Bottom line for the first day. We did 9 of the 27 scavenges during the 12 hours from 10 AM to 10 PM. Many people in Taiwan speak English and some signs are in English, but train schedules and other rather key items are incomprehensible.
The teams met in the hotel lobby at 10 AM. Each team was handed a booklet of 27 scavenges -- things to do. Two were mandatory (eating). We walked right to the main train station to buy a subway card. First scavenge we did was to identify the 4 languages that subway station announcements are made in - Taiwanese, another Taiwnese dialect, "Chinese" and English. we visited the huge memorial to Chiang Kai-Shek, who "led the wars against the Communist Party". We figured out what the 4 main garden areas are in the National Botanical Garden. In the garden, we sat on a bench with the maps and the scavenge book to plot our next moves and Alex collected 4 fat mosquito bites. (No points for that).
At Lungshan Temple we burned incense where people pray for peaceful living. It is peaceful and spiritual just wandering around the halls of the temple, with clouds of burning incense wafting around and people bowing and praying. In order to accomplish the scavenge, we also had to have our fortunes told. On the street outside the temple, we found a master who spent 45 minutes with us. More on that later.
We attended an afternoon concert at the National Concert Hall. "From Mozart to Mahler". Fantastic - and lively and loud with some crashing percussion every now and then, to stave off any temptation to give in to jet lag.
We were seated right near the exit doors, so when the concert ended, we jumped into one of the first taxis lined up outside. We walked through the Holiday Flower Mart, where we bought "something fragrant". The rest of the day, Alex had a few stems of flowers hanging out of his messenger bag. Hopped on the subway for Cantonese dim sum on the second floor of the Brother Hotel -- one of the 5 mandatory food scavenges. Bumped into 2 other teams dim summing.
By then, it was 6:30 and we still had the other mandatory food challenge left to do, so we figured we would have dinner progressively and go right to the next restaurant. Throughout the day, we had been asking people if they knew any of the other 3 named restaurants. Couldn't nail them down, so we chose the remaining option: "trust and chance" - ask a cab driver where he would eat with his family or friends, preferably nearby, and take us there. He took us to a place where the plates of food are out on the sidewalk, covered in plastic wrap, and you point to what you want. They seated us inside and then brought freshly prepared versions of the dishes we had chosen - szechuan green beans with pork crumbles, fried tofu (yum and yum) and sliced cold smoked chicken (yuk). Sidebar on the chopsticks: an oblong container like a wall sconce was nailed above our table and had chopsticks in it, like one might stand forks in a cylinder. Having some doubts about hygiene, I gave the chopsticks a surreptitious wipe under the table with my CVS hand sanitizer. Not sure which is worse, but I chose CVS.
At 8 PM, continuing the eating theme, we hunted for 2 of the 6 xiao chi, or small eats, in the Shilin Night Market. Wandered through crowded rows of stalls where vendors offer all kinds of strange creatures and concoctions bobbing around in oil and other liquids. Omelettes with fishes, all kinds of raw organs in piles, old-looking eggs and so on. We ate tianbula, which was a fried, flat triangle which we later learned was fish, but I thought might be a pig's ear, and "stinky tofu" which was fried and served with a red sauce of I don't know what on the side. My chopsticks cleanliness alarm was even louder when the lady cooking the tianbula handed me some obviously non-virginal chopsticks. Definitely in a work-around mode to eat with the chopsticks.
The last scavenge we could squeeze in by the 10 PM deadline was to snap a picture at the Chengen gate - the last of the 5 original gates to the city. It is obscure and located under a highway overpass and was shrouded, with its ancient crown of decoration peeking above the green construction material. We snapped the picture to prove we were there and dashed back to the hotel, 10 minutes before deadline. What an amazing day!