After lunch at the food court again, we did the tourist thing. We went up to the 89th floor of Taipei 101. The elevator apparently is the faster in the world. Has a vertical speed of 60mph. From the 5th floor (where the ticket office is) to the 89th floor took 42 seconds! The elevator is pressurized.
Once the elevator began going up, the light dimmed. The ceiling became a constellation gazing thingy. Very tacky. Then the accompanied staff began to speak in 3 different languages. What I could gathered, the person attempted to speak Mandarin, Japanese and English all within the 42 seconds inside the elevator. I could not understand a word of any language! Even my linguistic gifted iron-wife had a bewildered look on her face.
As we stepped out onto the 89th floor, we were greeted by sunshine and friendly staff. We were guided to a booth which handed out personal speaker set. We could just walk and listen to all the explanation. The view from the 89th floor was majestic. I did not realize Taipei was surrounded by mountains until I was looking out the windows. Taipei used to have only 200,000 people; in a mere 30 years, it has grown to over 2 millions. We saw adjacent towns as well; they were more like the suburns. We even saw one of the three dampers used to stop the building from swaying. Very cool.
As we were having a cup of coffee at the end of our 89th floor visit, we saw these two kids screaming and running around. We commented that where was the security guard. He was there to kick an older Western tourist off a step labeled as "For Children only". But when these kids screamed like no tomorrow and being rude, this security guard was nowhere to be found. So Audrey and I commented about these kids. After that, I realized the parents were just sitting at the next table having coffee; I believed we saw loud enough that these parents had heard us. The kids finally returned to the "nest" quietly.
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