The Last Day

I woke up groggy, sore, and dehydrated. I’d also picked up a small sunburn — more annoying than painful, thankfully. I hadn’t planned much for today, so I took it slow: sleeping in, getting breakfast, and packing my bags. After a bit of final prep for the flight home, I was off to the races.

National Palace Museum

I had saved the National Palace Museum for today, knowing I could spend a couple of hours there. They had a large collection of ancient Chinese artifacts — porcelain, jade, weaponry, silk — all the classics.

But to be honest, the collection was a bit of a letdown. The museum felt like the little brother to a much larger museum in China, where most of these items were originally from and are now displayed. Many of the pieces here were “secured” by the KMT, as I mentioned on 2025-11-25.

Because the museum was smaller than expected, I finished pretty quickly. I had some extra time, so I wandered along the pier a bit more and grabbed some lunch.

Happy Valley Racecourse

The final event of this trip was the Happy Wednesday races at Happy Valley — an open horse jockey race. I’d only learned about it this week after noticing references to the Jockey Club at several cultural sites and doing some Googling.

It’s hosted every Wednesday, open to the public, and usually has a real festival vibe. But due to the recent fires, they had toned down the festivities.

Once seated, I did some research to understand how the betting worked. There were countless types of bets you could place, predicting which horses would finish where. It was overwhelming, so I decided to just watch the first race (of seven) to see how everything worked.

I was seated next to a lively group of locals who had mixed results in the first round. It was tempting to join in, but I was still overwhelmed by the options. I grabbed some food and a beer to see if that would nudge me over the edge.

By the fourth race, I felt like I had the hang of it — and the alcohol had definitely kicked in — so I went to one of the betting terminals to place my bet. I put in my picks for which three horses would finish in the top positions and hit submit.

Nothing happened.

There was no place to insert money. I tried again. Still nothing.

I had wads of cash left over from the trip that I couldn’t bring home. I wanted to spend it there. But the machine refused to cooperate. Eventually, I gave up, reasoning that I was supposed to get rid of my cash — not make more by surely winning all my bets.

In the next race, the horses I had “bet” on didn’t finish anywhere close to what I’d predicted. Had my bet gone through, I would have lost everything. Instead, now I was stuck with a stack of cash I didn’t know what to do with.

I called it a night and headed back to the hotel. I had to wake up pretty early the next day for a long trip home.

On the way back, I caught myself thinking: “Is this really the best way to end your trip? Was this last night fun enough?” I pondered it for a moment, then shut it down. This trip lasted 70 days. I’ve done so much — I can’t let it all come down to one evening.

This final day was perfectly nice.