Taiwan part 2

After the wedding, Frank and June took about 30 of us on a bus tour of Taiwan. This is really the best way to travel, because there's lots of different people to hang out with, the confusing transportation in a different country issue is handled, and because you're with locals, you get to see stuff that you would never see if you just got off the plane and walked around. For me, the best part of this was trying all the different food (shut up Frank and Josh) because June and Bi knew all the best places and best dishes.

Night Market

After seeing a bunch of the countryside, we settled into a swanky Taipei hotel, and headed off to the night market. These things are pretty similar everywhere I've been: some ancient part of town with tiny little streets with lots of little shops selling all manner of goods, a ton of street vendors selling tasty/weird food, and LOTS of people. The Taipei night market is basically the standard deal, except there's more people. Basically, the whole night was a rock concert style pack-in with what seemed like all the Taiwanese people in the world. Frank, true to form, was concerned that we would get lost and wanted us to all stay together and communicate via walkie talkies. This was very kind, but we all snuck off ASAP, packed in, and had a blast. Sorry Frank! :)

night market Cory

night market Jill

night market Timmay!

night market E

One of the difficult things about documenting my various travels over here is trying to describe the food. There's a huge variety of flavors and combinations of flavors that I've never tasted before, and just don't have words to describe. That is, other than GOOD, or WEIRD, or GROSS, or KICKASS. I don't even know the names of this stuff, so pictures will have to suffice.

these are called whateverahoozis

these are squids on a stick, called somethingorotheraka

hotdog?

New Years

The last night we went to the Taipei 101 building, which is currently the tallest building in the world. This night was new year's eve, so the streets were packed beyond packed with people waiting to see the fireworks. Jill, Cory, Reba and I snuck in some Famous Grouse in coke bottles, and got nice and buzzy while we waited.

when dumbass meets dumbass and it's love

I'm a hit with the ladies, as usual

fireworks at the tallest building in the world

more fireworks

Aftermath

After the fireworks were over, we and 25 billion of our closest friends all tried to get on the subway. Put simply: this sucked. We queued up for hours just trying to get close to the subway entrance, all the time having to pee worse and worse.

packed in like (Taiwanese) sausage

As we stood in line longer and longer, I went from uncomfortable to twitchy. I started to sweat. All I could think about was peeing and how bad my bladder hurt. As more time went by, I went from twitchy to frantic. Finally, I grabbed Reba, told Wang Fu we were going to split and booked for the nearest darkened alley. As I pushed away into the crowds, Frank (Wang Fu) gave me a sort of disappointed/resigned look and shook his head. I'm sure he thought that our bodies were going to turn up in the river 2 days later. :) A funny thing about Taiwan is the contrast between the developed and undeveloped. Literally 2 blocks from the tallest building in the world is a two story, run down abandoned building filled with garbage. The shrubs in the front walk of this building had overgrown and provided a good deal of cover. Reba and I went in and let loose! As we left, some little kid was on his way in there as well. We smiled at his frowning father as we left, and took off for the cab stand.

Cab Stand, Yeah Right

So there wasn't a cab stand, but instead there were a billion people crowding the streets looking for a cab, looking for friends, looking for love, or looking for the Taiwanese equivalent of a kebab. We walked around in the crowds for a while trying to flag down cabs, but they were few and full. Finally, we came to a freeway offramp from which cabs literally seemed to be pouring. Kickass! Hundreds of people were lining the road waving down cabs, but there was no orderly queue. I'm sure that my English friend are gasping in shock as they read this, but it's true! Chaos at the offramp ensued, and we watched helplessly as cabs were grabbed with no indication of procedure. Taking my cue from my neighbors' bad behavior, I finally just jumped in front of everyone else and grabbed open a door. I stuffed Reba and myself in and gave the little hotel card (printed in Chinese) to the driver. This was a scary moment for two reasons. 1) the driver kept flipping the card over and over like he was looking for something he could read on it. I figured he had no idea where this hotel was, and we were going to have to get back out with the rest of the crowd and try for another cab. 2) I only had 1000 New Taiwanese Dollars, and had no idea if this was enough to get me back to the hotel. I immediately began prepping myself for the "this is all I have and this is all you're going to get" conversation. Stress stress stress!!!! In the end, the driver found our hotel and the ride only cost 300 NTDs. Phew! PLUS, we beat everyone else back to the hotel by an hour. Disaster averted, and adventure gained, not bad for a night out in a strange town!

The next morning, the bus took us all to the airport early, and we caught our flight to Hong Kong, aka Hongkers.

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