Liblog: Terrific Taiwan 2

Now, where were we? Ah yes, I remember.

It came to the first concert day, and everyone was well rested before the first performance of the tour. We’d all recovered from any travelling aches or hungers, but just to be sure we’d give the best performance we could, we spent most of that day resting in our rooms, and watching Madagascar 3 together. Brilliant movie, well I think anyways. We would’ve gone outside and done something peaceful, like the cinema; however the weather held us back.

The well-rested period had past, and we took our coach a short journey to the concert hall. We were shocked; never before had we seen such an interestingly designed venue, in an amazing Chinese style. It was really cool how the concert hall was almost identical to the theatre house, and the view of all the monuments around the square really was quite a sight. We hadn’t even seen the stage yet. 

Time passes, and a sound-check later we’re resting in the changing rooms. A light snack and we were ready to perform, and I'm glad to say our first concert ever in Taiwan was great. One of the highlights was of course our version of the song ‘Moon’; in which we conquered the challenge of singing a full song in Mandarin.

It was quite a challenge to learn; Mandarin has lots of different ways to pronounce the words, so we had to watch a version sung before to get the idea. After a YouTube click, we’d get the English phonetic spelling. It would take far too long to learn from the Chinese symbols. Then comes the melody, staging, and like a good soufflé it was baked to perfection.

On stage, it was amazing to get such a huge reaction from the fans and people watching. From the very mysterious ‘ah’ opening, to Michael Ustynovych-Repa’s sweet final lines, it was a great experience. Of course, some of us had sung different language songs before in the Philippines and Japan; but this occasion was clearly very special to the Taiwanese fans. The English Translation was very interesting to hear, as well as the story behind why the moon is so special.

Throughout the tour, we were going to do 7 shows. The second was the day after the first on the Wednesday, same venue, and same time. It was pretty much a same day sort of thing, but on that day we saw the changing of guards in the Shrine to the Martyrs. The sun was beaming down, the birds were calling to their mum's, and so we decided to go have a look at the beautiful Chinese monument. It was interesting; we spent most of the time arguing at how they kept their eyelids open for so long. Matthew Madine had a go, and was pretty good at it.

That's the end of part 2. See you in a bit.

Liblog: Terrific Taiwan

Why hello there.

We’ve travelled far and wide: from Canada to Japan, Korea to Ireland, America to the Philippines and even London to the Channel Islands. But today we turn a new chapter in the Libera world travel book, and set foot in a place we do not know anything of.

Taiwan.

It’s really interesting to visit new places for the first time. Not only have you got a totally different culture, but also you’ve got new places to go, new people to see and new venues to sing at. We set off on our flight after a coach journey to the airport, and went through security, all that jazz.

After the 11-hour flight, we touched down in Hong Kong to queue up for our next flight to Taiwan. We were getting pretty excited now, but everyone was really sleepy and confused. When we descended into Taiwan, during another earache of the pressure change, things started to really get going.

A few custom and immigration checks later, we met up with our host. He led us to our coach: which would take us on our way to our first hotel. It looked shiny, and we got a to see our first view of the streets of Taipei. It was around 8, and we were all pretty hungry seeing as nobody ate any plane food. Don’t blame us, it was really quite disgusting.

The sight of our first hotel restaurant greeted us like an oasis in a desert. We quickly scoffed our dinner and were off straight to sleep. Everyone slept like a log, until they were greeted with the sunshine that would start our first day of really experiencing Taiwan.

In between all the concerts, rehearsals and professional stuff we do, as always there is time for us to muck around and see stuff we would never see back in England. An obvious hit was the Taipei 101. The second tallest building in the world, but we weren’t going to dubai any time soon. Even though it was an overcast day, that didn’t stop the twenty-six of us (and our chaperones) admiring the vast construction and architecture.

We went up at first, all the way to the first deck. The view was, as you may have guessed, cloudy; but we could still admire the 360 view of the city we’d be spending some time in.

After that, we went to take a look at the in-genius design of the pendulum, or wind-damper. The stairs then took us to the outside level, so near the top we were actually inside a cloud. It was weird to breath in the air that was so high up. After a short queue and 43 seconds later, we found ourselves back on the ground.

That was just one of the things we did. There was an interesting talk about the History of Taiwan by our host In the Regent Hotel, Taipei. We ate amazing food. We even went to sleep a few times.

Stay tuned for some more inside scoop on Taiwan.