Taiwan Week 1

Ok. It's been a week and I haven't written about any of the hilarious things that have happened, the crazy food I've eaten or the neat places I've seen. There will be pictures but our trip photographer forgot a usb cable so those will come later. Hopefully I can remember most of this... I left Saturday morning (14Nov) and was upgraded by some fluke to business class. One of the two guys coming with me got bumped up too, but not the other. No idea why. It sure was funny though because I checked in last and the other guy that got bumped checked in first. Somehow, it skipped the guy in the middle. This has turned out to be the start of an ongoing trend for him. So business class is amazing. The seat lays flat for sleeping, wine and beer are free, the food is nice restaurant quality and the service almost annoyingly attentive. It was INCREDIBLE. Fastest flight of my life. We lose a day in the air and arrive in Taipei on Sunday night. That sucks because we have class early in the morning. Oh well, I'm in Taiwan. I'm having trouble understanding people, I can't work up the nerve to speak. I just listen... A lot. Monday morning, we wake up early and go foraging for breakfast. When you see the pictures this term will become more clear to you. The choices are endless for food and it is almost all delicious. They eat some weird things but I'll try it all once. Except for one thing. It's called stinky tofu. It smells like a corpse stuffed with week old dirty diapers and has been known to incapacitate city blocks. No joke. Ok, so I'm kidding but only about the incapacitating part. I can smell it from about 500 feet away through building walls. I'm not even tempting fate with that one. I finally find something like a burrito with 2 or 3 thin slices of meat, rice, cabbage, carrots, garlic, peanut powder and cilantro wrapped in a rice tortilla. Awesome. I promise. We eat and walk to the subway but I notice that no one else is eating and put my food in my back pack. I asked Jeff (other guy on the trip) if it was considered rude to eat and walk on the streets. He said 'No way. It's fine.' I'm not so sure so my food remains safely tucked away in my bag. He is from here so I figure he's right but as they say "When in Taipei..." We are about to get on the subway and a police man blows his whistle and yells at Jeff that you cannot eat here. HA! I win. Observation skills 1, native blood 0. We get on the train, find class get blasted in Chinese for 5 hours and wander the streets free again. We eat something call "Beef Noodles" and it contains beef tendon. The waitress assumes that I will not eat it and informs my Chinese friend that they are making me a bowl with just meat. He said "Did he request that?" she replied "Well, no but we just assumed..." Right, so 5 minutes later I get my bowl that is just like the others. Foreigner repelling beef tendon and all. Ok, so they were right. It's not really to my liking but I kind of wanted to discover that for myself. It tasted all right but the texture was not OK with my American tongue. Night falls and we wander through a city market known as XIMEN (Western gates) the name hearkens back to the days when there were walls around Taipei. Amazing and odd food abound in an incredible organized chaos. I ate a bowl of noodles that I was told is delicious. Considering all the people standing around just eat it I figured it must be good. It is, but as I was eating it I found some strange chewy substance. Not wanting to know, I asked what it was after I finished. It was pig intestine. Sweet. You know, I hate eating pig and now I ate intestine. Oh well, what's done is done. Next up I tried something called DONGGUACHA (Winter melon tea). It is sweet and refreshing. Delicious. I tried some chicken but when I nearly choked on a bone I gave up on that idea. I bought some fruit from a vendor selling fresh cut guava, papaya, dragon fruit and assorted others not found in America. I walked until my feat hurt then walked back to the subway and rode home. I think we turned in at around 1030pm. I spent about $10 all day. Sweet! The next few days are much the same with different foods. Tuesday I tried CONGZHUABINGJIADAN[JIALA] (Green onion pancake roll with egg and spicy sauce) with WENDOUJIANG (warm soy milk). I found my food. Sticking to it. It's awesome. I eat it almost every morning. Of everything I've tried this is the one I'll miss. Tuesday we go to SHILIN YESHI (the SHILIN market). My least favorite place that for some reason every vistior to TAIBEI should see. Crowded, smelly and loud with way to many DALUREN (Mainland China Chinese, they are rude, loud and smell. I know, I'm mean but if the shoe fits) I tried oyster omelet, and ROUYUAN (ok don't laugh Meat Pill) the omelet is self explanatory but the meat pill is a ball of gelatonous rice about the size of your fist with QINGCAI (green cabbage) and meat inside. Not bad, not definitely not my favorite. The omelette might have the potential of tasting good but the surroundings smelled of stinky tofu and I couldn't enjoy food very well. I found a stall selling fruit smoothies and got a fresh watermelon drink. SCORE! That's awesome as I'm sure you can imagine. We leave the food area after Jeff finds some KAOYOUYUCHUAN (Roast squid on a stick) and I buy some more fruit from a vendor by the main market area. Guava is good. I also tried mountain apples. They were good, but I'll stick to guava from now on. By now I'm sure you've noticed the focus on food. Well, that's because here, it's all about the food. Everything else seems secondary. It is a huge part of their culture, one that I had no understanding of before this trip. Friday comes at last and Jeff, Doug and I head out into town to get lost and find our way back. We are looking for a club we heard about but it is not open yet when we get there so we decide it sounds fun to ride elevators. Let me explain the sport. You get on an elevator, ride to the top then stop on each floor to see what it's hiding. It's amazing what you can find. The first one we ride on is just a department store. Nothing interesting. The second is a large building with poor signage which is fairly standard here. I have no idea how things stay in business. We ride to the top and find a personal theater. You can rent a large home theater setup with chairs and everything and watch from a huge selection of movies. Cool, but we were hoping to talk to some people and use our language skills. Next floor down please. Apartments. Next. 10th floor (Sounds like dead floor in Chinese) The elevator jolts to a stop and the doors slowly eek open. We are startled by the empty floor that is lit only by the light casting feebly from withing our elevator. It's like a scene from a cheesy horror flick and I'm jamming the close door button because that floor is way too creepy. NEXT! Apartments. Next. Oh, this is nice. Marble floors, nice lighting. Smells nice (a marked change from most places). We disembark from our faithful elevator and are greeted by a polite service lady who guides us into a karaoke room complete with big tv, surround sound, nice couches and books of songs with 4 mics. Sweet, we found something. We thumb through the pages of the song books and find no English songs which sucks because I can speak, not sing, Chinese. So I open the door to leave and find the service woman right in my face. "You're leaving?" so I say "Yeah, no English songs so I think we'll be going. Thanks though." She has be wait and ushers us back into the room and starts to explain the services provided by this lounge, The name of which suddenly translates in my mind as Perfume, uh oh. She explains pricing which is quite expensive and gets to a part about "and every 30 minutes we switch girls unless you like them, then you can keep them..." and I go "Wait wait wait. Let me make sure I heard you right" I repeat it back and I did. I say "I'm sorry, this is embarrassing we didn't bring enough money and our friend back at the hotel would really like this place. We need to go get some more money and our friend then we'll be back." NOT!! So gone. We get walked to the elevator by an attractive girl (that's her job, this is an objective observation) and when we get in a "couple" gets in the elevator too. I emphasize the fact that we are speaking English by speaking loudly in hopes that they will say something uh... embarrassing? It works. The guy says "You are so hot, you should come home with me tonight." The girl replies politely with "I'm sorry I can't, I've already been reserved" I look at my friends and say "Did you catch that?" one says "Uh, reserved?" yeah... that's what I heard too. So we leave. We eventually found a bar that had cheap beer and karaoke so we stayed for awhile and talked to random people. The day before, doug had discovered something called a maid cafe. It is a French maid themed cafe with overpriced food and waitresses in French maid costumes. The costumes are actually far more conservative than what most girls wear on the streets so mostly they're just for manga fans to oggle and not speak to. I'll tell you more about that in next weeks post. Now it's Saturday and we go to the warfs with Jeff's aunts who enjoy speaking TAIYU just to confuse us. Very sweet old ladies. They took us out to some SICHUAN food where I tried ZONGZI (A rice ball with meat inside wrapped in a tea leaf then steamed) some spicey greenbeans, hot and sour soup (authentic, don't puke like I almost did. I found duck blood cakes in there) and some delicious MANTOU that was fried (it looks like french bread and tastes like it only slightly sweeter.) So onto the subway/train to get to the docks. We wander around a bit in DANSHUI enjoying the local shops and I snag a dragon for Ryan for about $0.75 and some awesome KAOYUMI JIALA (roasted corn with hot sauce) Doug picked up some mochi candies which are a sweet rice jello like candy. They're good. Jeff's aunts buy a ticket for us all on the ferry and we head out to YURENMATOU (the fishermans warf). The waves are huge, but remember, this is a river. As I get off the ship, I say "That was fun!" but with the standard BEIJING 'r'ification that I learned in school. I am promptly corrected by the guy on the back of the ferry that it is fun, without the r and I repeat my self with the r and he re-emphasizes that I am wrong. Ok, I'm wrong. I say it his way. Such is life with so many QUYU (regional dialects). We get coffee and fesh crab while seeking shelter from the driving rain and head back. On the way back I get some Almond milk tea which is great! I buy one for each of us since it's warm and we're freezing. I fall asleep on the subway back and wake up just before my stop. That night we head to XIMEN again and discover a restaurant that is toilet themed. Right, you eat of a small toilet shaped bowl. Weird. Doug buys a mock US passport that says "United states of condom" on it, I guess he thinks it's pretty funny. I hope he doesn't read this. Sleep. Wake. Sunday is here. Time for relaxation. We hop on the train to BEITOU and wander around until we spot a nice looking spa that is Japanese styled. We go in, I dazzle the person at the counter with broken Chinese and we get a 30 minute massage followed by an hour in the hot springs for 33 bucks. Wow. I'm so coming back here. We head back to the hotel, take a nap and wake up to go out with Mike and Doug to hit a few bars and get some dinner. After two disappointingly boring bars filled with Americans speaking English, Mike finds a karaoke bar where everyone speaks English, or Tagalog. But hey, at least they have decent English song collection so we have a good time. It get stuck singing Tears in Heaven then I sing Hotel California and it's time to go. Mike's headache won't go away. Probably my singing. Sleep. And the next week begins.