On Our Own

Tuesday 2/1/11

Max and I decided to roam the city on our own today. We started the day with a tutorial from his mom on how to use the Metro and where all of the major stops were. Then we walked with Ivan down the street to the 24-hour McDonald's to use their wifi. Turns out it was a Hinet hotspot and you needed a subscription so we headed towards Starbucks instead. Starbucks turned out to be a Wifly hotspot (still need a subscription) but Max randomly got logged in and was able to connect. It was such a sad thing to stand with dead devices while watching Max roam Google maps looking for the next nearest free wifi spot. After trying a few more places to no avail, Ivan headed back and Max and I hopped on the metro headed towards Taipei City Hall.

The metro was quick and easy to navigate. There was a quick change of trains at the Taipei Main Station and soon we were back in the main shopping district. It took a while to orient ourselves because the shops were basically blocks of department stores that looked the same but were numbered A4, A8, A9, etc. Outside of one of them we caught a free wifi hotspot and sat on the bench for 10 minutes uploading pictures, looking up restaurants, etc. We walked around looking for Hankyu department store which was supposed to have a Uniqlo and a Muji store.

We wandered into a building called Eslite which was kind of like a Fred Segal on steroids. There were a lot of Japanese-esque mini boutiques and everything was super expensive. After a quick browse we headed to the next block which turned out to be Hankyu. The main floor was a lobby connected to the Taipei City Hall metro station (how did we miss this??) and the main department store. We headed down the escalator and saw Uniqlo (B1) and Muji (B2). I was pretty hungry at this point so we browsed the food court first. Almost all of the department store blocks had a food court in the basement. We saw a katsu place called Anzu with a long line and decided almost immediately to join the line. Chinese rule: if there is a line, the food must be good! Also, I caught a wifi signal in line so I was able to log into Facebook and check in on Foursquare. Turns out we had wifi access in the restaurant too so it was the first time it felt like we were eating back in the US... taking pictures here and there and uploading them while we waited for our food.

The katsu was amazing. It reminded me a lot like Wako: we were given toasted sesames to grind in a bowl and the katsu was served on a tin cooling rack. Max had the TORO black pig which was SUPER fatty and I had the tiger prawn with pork tenderloin which was delicious. It came with a salad and choice of soup too.

After that we did a little shopping at Muji and then headed up to Uniqlo. Jeggings seemed to be an in thing there and I tried on a couple of pairs but they looked horrible! Bad throwback to the nineties. Uniqlo was by far the most crowded store we visited -- there was a long line at the fitting rooms and it took about 20 minutes to finally get in.

On the way out we hit up the food court floor again for a snack. (Okay, actually for the wifi.) We had some fresh juice at Happy Inn. Max had the "green bean job tear" and I had a papaya yogurt. We picked up a crepe cake for Chinese New Year and headed home.

It was about a 10-15 minute walk home from the metro station so we stopped by a cosmetic store to pick up some face masks and the Taiwan version of Best Buy to see if they sold scanners so we could scan Max's baby pictures. They didn't have any standalone scanners so we headed back home. I was super tired and hurting all over so after a short rest (of stuffing face with CNY snacks) we headed to the Shilin Night Market for a massage. It was $600NT for a 45 minute foot + shoulder massage (about $20) that came with a snack and some hot tea. Each lounge chair had its own TV and headphones so I watched America's Next Top Model while squirming in pain from my masseuse lady's man hands.

After the massage we headed home and I went straight to bed.

Taipei 101

Monday 1/31/11

This morning we took a Taxi to Taipei 101 for some shopping and sightseeing. When we arrived, we headed to Shin Kong Mitsukosha department store first to grab some lunch at the food court. The food court was filled with all kinds of Asian food, kind of like the Mistuwa food court x 10. There were all types of Chinese/Taiwanese/Hakka food, Japanese food, Korean food, Thai food and some fast food places. It was so overwhelming it was hard to choose what to eat. I ended up with a pork katsu donburi and a Mos burger on the side.

After that we headed upstairs to do some shopping. The main floor of the department store was all beauty stuff. They had most of the same premium brands we have in the US like Chanel, Dior, Chantecaille, Cle de Peau, etc and also some premium Asian brands like Shu Uemura, Kose, Fancl, etc. I wanted to buy some makeup to bring back but there was so much it ws hard to focus. There were a lot of cute shoes and boots (from Europe? Brazil?) but they were pretty pricey. I wanted to see the selection at the cheaper night market type places first.

Next to that department store, there was a small indoor mall that had boutiques from all the major European designers. Some of the stores had a sale sign in front that read 3, 5, or 7 which means up to 30, 50 or 70% off selected items (respectively). It was hard getting used to and the boutiques were so small it was hard to tell what was on sale and how much it was on sale for. It seemed like the salespeople just memorized which ones were what since the items weren't marked.

After we were done browsing, we walked to Taipei 101 which was a 4-story mall in the lobby. We headed up to the 5th floor which was the entrance to the observatory. After getting tickets, we waited in line for the elevator up. The elevator was super fast, something like going up 3 stories every half second. I got very woozy but it was a very short ride up. At the top we each got a little museum-tour-like speaker and walked around to take pictures and see the displays. There were a couple of gift stores at the top, a coffee shop and some other little things to do. After about an hour we headed down.

On the way down you can see the large damper ball which is this massively huge round structure suspended in the middle of the building that is used to keep the tall building secure and not sway in the wind. We also had to walk through the largest coral/jade shop ever before they let us exit. By the time we were done it was dark outside and we jumped into a taxi and headed towards Julia Wedding studio to look at our picture proofs. The traffic was horrible (New Years? Rush hour?) and it took almost 2 hours to get to the photo studio. We arrived around 8pm and it took about 2 hours to sort through 355 picture proofs to narrow it down to our top 42. The package we chose had 30 pictures included so we had to pay $1500NT ($30) extra per picture.

After Julia Wedding we went to the Shilin Night Market to eat traditional night market foods. Yup, this meant stinky tofu and oyster pancakes. At the beginning of the trip I was actually excited to try these things. I typically like exotic foods and it would be nice to like these "special" Taiwanese items but as soon as I walked into the stinky night market and actually saw the foods being cooked I was pretty grossed out. I tried the stinky tofu anyway, which was deep fried and didn't look bad, and got as far as putting it on my tongue before I had to spit it out. It tasted like really, really bad/strong fish sauce and literally stung my tongue. The oyster pancake would have been much better except it was drenched in this questionable red sauce. I took a bite (without the sauce) and actually enjoyed it until I got some gooey pancake part. I'm noticing that a lot of Taiwanese food is gooey. We ordered a couple other dishes like this oden-type soup with unidentifiable floating white things in it and some fried tempura fishcake which was good but had this pink sauce on top that I didn't like that much. After that we walked around some more to take pictures and I was just so tired (and grossed out) that I couldn't really enjoy browsing around. It was like an overly crowded flea market that smelled. There were rows and rows of clothes and accessories vendors and each played their own loud house/dance/pop music. It was craziness. After 15 minutes of being over stimulated we took a taxi home and I knocked out.

First Morning in Taiwan

The 14 hour flight here was brutal! It started out okay -- the flight was half-empty so we were allowed to move where we wished. We opted to take the first row to get extra leg room. After about 5 hours my back started hurting and I started getting restless. I watched The Kids are Alright, half of King's Speech, Love and Other Drugs, half of Mary Poppins and read a couple of chapters. I was determined to stay awake since we were arriving in Taipei at 10:30pm (6am PST). By about hour 12 I was not feeling it. My back hurt, my shoulder was in pain, my legs were aching and I started feeling nauseous from the airplane smells. They served porridge and the smell just made everything worse. I used a throw-up bag to "filter" the airplane air and sat with my head between my knees for the rest of the flight.

When we arrived in Taipei it was warmer than I expected. It was cool outside but the humidity made it easy to sweat. I was really hungry but too tired to do anything. It was about a 45 minute drive to Max's grandma's house in Shilin and I knocked out in the car. I had a bad ulcer and stomach pains when we arrived so we decided to go to the night market to eat something. I felt like a zombie but I knew I'd feel better once I got something in my stomach. We went to a random restaurant and had cold chicken, fried rice, sauteed vegetables, tofu and sweet and sour pork ribs. Amazing that such a random street restaurant tastes so much better than the over-greased Chinese food in LA! We stopped by 7-Eleven to get some tea eggs and tea and then headed back to the apartment. Max's grandma lives in a new apartment complex built by the Taiwanese government for government workers. (His grandfather was in the Taiwanese equivalent of the CIA.) Was I allowed to blog that?

I showered and knocked out and woke up at 7:30am the next morning. I forgot to turn my iPhone alarm off and the time automatically adjusted! In the morning I met Max's grandmother who was so happy to see us. We had some sweet soymilk and watched TV until Ivan and Max's mom woke up. After spending some time with the family, we headed out for some breakfast. It was about a 10 minute walk to the best Taiwanese breakfast I've had in my life. There was a salty soy milk which was served like porridge, scallion buns and some Chinese donuts dipped in sweet soymilk. Even the panfried radish cake was 100x better than the best dimsum in San Gabriel! Since I don't have my laptop with me pictures will have to wait until I get back!

We rushed back to the apartment to meet Max's aunt and cousin who was visiting from the U.S. too. We watched Asian music videos on TV while snacking on some fresh hand-rolled egg rolls (the cookie, not the appetizer) and Taiwanese fruit. Then his other aunt and cousin who live here came over and we had pork chop rice delivered to the apartment. Again, the best I've ever tasted. Doesn't even taste like any of the pai kut fan I've ever had in the U.S. The pork was so thin, tender and flavored. The rice was soft and sticky like Korean rice and it had really good steamed vegetables, corn and seaweed in it.

I am so full, it's barely 2:30pm and I feel like I've already gained 5 pounds. I'll be back later hopefully. It is a pain to type on a Chinese keyboard btw... Ｔｈｅ　ｓｅｔｔｉｎｇ　ｋｅｅｐｓ　ｇｏｉｎｇ　ｂａｃｋ　ａｎｄ　ｆｏｒｔｈ　ｂｅｔｗｅｅｎ　ｄｉｆｆｅｒｅｎｔ　ｃｈａｒａｃｔｅｒ　ｓｅｔｓ．