the bLog entry for today will be pretty short, as we spent almost all day long in taipeh zoo[001-118], the biggest zoo in asia. the area is huge and it takes hours to see all the stuff they offer. in the end we ran out of time, but managed to see quite a lot of it. besides all the animals in the enclosures there were also other animals like huge spiders [008,049-050,087], butterflies[022-029], dragonflies[051-052]. but there was even an area where they had butterflies[032-046,079] inside. and there were also some squirrels[062]. soon there was a lovely tune played all over the zoo area, telling people the zoo will soon be closed. we spotted a sign that said the exit is over one kilometre away. and all day long it had been so very hot and humid that we decided to go by one of those touristy trains[108]. we took the metro back to taipeh main station and ended up right in the middle of the rush hour[125,127-128]. since we didn't want to join the crowd, we decided to go for a coffee and wait a little. so we went to SOGO, a big shopping mall and found the "UCC vienna café". after returning to the hostel, having a long nice shower, we went out again to go to the shilin night market[135]. the market is right around a temple, but it was already closed. unfortunately it was already late when we arrived there and as already mentioned, the metro stops at about midnight. also it had started to rain, so we drove home, but took a different route on our way from the metro station to our hostel to find some nice place to eat. this way we found out that we actually were in the middle of the so called "combat zone", the red light district. but it looks quite different from red light districts i have already seen so far. only some red lights and the names on the signs. but wandering around we soon found a nice restaurant that had awesome dumplings with a delicious sauce. nomnom, as usual. track: day 04