Spooky hotel stay in Taipei

For a start, I must stress that Taiwan is now one of my favourite places to visit, the food is great, the people are super nice and polite and the scenic spots are beautiful. Will defo revisit except will be careful with hotel selection and avoid unnecessary triggers. My hotel is located near XMD and the room rate per night was not cheap for a solo trip. The interiors were dark and my room was at the end of the corridor sandwiched between 2 other rooms. On my second night, I visited a famous night market but before that I made a mistake in entering an over 100 yo temple during the night, my first and only thought was to pray for the victims of Hualian earthquake. Prior to that, I walked past a dark empty Chinese opera stage (akin to our getai) and looked into the darkened stage. When it was time to go to bed that night, some lights were left on as usual and I slept with a pillow over the side of my head (side sleeper). All of a sudden, a high pitch tone, bits of female Chinese opera singing crept into my ear. Stunned, I braced myself. Next few moments were quite shocking as I felt the bed (mattress on a wooden base structure) shaking from side to side. I started praying and it slowly subsided. The next night became worse (luckily it was the last night), as soon as I went to bed, the bed shook from side to side and there were loud knocking and stomping from above my room for a good period of time. On my way to the airport in a private ride, I asked the driver if there were any earthquakes happening nearby and he said not likely as things would have fallen onto the ground. Before I checked out, the door to the room next to me was open as the housekeeping team started cleaning it and I could see the wall behind my bed was directly connected to it. So was it some “strange” activity next door causing my bed to shake or??? Or some delusional sensations when one is tired or anxious. Oh avoid hotel rooms with odd angular shape, normal rooms are either square or rectangular, I slept in one odd angled room (5star) in HK and failed my business presentation miserably the next day as I could not get a wink of sleep at all.

Love to visit Taiwan again but not that hotel and be careful where you go at night. Don’t be discouraged from travelling solo. This is just one strange encounter I had.

#storytime